The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

fart in tune with verses recited to him; but that does not prove the pure obedience of that member, since it is normally most indiscreet and disorderly.

17 In addition I know one Behind so stormy and churlish that it has obliged its master to fart forth wind constantly and unremittingly for forty year...

And near Pisa there was presented to the Emperor Charles, King of Bohemia, a girl all bristly and hairy whom her mother claimed to have conceived like this because of a portrait of John the Baptist hanging above her bed. It is the same with animals: witness Jacob’s sheep and those partridges and hares which are turned white by the snow in the mountains.

The power of habit was very well understood, it seems to me, by the man who first forged that tale of a village woman who had grown used to cuddling a calf and carrying it about from the time it was born: she grew so accustomed to doing so that she was able to carry it when a fully grown bull.1

A certain French nobleman always used to blow his nose with his fingers, something quite opposed to our customs. Defending his action (and he was famous for his repartee) he asked me why that filthy mucus should be so privileged that we should prepare fine linen to receive it and then, going even further, should wrap it up and carry it carefully about on our persons; that practice ought to excite more loathing and nausea than seeing him simply excrete it (wherever it might be) as we do all our other droppings. I considered that what he said was not totally unreasonable, but habit had prevented me from noticing just that strangeness which we find so hideous in similar customs in another country.

Alexander came across a people where they bury their fruit trees in winter to protect them from the frost.13

Sea-going merchants are right to ensure that dissolute, blasphemous or wicked men do not sail in the same ship with them, believing such company to be unlucky. That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: ‘Shut up,’ he said, ‘so that they do not realize that you are here with me.’4

Socrates was told that some man had not been improved by travel. ‘I am sure he was not,’ he said. ‘He went with himself!’10

Our own deaths have never frightened us enough, so let us burden ourselves with fears for the deaths of our wives, children and servants. Our own affairs have never caused us worry enough, so let us start cudgelling and tormenting our brains over those of our neighbours and of those whom we love.

to do without going that far. When Fortune favours me, it is enough to prepare for her disfavour, picturing future ills in comfort, to the extent that my imagination can reach that far, just as we train ourselves in jousts and tournaments, counterfeiting war in the midst of peace.

me. I know healthy young men who travel with a mass of pills in their baggage to swallow during an attack of rheum, fearing it less since they know they have a remedy to hand. That is the way to do it, only more so: if you know yourself subject to some grave affliction, equip yourself with medicines to benumb and deaden the part concerned.

If a hangover came before we got drunk we would see that we never drank to excess: but pleasure, to deceive us, walks in front and hides her train. Books give pleasure: but if frequenting them eventually leads to loss of our finest accomplishments, joy and health, then give up your books. I am one who believes that their fruits cannot outweigh a loss such as that.

If I had somebody to write to I would readily have chosen it as the means of publishing my chatter. But I would need some definite correspondent, as I used to have,11 who would draw me out, sustain me and keep me going. For to correspond with thin air as others do is something I could only manage in my dreams; nor, being the sworn enemy of all deception, could I treat serious matters under made-up names. I would have been more observant and confident if I were addressing one strong and beloved friend than I am now when I need to have regard for a many-sided public. Unless I deceive myself my achievement then would have been greater.

I hate unto death to sound like a flatterer; which means that I naturally adopt a dry, blunt, raw kind of language which to anyone who does not otherwise know me may seem somewhat haughty.

Of all the lunacies in this world the most accepted and the most universal is concern for reputation and glory, which we espouse even to the extent of abandoning wealth, rest, life and repose (which are goods of substance and consequence) in order to follow after that image of vanity and that mere word which had no body, nothing, to hold on

For, as Cicero says, even those who fight it still want their books against it to bear their name in the title and hope to become famous for despising fame.2

Somebody in my own time was criticized by the King for ‘laying hands on a clergyman’; he strongly and firmly denied it: all he had done was to thrash him and to trample on him.

Flatterers were bringing Alexander the Great to believe that he was the Son of Jove; but when he was wounded one day and saw the blood pour out of the gash he said, ‘What do you say about this, then? Is this blood not red and thoroughly human? It is not the same colour as the blood which Homer has flowing from the wounds of gods!’13

Yes, and he may perhaps agree with the opinion of King Seleucus, that if a man knew the weight of a sceptre he would not bother to pick it up if he found it lying on the ground – he said that because of the great and painful responsibilities weighing on a good king.18 Indeed it is no little thing to have to rule others, since there are so many difficulties in ruling ourselves.

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As for being in command – which appears so pleasant – I am strongly of the opinion (given the weakness of man’s judgement and the difficulty of making choices in new and doubtful matters) that it is far more easy and agreeable to be led than to lead, and that there is great peace of mind to be found in merely having to follow the road you are told to and in being responsible for no one but yourself:

Do we believe that choirboys greatly enjoy the music or rather that, being glutted with it, they find it boring? Feasting and dancing, masquerades and tournaments give delight to those who do not often see them and who were yearning to see them; but for a man who attends them regularly they become tasteless and disagreeable. Nor do women excite a man who has enjoyed them until his mind is sated; if a man does not give himself time to get thirsty he will never enjoy drinking.20 We enjoy farces: they are drudgery to the travelling players. As proof of this, it is a treat and feast for princes to put on disguises occasionally and to drop into the way of living of the ordinary common people.

Nothing cloys and impedes like abundance. What appetite would not be put off by the sight of three hundred accessible women such as the Grand Seigneur has in his harem? And what appetite for what kind of hunting did one of his ancestors keep up, who never took to the field with fewer than seven thousand falconers?

And I do not know why, but we expect kings to cover up their faults more and to hide them better. What is a misdemeanor in us is, in them, considered an act of tyranny by the people, as disdain and contempt for the law; any tendency to vice apart, they look as if they are taking additional pleasure in scornfully trampling public decency underfoot. [C] Indeed Plato in his dialogue Gorgias defines a tyrant as a man who, in his city, is free to do anything he wants.22 [B] So, often, the flaunting of their vice in public hurts more than the vice itself. Every man loathes being spied on and having his actions recorded: but kings are spied on, down to their facial expressions and their thoughts, the entire people reckoning that they have the right and privilege of making judgements upon them. The higher and brighter the spot, the bigger the stain: a mole or wart on your forehead shows up more than a scar does elsewhere.

Cyneas, wishing to make him realize the inanity of his ambition, asked him, ‘Well now, Sire, what end do you propose in planning this great project?’ – ‘To make myself master of Italy,’ came his swift reply. ‘And when that is done?’ – ‘I will cross into Gaul and Spain.’ – ‘And then?’ – ‘I will go and subjugate Africa.’ – ‘And in the end?’ – ‘When I have brought the whole world under my subjection, I shall seek my repose, living happily at my ease.’ Cyneas then returned to the attack: ‘Then by God tell me, Sire, if that is what you want, what is keeping you from doing it at once? Why do you not place yourself now where you say you aspire to be, and so spare yourself all the toil and risk that you are putting between you and it?’

Compare the life of a man, or enslaved by such fantasies with the life of a ploughman who, free from learning and prognostics, merely follows his natural appetites and judges things as they feel at present. He only feels ill when he really is ill; the other fellow often has stone in the mind before stone in the kidney. As though it were not time enough to suffer pain when it really comes along, our thoughts must run ahead and meet it.

What I mean is that when our judgement brings a charge against another man over a matter then in question, it must not exempt us from an internal judicial inquiry. It is a work of charity for a man who is unable to weed out a defect in himself to try, nevertheless, to weed it out in another in whom the seedling may be less malignant and stubborn. And it never seems to me to be an appropriate answer to anyone who warns me of a fault in me to say that he has it too. What difference does that make? The warning remains true and useful. If we had sound nostrils our shit ought to stink all the more for its being our own.