The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

[The more crafty and artful a man is, the more he is loathed and mistrusted, once he has lost his reputation for probity.]

A man who is disloyal to truth is disloyal to lies as well.

Those writers nowadays who, when drawing up the duties of a prince, have considered only what is good for the affairs of State, placing that before his fidelity and conscience, might have something to say to a prince whose fortune had so arranged his affairs that he could for ever secure them by one single act of deception, one failure to keep his word. But things do not happen that way: princes stumble again into similar bargains: they make more than one peace, more than one treaty in their lifetime. The profit tempts them when they first prove untrustworthy – and virtually always some profit is on offer, as in every act of wickedness (sacrilege, murder, rebellion and treachery are done for some kind of gain); but that first profit entails infinite subsequent losses, putting that prince, by his first breach of trust, beyond all negotiations, beyond any mode of agreement.

[I am full of cracks and leaking everywhere.]

I think the same about debates on politics: whatever role you are given your game is as easy as your opponent’s, provided that you do no violence to the most obvious and evident of principles. That is why, for my humour, there is no system so bad (provided it be old and durable) as not to be better than change and innovation. Our manners are corrupt in the extreme and wondrously inclined to get worse; many of our French laws and customs are monstrous and barbaric: yet, because of the difficulty of putting ourselves into a better state, and because such is the danger of collapse into ruin, if I could jam the brake on our wheel and stop it dead at this point I would happily do so.

I have often heard it said that cowardice is the mother of cruelty. [B] And I have learned from experience that that harsh rage of wicked inhuman minds is usually accompanied by womanish weakness.

Health is precious. It is the only thing to the pursuit of which it is truly worth devoting not only our time but our sweat, toil, goods and life itself. Without health all pleasure, scholarship and virtue lose their lustre and fade away.

Reading, by its various subjects, particularly serves to arouse my discursive reason: it sets not my memory to work but my judgement.

So, for me, few conversations are arresting unless they are vigorous and powerful. It is true that grace and beauty occupy me and fulfil me as much or more as weight and profundity. And since I doze off during any sort of converse and lend it only the outer bark of my attention, it often happens that during polite conversation (with its flat, well-trodden sort of topics) I say stupid things unworthy of a child, or make silly, ridiculous answers, or else I remain stubbornly silent which is even more inept and rude. I have a mad way of withdrawing into myself as well as a heavy, puerile ignorance of everyday matters.

To tell the truth, localized solitude makes me reach out and extend myself more: I throw myself into matters of State and into the whole universe more willingly when I am alone. In a crowd at the Louvre I hold back and withdraw into my skin; crowds drive me back into myself and my thoughts are never more full of folly, more licentious and private than in places dedicated to circumspection and formal prudence.

It is not our folly which makes me laugh: it is our wisdom.

the profit which I draw from books consists in experiencing and applying that proverb (which is a very true one). In practice I hardly use them more than those who are quite unacquainted with them. I enjoy them as misers do riches: because I know I can always enjoy them whenever I please. My soul is satisfied and contented by this right of possession. In war as in peace I never travel without books. Yet days and even months on end may pass without my using them. ‘I will read them soon,’ I say, ‘or tomorrow; or when I feel like it.’ Thus the time speeds by and is gone, but does me no harm; for it is impossible to describe what comfort and peace I derive from the thought that they are there beside me, to give me pleasure whenever I want it, or from recognizing how much succour they bring to my life. It is the best protection which I have found for our human journey and I deeply pity men of intelligence who lack it. I on the other hand can accept any sort of pastime, no matter how trifling, because I have this one which will never fail me.

That, as the saying goes, is shitting in the basket and then plonking it on your head.

The oddness of such novelties leads me on to the idea that it is a sort of lack of confidence in monarchs, a sign of not being sure of their position, to strive to make themselves respected and glorious through excessive expenditure. It would be pardonable abroad but among his subjects, where he is the sovereign power, the highest degree of honour to which he can attain is derived from the position he holds.

Isocrates’ advice to his king does not seem to lack good sense: let his furniture and his tableware be magnificent, for such expenditure is of lasting value and is passed on to his successors: let him avoid all magnificence which drains away immediately from use or memory.

When I was a young man, in default of other glories I gloried in fine clothes. In my case they were quite becoming; but there are folk on whom fine clothes sit down and cry.

And Theophrastus is rightly condemned for asserting the opposite doctrine in his book On Riches, in which he maintained that expenditure on festivals was the true fruit of opulence. Such pleasures, says Aristotle, have an effect only on the lowest of the low; they immediately vanish from their memory as soon as they have had enough of them; no serious man of judgement can hold them in esteem.

Moreover to their subjects who form the spectators of these festivities, it seems that it is their own wealth that is being flaunted and that they are being feasted at their own expense. Their peoples are always ready to assume about kings what we assume about our servants: that their job is to provide abundantly for everything that we want but never to spend anything on themselves. That is why the Emperor Galba, when he was delighted by a musician during dinner, called for his chest, plunged in his hand and gave him a fistful of crowns saying, ‘This is my own money not the government’s.’14 Be that as it may, the people are usually right: money earned to feed their bellies is used instead to feed their eyes.

By our fashion there is no end to it: goods already received do not figure in our accounts: we only love future liberality.

[If we were vouchsafed a sight of the infinite extent of time and space stretching away in every direction, and if our minds were allowed to wander over it far and wide, ranging about and hastening along without ever glimpsing a boundary where it could halt: from such an immensity we would grasp what almighty power lies behind those innumerable forms.]

Just as we vainly conclude today that the world is declining into decrepitude using arguments drawn from our own decline and decadence – Jamque adeo affecta est ætas, affectaque tellus [Our age lacks vigour now: even the soil is less abundant]29 – so that same poet concluded that the world was yet newly born and young, from the vigour of the minds of his day, fertile in new inventions and the creation of various arts: Verum, ut opinor, habet novitatem summa, recensque Natura est mundi, neque pridem exordia cæpit: Quare etiam quœdam nunc artes expoliuntur, Nunc etiam augescunt, nunc addita navigiis sunt Multa. [In my opinion our universe is new; the origin of the world is recent: it is but newly born. That is why some arts are still developing nowadays and growing still; the art of navigation is even now progressing.]

Since we cannot attain it, let us get our own back by disparaging it! Not that you are disparaging anything in its entirety when you find defects in it: there are defects in all things, no matter how beautiful or desirable they may be. In general high rank has one obvious advantage: it can lay itself aside whenever it wants to; it is virtually free to choose either condition. All forms of greatness are not brought low uniquely by a fall: some there are which allow you to stoop low without falling. It does seem to me that we set too high a value on it, as we also do on the determination of those whom we have seen or heard refusing it or resigning it at their own volition. In its essence the advantage of it is not so self-evident that it takes a miracle to reject it.

What I find hard is striving to bear misfortune. There does not seem to be much involved in being content with a modest measure of wealth and avoiding greatness; that is a virtue which I think even I could reach without a great deal of exertion, and I am only a fledgling.

I have a soul so lazy that I do not measure my fortune by its height: I measure it by its pleasantness.

My horror of cruelty thrusts me deeper into clemency than any example of clemency ever could draw me.

What hits you affects you and wakes you up more than what pleases you.

Just as our mind is strengthened by contact with vigorous and well-ordered minds, so too it is impossible to overstate how much it loses and deteriorates by the continuous commerce and contact we have with mean and ailing ones. No infection is as contagious as that is. I know by experience what that costs by the ell. I love arguing and discussing, but with only a few men and for my own sake: for to serve as a spectacle to the great and indulge in a parade of your wits and your verbiage is, I consider, an unbecoming trade for an honourable gentleman.

Since opinions do not find in me a ready soil to thrust and spread their roots into, no premise shocks me, no belief hurts me, no matter how opposite to my own they may be. There is no idea so frivolous or odd which does not appear to me to be fittingly produced by the mind of man. Those of us who deprive our judgement of the right to pass sentence look gently on strange opinions; we may not lend them our approbation but we do readily lend them our ears.

So contradictory judgements neither offend me nor irritate me: they merely wake me up and provide me with exercise. We avoid being corrected: we ought to come forward and accept it, especially when it comes from conversation not a lecture. Whenever we meet opposition, we do not look to see if it is just but how we can get out of it, rightly or wrongly. Instead of welcoming arms we stretch out our claws. I can put up with being roughly handled by my friends: ‘You are an idiot! You are raving!’ Among gentlemen I like people to express themselves heartily, their words following wherever their thoughts lead. We ought to toughen and fortify our ears against being seduced by the sound of polite words. I like a strong, intimate, manly fellowship, the kind of friendship which rejoices in sharp vigorous exchanges just as love rejoices in bites and scratches which draw blood. [C] It is not strong enough nor magnanimous enough if it is not argumentative, if all is politeness and art; if it is afraid of clashes and walks hobbled. ‘Neque enim disputari sine reprehensione potest.’ [It is impossible to debate without refuting.]7

we, on the contrary, find that there is nothing which makes us more susceptible than convictions about our own surpassing excellence, our contempt for our adversary, and about its being reasonable for the weaker to be willing to accept refutations which set him back on his feet and redress him.

In debating we are taught merely how to refute arguments; the result of each side’s refuting the other is that the fruit of our debates is the destruction and annihilation of the truth.

Every day I spend time reading my authors, not caring about their learning, looking not for their subject-matter but how they handle it; just as I go in pursuit of discussions with a celebrated mind not to be taught by it but to get to know it.

Any man may speak truly: few men can speak ordinately, wisely, adequately.

there is in truth no greater silliness, none more enduring, than to be provoked and enraged by the silliness of this world – and there is none more bizarre.

It is the same in discussion: the gravity, academic robes and rank of the man who is speaking often lend credence to arguments which are vain and silly.

Related to this is the practice of so many people to sanctify the kings whom they have chosen from among themselves. They are not contented with honouring them: they need to worship them.

I most doubt a man’s ability when I see it accompanied by great rank and public acclaim.

If their judgements are apposite but expressed in universals – ‘This is good: that is bad’ – find out whether it is luck which makes them apposite.

Make them circumscribe and restrict their verdict a little: ‘Why is it good? How is it good?’ Those universal judgements (which I find so common) say nothing. They are like those who greet people as a mass or a crowd: those who have genuine knowledge of them greet them by name and distinguish them as individuals.

to undertake to go back over the detail of a good author, to try to indicate with precise and selected examples where he surpasses himself and where he flies high by weighing his words and his locutions and his choice of materials one after another: not many try that.

Day after day I hear stupid people uttering words which are not stupid. [B] They say something good; let us discover how deeply they understand it and where they got hold of it. They do not own that fine saying or that fine reasoning, but we help them to use it. They are only looking after it. Perhaps they only produced it fortuitously, hesitantly: it is we who give it credit and value. You are lending them a hand. But why? They feel no gratitude towards you for it and become all the more silly. Do not support them; let them go their own way: they will handle that material like a man who fears getting scalded: they dare not show it in a different light or context nor to deepen it.

[The fruits of intellect and virtue and of all outstanding talents are best employed when shared with one’s neighbour.]

I change subject violently and chaotically. [C] My pen and my mind both go a-roaming. [B] If you do not want more dullness you must accept a touch of madness, [C] so say the precepts of our past masters and, even more so, their example. [B] There are hundreds of poets who drag and droop prosaically, but the best of ancient prose – [C] and I scatter prose here no differently from verse – [B] sparkles throughout with poetic power and daring, and presents the characteristics of its frenzy. We must certainly cede to poetry the mastery and preeminence in prattle.

Those who extend their anger and hatred beyond their concerns (as most men do) betray that their emotion arises from something else, from some private cause, just as when a man is cured of his ulcer but still has a fever that shows that it arises from some other and more secret origin. [C] The fact is that they feel no anger at all for the general cause in so far as it inflicts wounds on the interests of all men and on the State: they resent it simply because it bruises their private interest. That is why they goad themselves into a private passion which goes beyond public justice and reason: ‘Nam tarn omnia universi quam ea quae ad quemque pertinent singuli carpebant.’ [They did not carp about the terms as a whole but about how they affected them as individuals.]

they required a reader to be a good swimmer, so that the weight of his doctrine should not pull him under nor its depth drown him.18

I find it harsh to have to judge anyone in whom the bad qualities exceed the good. [C] Plato requires three attributes in anyone who wishes to examine the soul of another: knowledge, benevolence, daring.58

Kings and philosophers shit: and so do ladies.

Our most great and glorious achievement is to live our life fittingly. Everything else – reigning, building, laying up treasure – are at most tiny props and small accessories.

But I know life to be something different: I find it to be both of great account and delightful – even as I grasp it now [C] in its final waning; [B] Nature has given it into our hands garnished with such attributes, such agreeable ones, that if it weighs on us, if it slips uselessly from us, we have but ourselves to blame.

[It is the life of the fool which is graceless, fearful and entirely sacrificed to the future.]