The Complete Essays of Montaigne

by Michel de Montaigne

Yet to the Stoics pity is a vicious passion; they want us to succor the afflicted, but not to unbend and sympathize with them.

ATruly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.

“It is because this last grief alone can be signified by tears; the first two far surpass any power of expression.”

In truth, the impact of grief, to be extreme, must stun the whole soul and impede its freedom of action; as it happens to us, at the hot alarm of some very bad news, to feel ourselves caught, benumbed, and as it were paralyzed from any movements, so that the soul, relaxing afterward into tears and lamentations, seems to unbend, extricate itself, and gain more space and freedom.

BNor is it in the live and most ardent heat of passion that we are fit to set forth our amorous complaints and pleadings; the soul is then burdened with deep thoughts, and the body weighed down and languishing with love.

BI am little subject to these violent passions. My susceptibility is naturally tough; and I harden and thicken it every day by force of reason.

are never at home, we are always beyond. Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the feeling and consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer

BAmong the laws that concern the dead, this one seems to me as solid as any, which obliges the actions of princes to be examined after their death. They are equals with, if not masters of, the laws; what justice could not do to their persons, it should rightfully be able to do to their reputations and to the property of their successors—things that we often prefer to life. It is a custom that brings singular advantages to the nations in which it is observed, and desirable to all good princes, Cwho have reason to complain that the memory of the wicked is honored like their own.

We owe subjection and obedience equally to all kings, for that concerns their office; but we do not owe esteem, any more than affection, except to their virtue. Let us make this concession to the political order: to suffer them patiently if they are unworthy, to conceal their vices, to abet them by commending their indifferent actions if their authority needs our support. But, our dealings over, it is not right to deny to justice and to our liberty the expression of our true feelings, and especially to deny good subjects the glory of having reverently and faithfully served a master whose imperfections were so well known to them, and thus to deprive posterity of such a useful example.

BI, who am so bold-mouthed, am nevertheless by nature affected by this shame. Except under great stress of necessity or voluptuousness, I hardly communicate to the sight of anyone the members and acts that our custom orders us to cover up. I suffer from more constraint in this than I consider becoming to a man, and especially to a man of my profession.

The opposite kind of preoccupation, of which also I have no lack of examples close to home, seems to me germane to this one: to fret and fuss at this last stage over planning one’s funeral so as to effect some trifling and unusual economy—one servant and one lantern.

it were necessary to make an ordinance about it, I should judge that in this, as in all actions of life, each man should relate his rule to the shape of his fortune.

AWhat causes do we not invent for the misfortunes that befall us? On what do we not place the blame, rightly or wrongly, so as to have something at which to thrust? It is not those blond tresses that you are tearing, nor the whiteness of that bosom that in your anger you beat so cruelly, that have made you lose by an unlucky bullet that well-loved brother: place the blame elsewhere.

ADeath, they say, acquits us of all our obligations.

We cannot be bound beyond our powers and means. For this reason—that we have no power to effect and accomplish, that there is nothing really in our power but will—all man’s rules of duty are necessarily founded and established in our will.

I can, I shall keep my death from saying anything that my life has not already said.

so it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination.

The soul that has no fixed goal loses itself; for as they say, to be everywhere is to be nowhere:

For these circumstances, to which they are willing to enslave their honor and their conscience, being subject to many changes, their words must vary accordingly.

CIn truth lying is an accursed vice. We are men, and hold together, only by our word. If we recognized the horror and the gravity of lying, we would persecute it with fire more justly than other crimes.

AIt seems to be more peculiar to the mind to be prompt and sudden in its operation, and more peculiar to the judgment to be slow and deliberate. But a man who remains completely mute unless he has leisure to prepare, and also one to whom leisure gives no advantage for speaking better, are both abnormal cases.

BI have little control over myself and my moods. Chance has more power here than I. The occasion, the company, the very sound of my voice, draw more from my mind than I find in it when I sound it and use it by myself. AThus its speech is better than its writings, if there can be choice where there is no value.

AThe precepts of resoluteness and constancy do not state that we must not protect ourselves as much as it lies in our power from the evils and troubles that threaten us; nor consequently that we should not fear being taken by surprise. On the contrary, all honorable means of safeguarding ourselves from evils are not only permitted but laudable. And constancy’s part is played principally in bearing troubles patiently where there is no remedy. So that there is neither any bodily suppleness, nor any move with hand weapons, that we should despise if it serves to safeguard us from the blow that is struck at us.

CNor do the Stoics mean that the soul of their sage can resist the first visions and fancies that come upon him; rather they consent that he give in, as to a natural subjection, to the great noise of the heavens or of a falling building, for example, to the point of turning pale and tightening up. Likewise for the other passions, provided that his judgment remains sound and entire, that the seat of his reason suffers no injury or alteration, and that he lends no consent to his fright and suffering.

AMen, says an old Greek maxim, are tormented by the opinions they have of things, not by the things themselves. There would be a great point gained for the relief of our wretched human lot if someone could prove this statement true in every case. For if evils have no entry into us but by our judgment, it seems to be in our power to disdain them or turn them to good use. If things give themselves up to our mercy, why shall we not dispose of them and arrange them to our advantage? If what we call evil and torment is neither evil nor torment in itself, if it is merely our fancy that gives it this quality, it is in us to change it. And having the choice, if no one forces us, we are strangely insane to tense ourselves for the course that is more painful to us, and to give sicknesses, poverty, and slights a bitter and unpleasant taste if we can give them a good one and if, fortune furnishing merely the material, it is for us to give it form. But let us see whether this can be maintained: that what we call evil is not evil in itself—or at least, whatever it is, that it depends on us to give it a different savor and a different complexion; for all this comes to the same thing.

CAny opinion is strong enough to make people espouse it at the price of life.

All pains whose only danger is their pain we call free from danger; toothache and the gout, painful as they are, inasmuch as they are not fatal, who lists them as illnesses? But let us suppose that in death we principally consider the pain, Aas likewise poverty has nothing to be feared but this, that it delivers us into the hands of pain, by the thirst, hunger, cold, heat, and sleepless nights that it makes us endure.

AWhat makes us endure pain so poorly is that we are not accustomed to find our principal contentment in the soul, Cand that we do not concentrate enough on it; for the soul is the one and sovereign mistress of our condition and conduct.

It is easy to see that what makes pain and pleasure keen in us is the sharpness of our mind. The animals, who keep the mind on a leash, leave to their bodies their own feelings, free and natural and therefore almost exactly alike within each species, as we see by the uniformity of their movements. If we did not disturb within our members the jurisdiction which belongs to them in this matter, it is probable that we should be better off, and that nature has given them a just and measured temperance toward pleasure and toward pain. Indeed it cannot fail to be just, being equal and common in all. But since we have emancipated ourselves from nature’s rules to abandon ourselves to the vagabond freedom of our fancies, at least let us help ourselves by turning them in the most agreeable direction.

BExternal circumstances take their savor and color from the inner constitution, just as clothes keep us warm not by their heat but by our own, which they are fitted to foster and nourish; he who would shelter a cold body with them would get the same service for cold; thus are snow and ice preserved.

AIndeed, just as study is a torment to a lazy man, abstinence from wine to a drunkard, frugality to the luxurious man, and exercise to a delicate idler, so it is with the rest. Things are not that painful or difficult of themselves; it is our weakness and cowardice that make them so. To judge of great and lofty things we need a soul of the same caliber; otherwise we attribute to them the vice that is our own. A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see the thing, but how we see it.

AValor has its limits like the other virtues, and these limits once transgressed, we find ourselves on the path of vice; so that we may pass through valor to temerity, obstinacy, and madness, unless we know its limits well—and they are truly hard to discern near the borderlines. From this consideration is derived the custom, which we have in wars, of punishing even with death those who obstinately defend a place which by the rules of war cannot be held.

In truth it is right to make a great distinction between the faults that come from our weakness and those that come from our malice. For in the latter we have tensed ourselves deliberately against the rules of reason that nature has imprinted in us; and in the former it seems that we can call on this same nature as our warrantor, for having left us in such imperfection and weakness. Thus many people have thought that we could not be blamed except for what we do against our conscience; and on this rule is partly based the opinion of those who condemn capital punishment for heretics and unbelievers, and the belief that an advocate or a judge cannot be held responsible for having failed in his charge because of ignorance.

I am not a good “naturalist” (as they call it) and I hardly know by what springs fear acts in us; but at all events it is a strange passion, and the doctors say that there is none which carries our judgment away sooner from its proper seat.

ANow fear gives wings to our heels as in the above examples; now it nails down and fetters our feet.

CFear expresses its utmost power when, in its own service, it throws us back upon the courage that it has snatched away from our sense of duty and honor.

Those who are in pressing fear of losing their property, of being exiled, of being subjugated, live in constant anguish, losing even the capacity to drink, eat, and rest; whereas the poor, the exiles, and the slaves often live as joyfully as other men. And so many people who, unable to endure the pangs of fear, have hanged themselves, drowned themselves, or leaped to their death, have taught us well that fear is even more unwelcome and unbearable than death itself.

The Greeks recognize another kind of fear, which comes, they say, not from any failure of our reason, but without any apparent cause and by divine impulsion. Whole peoples are often seen to be seized by it, and whole armies.

For it seems that, as storms and tempests are provoked to humble the pride and loftiness of our buildings, so there are spirits up above who are envious of grandeurs here below:

And it seems that Fortune sometimes lies in wait precisely for the last day of our life, to show her power to overturn in a moment what she has built up over many years, and makes us cry out after Laberius: Truly this day I have lived one day longer than I should have [Macrobius].

In everything else there may be sham: the fine reasonings of philosophy may be a mere pose in us; or else our trials, by not testing us to the quick, give us a chance to keep our face always composed. But in the last scene, between death and ourselves, there is no more pretending; we must talk plain French, we must show what there is that is good and clean at the bottom of the pot:

That is why all the other actions of our life must be tried and tested by this last act. It is the master day, the day that is judge of all the others. “It is the day,” says one of the ancients [Seneca], “that must judge all my past years.” I leave it to death to test the fruit of my studies. We shall see then whether my reasonings come from my mouth or from my heart.

ACicero says that to philosophize is nothing else but to prepare for death. This is because study and contemplation draw our soul out of us to some extent and keep it busy outside the body; which is a sort of apprenticeship and semblance of death. Or else it is because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world boils down finally to this point: to teach us not to be afraid to die. In truth, either reason is a mockery, or it must aim solely at our contentment, and the sum of its labors must tend to make us live well and at our ease, as Holy Scripture says.

What is more, Nature herself lends us her hand and gives us courage. If it is a quick and violent death, we have no leisure to fear it; if it is otherwise, I notice that in proportion as I sink into sickness, I naturally enter into a certain disdain for life. I find that I have much more trouble digesting this resolution to die when I am in health than when I have a fever. Inasmuch as I no longer cling so hard to the good things of life when I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, I come to view death with much less frightened eyes. This makes me hope that the farther I get from life and the nearer to death, the more easily I shall accept the exchange.

AThe body, when bent and bowed, has less strength to support a burden, and so has the soul; we must raise and straighten her against the assault of this adversary. For as it is impossible for the soul to be at rest while she fears death, so, if she can gain assurance against it, she can boast of a thing as it were beyond man’s estate: that it is impossible for worry, torment, fear, or even the slightest displeasure to dwell in her:

Nothing can be grievous that happens only once. Is it reasonable so long to fear a thing so short? Long life and short life are made all one by death. For there is no long or short for things that are no more. Aristotle says that there are little animals by the river Hypanis that live only a day. The one that dies at eight o’clock in the morning dies in its youth; the one that dies at five in the afternoon dies in its decrepitude. Which of us does not laugh to see this moment of duration considered in terms of happiness or unhappiness? The length or shortness of our duration, if we compare it with eternity, or yet with the duration of mountains, rivers, stars, trees, and even of some animals, is no less ridiculous.

Death is to be feared less than nothing, if there is anything less than nothing: For us far less a thing must death be thought, If ought there be that can be less than nought. LUCRETIUS

AWherever your life ends, it is all there. CThe advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

CWhy do you recoil, if you cannot draw back? You have seen enough men who were better off for dying, thereby avoiding great miseries. Have you found any man that was worse off? How simple-minded it is to condemn a thing that you have not experienced yourself or through anyone else. Why do you complain of me and of destiny? Do we wrong you? Is it for you to govern us, or us you? Though your age is not full-grown, your life is. A little man is a whole man, just like a big one. Neither men nor their lives are measured by the ell.

Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.