The Complete Essays of Montaigne

by Michel de Montaigne

CHuman wisdom very stupidly exercises its ingenuity to reduce the number and the sweetness of the sensual pleasures that belong to us, just as she does favorably and industriously in using her artifices to trick out and disguise our ills and to alleviate our sense of them. If the decision had been up to me, I should have taken another course, one that would have been more natural—which is to say, true, practicable, and holy; and I might perhaps have made myself strong enough to set bounds to it.

AAll our efforts cannot even succeed in reproducing the nest of the tiniest little bird, its contexture, its beauty and convenience; or even the web of the puny spider. CAll things, says Plato, are produced by nature, by fortune, or by art; the greatest and most beautiful by one or the other of the first two, the least and most imperfect by the last.

AThese nations, then, seem to me barbarous in this sense, that they have been fashioned very little by the human mind, and are still very close to their original naturalness. The laws of nature still rule them, very little corrupted by ours; and they are in such a state of purity that I am sometimes vexed that they were unknown earlier, in the days when there were men able to judge them better than we.

AThe true field and subject of imposture are things unknown. Because in the first place strangeness itself lends credit; and then, not being subject to our ordinary reasoning, such things take away our means of combating them. CFor this reason, says Plato, it is much easier to give satisfaction when speaking of the nature of the gods than when speaking of the nature of men, because the ignorance of one’s audience affords a fine broad range and full liberty in handling so obscure a subject.

AIt is enough for a Christian to believe that all things come from God, to receive them with acknowledgment of his divine and inscrutable wisdom, and therefore to take them in good part, in whatever aspect they may be sent to him. But I think that the practice I see is bad, of trying to strengthen and support our religion by the good fortune and prosperity of our enterprises. Our belief has enough other foundations; it does not need events to authorize it. For when the people are accustomed to these arguments, which are plausible and suited to their taste, there is a danger that when in turn contrary and disadvantageous events come, this will shake their faith.

CGod, wishing to teach us that the good have something else to hope for, and the wicked something else to fear, than the fortunes and misfortunes of this world, handles and allots these according to his occult disposition, and deprives us of the means of foolishly making our profit of them.

AI had indeed seen that most ancient opinions agree on this, that it is time to die when there is more evil than good in living; and that to preserve our life to our torment and discomfort is to bump up against the very laws of nature, as these old rules say: Either a painless life, or else a happy death. To die is good for those whom life brings misery. ’Tis better not to live than live in wretchedness. GREEK GNOMIC POETS

The inconstant and variable movement of Fortune makes her necessarily present all sorts of faces. Is there a more express act of justice than this one? The duke of Valentinois,1 having resolved to poison Adrian, cardinal of Corneto, with whom he

do not share that common error of judging another by myself. I easily believe that another man may have qualities different from mine. CBecause I feel myself tied down to one form, I do not oblige everybody to espouse it, as all others do. I believe in and conceive a thousand contrary ways of life; and in contrast with the common run of men, I more easily admit difference than resemblance between us. I am as ready as you please to acquit another man from sharing my conditions and principles. I consider him simply in himself, without relation to others; I mold him to his own model. I do not fail, just because I am not continent, to acknowledge sincerely the continence of the Feuillants and the Capuchins, and to admire the manner of their life. I can very well insinuate myself by imagination into their place, and I love and honor them all the more because they are different from me. I have a singular desire that we should each be judged in ourselves apart, and that I may not be measured in conformity with the common patterns.

AOur judgments are still sick and follow the depravation of our morals. I see most of the wits of my time using their ingenuity to obscure the glory of the beautiful and noble actions of antiquity, giving them some vile interpretation and conjuring up vain occasions and causes for them. BWhat great subtlety! Give me the most excellent and purest action, and I will plausibly supply fifty vicious motives for it. God knows what a variety of interpretations may be placed on our inward will, for anyone who wants to elaborate them. CIn their calumny they play at ingenuity not so much maliciously as clumsily and crudely.

Here is a wonder: we have many more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to create it than to understand it. On a certain low level it can be judged by precepts and by art. But the good, supreme, divine poetry is above the rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a firm, sedate gaze does not see it, any more than he sees the splendor of a lightning flash. It does not persuade our judgment, it ravishes and overwhelms it.

For although most of our actions are indeed only mask and make-up, and it may sometimes be true that An

yet in judging these accidents we must consider how our soul is often agitated by diverse passions. And just as in our body they say there is an assemblage of diverse humors, of which that one is master which most ordinarily rules within us, according to our constitution; so in our soul, though various impulses stir it, there must be one that remains master of the field.

No quality embraces us purely and universally.

ALet us leave aside the usual long comparison between the solitary and the active life; and as for that fine statement under which ambition and avarice take cover—that we are not born for our private selves, but for the public—let us boldly appeal to those who are in the midst of the dance.

AIt is not that the wise man cannot live anywhere content, yes, and alone in a palace crowd; but if he has the choice, says he, he will flee even the sight of a throng. He will endure it, if need be, but if it is up to him, he will choose solitude. He does not feel sufficiently rid of vices if he must still contend with those of other men. BCharondas chastised as evil those who were convicted of keeping evil company.

If a man does not first unburden his soul of the load that weighs upon it, movement will cause it to be crushed still more, as in a ship the cargo is less cumbersome when it is settled. You do a sick man more harm than good by moving him. You imbed the malady by disturbing it, as stakes penetrate deeper and grow firmer when you budge them and shake them. Wherefore it is not enough to have gotten away from the crowd, it is not enough to move; we must get away from the gregarious instincts that are inside us, we must sequester ourselves and repossess ourselves.

We take our chains along with us; our freedom is not complete; we still turn our eyes to what we have left behind, our fancy is full of it.

Now since we are undertaking to live alone and do without company, let us make our contentment depend on ourselves; let us cut loose from all the ties that bind us to others; let us win from ourselves the power to live really alone and to live that way at our ease.

ACertainly a man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself. When

AAmong our customary actions there is not one in a thousand that concerns ourselves. The man you see climbing atop the ruins of that wall, frenzied and beside himself, a mark for so many harquebus shots; and that other, all scarred, pale and faint with hunger, determined to die rather than open the gates to him—do you think they are there for their own sake? They are there for the sake of a man whom perhaps they never saw, who is not in the least concerned about their doings, and who at that very moment is plunged in idleness and pleasures.

When riches fail, I praise The safe and simple life, content with humble ways; But then, when better, richer fortune smiles on me, I say that only they live well and sensibly Whose wealth in country manors glistens brilliantly. HORACE

seems reasonable, when a man talks of retiring from the world, that he should set his gaze outside of it. These men do so only halfway. They indeed arrange their affairs for the time when they will no longer be there; but by a ridiculous contradiction they still aspire to reap the fruit of their plan from the world when they have left it. The idea of those who seek solitude for religious reasons, filling their hearts with the certainty of divine promises for the other life, is much more sane and consistent. They set before their eyes God, an object infinite both in goodness and in power; in him the soul has the wherewithal to satisfy its desires abundantly in complete freedom. Afflictions, sufferings, come to them as profit, being used for the acquisition of eternal health and rejoicing; death is to be desired, being the passage to so perfect a state. The harshness of their rules is promptly smoothed by habit; and the carnal appetites are frustrated and then put to sleep by denial, for nothing keeps them up but use and exercise. Only this one goal of another life, happily immortal, rightly deserves that we abandon the comforts and pleasures of this life of ours. And he who can really and constantly kindle his soul with the flame of that living faith and hope, builds himself in solitude a life that is voluptuous and delightful beyond any other kind of life.

AIt is a kind of mockery and insult to praise a man’s worth for qualities unbecoming his rank, though they be otherwise laudable, and for qualities also which ought not to be his principal ones; as if you praised a king for being a good painter, or a good architect, or else a good shot with a harquebus or a good tilter at the ring. These praises do no honor unless they are presented in mass and after those that befit him: to wit, justice and the science of leading his people in peace and

war.

AIf nature enfolds within the bounds of her ordinary progress, like all other things, also the beliefs, judgments, and opinions of men; if they have their rotation, their season, their birth, their death, like cabbages; if heaven moves and rolls them at its will, what magisterial and permanent authority are we attributing to them? BIf we feel palpably by experience that the form of our being depends on the air, the climate, and the soil where we are born—not only the complexion, the stature, the constitution and countenance, but also the faculties of the soul: Cthe climate affects not only the vigor of the body, but also that of the soul, says Vegetius—and if the goddess who founded the city of Athens chose for its situation a climate which made men prudent, as the priests of Egypt taught Solon: the air of Athens is thin, whereby the Atticans are reputed more acute; that of Thebes is thick, wherefore the Thebans are reputed gross and solid [Cicero]; Bso that just as fruits are born different, and animals, men too are born more or less bellicose, just, temperate, and docile—here subject to wine, elsewhere to theft or lechery; here inclined to superstition, elsewhere to unbelief; Chere to freedom, here to servitude; Bcapable of one science or of one art, dull or ingenious, obedient or rebellious, good or bad, according to the influence of the place where they are situated—and take on a new disposition if you change their place, like trees; which was the reason why Cyrus woul...

What we call decency—not to dare to do openly what it is decent for us to do in private—they called stupidity; and to try to be clever by hushing up and disavowing what nature, custom, and our desire publish and proclaim about our actions, they considered a

AKnowledge begins through them and is resolved into them. After all, we would know no more than a stone, if we did not know that there is sound, smell, light, taste, measure, weight, softness, hardness, roughness, color, smoothness, breadth, depth. There are the base and the principles of the whole edifice of our knowledge. CAnd according to some, knowledge is nothing else but sensation.

The schools that dispute man’s knowledge dispute it principally because of the uncertainty and weakness of our senses; for since all knowledge comes to us by their means and mediation, if they err in the report they make to us, if they corrupt or alter what they carry to us from without, if the light that flows through them into our soul is obscured in passage, we have nothing left to go

BThose who have compared our life to a dream were perhaps more right than they thought. When we dream, our soul lives, acts, exercises all her faculties, neither more nor less than when she is awake; but if more loosely and obscurely, still surely not so much so that the difference is as between night and bright daylight; rather as between night and shade. There she sleeps, here she slumbers: more and less. It is always darkness, and Cimmerian darkness. CSleeping we are awake, and waking asleep. I do not see so clearly in sleep; but my wakefulness I never find pure and cloudless enough. Moreover sleep in its depth sometimes puts dreams to sleep. But our wakefulness is never so awake as to purge and properly dissipate reveries, which are the dreams of the waking, and worse than dreams. Since our reason and our soul accept the fancies and opinions which arise in it while sleeping, and authorize the actions of our dreams with the same approbation as they do those of the day, why do we not consider the possibility that our thinking, our acting, may be another sort of dreaming, and our waking another kind of sleep? AIf the senses are our first judges, it is not ours alone that must be consulted, for in this faculty the animals have as much right as we have, or more. It is certain that some have hearing keener than man’s, others sight, others smell, others touch or taste. Democritus said that the gods and the animals had much more perfect sensitive faculties than man.

We have no communication with being,64 because every human nature is always midway between birth and death, offering only a dim semblance and shadow of itself, and an uncertain and feeble opinion.

That which is eternal: that is to say, what never had birth, nor will ever have an end; to which time never brings any change. For time is a mobile thing, which appears as in a shadow, together with matter, which is ever running and flowing, without ever remaining stable or permanent. To which belong the words before and after, and has been or will be, which at the very first sight show very evidently that time is not a thing that is; for it would be a great stupidity and a perfectly apparent falsehood to say that that is which is not yet in being, or which already has ceased to be. And as for these words, present, immediate, now, on which it seems that we chiefly found and support our understanding of time, reason discovering this immediately destroys it; for she at once splits and divides it into future and past, as though wanting to see it necessarily divided in two.

The same thing happens to nature that is measured, as to time that measures it. For there is nothing in it either that abides or is stable; but all things in it are either born, or being born, or dying. For which reason it would be a sin to say of God, who is the only one that is, that he was or will be. For those terms represent declinings, transitions, or vicissitudes of what cannot endure or remain in being.

AThere is the name and the thing. The name is a sound which designates and signifies the thing; the name is not a part of the thing or of the substance, it is an extraneous piece attached to the thing, and outside of it. God, who is himself all fullness and the acme of all perfection, cannot grow and increase within; but his name may grow and increase by the blessing and praise we give to his external works. Which praise, since we cannot incorporate it in him, inasmuch as he can have no accession of good, we attribute to his name, which is the part outside him that is nearest him. That is why it is to God alone that glory and honor belong. And there is nothing so remote from reason as for us to go in quest of it for ourselves; for since we are indigent and necessitous within, since our essence is imperfect and continually in need of betterment, it is this betterment that we should work for.

We are all hollow and empty. It is not with wind and sound that we have to fill ourselves; we need more solid substance to repair us. A

It was also one of the principal doctrines of Epicurus; for that precept of his school, CONCEAL YOUR LIFE, which forbids men to encumber themselves with public charges and negotiations, also necessarily presupposes our contempt for glory, which is an approbation that the world offers of the actions that we place in evidence. He who orders us to conceal ourselves and to be concerned only with ourselves, and who does not want us to be known to others, is even farther from wanting us to be honored and glorified. So he advises Idomeneus not to regulate his actions at all by common opinion or reputation, except to avoid the other accidental disadvantages that men’s contempt might bring him.

AThose who teach the nobility to seek only honor in valor—Cas if what is not noted were not honorable [Cicero]—Awhat do they gain thereby but to instruct them never to hazard themselves unless they are seen, and to take good care that there are witnesses who can bring back news of their valor? Whereas a thousand occasions of well-doing present themselves without our being able to be noticed for it. How many fine individual actions are buried in the press of a battle! Whoever wastes his time checking others during such a melee is not very busy in it himself, and produces against himself the testimony he gives of his companions’ behavior. CTrue and wise greatness of soul judges goodness, which our nature mainly seeks, to lie in deeds, not in fame [Cicero].

least of Athose he passed through. An infinity of fine actions must be lost without a witness before one appears to advantage. A man is not always at the top of a breach or at the head of an army, in sight of his general, as on a stage. He is taken by surprise between the hedge and the ditch; he must tempt fortune against a hen roost; he must root out four paltry musketeers from a barn; he must go out alone from his company and do a job alone, as the need presents itself. And if you watch carefully, you will find by experience that the least brilliant occasions happen to be the most dangerous; and that in the wars that have taken place in our times, more good men have been lost on trivial and unimportant occasions and in fighting over some shack than in worthy and honorable places. CWhoever thinks his death ill employed unless it is on some signal occasion, instead of casting luster on his death, is likely to obscure his life, meanwhile allowing many just occasions for hazarding himself to escape him. And all the just ones are illustrious enough, since each man’s conscience trumpets them sufficiently to himself. Our glory is the testimony of our conscience [II Corinthians].

BNo art, no suppleness of mind, could guide our steps in following so erratic and unregulated a guide. In that windy confusion of rumors, reports, and popular opinions that push us about, no worth-while road can be charted. Let us not set ourselves a goal so fluctuating and wavering: let us steadfastly follow reason. Let public approbation follow us there, if it will; and since it depends entirely on fortune, we have no reason to expect it rather by any other way than by that one.

People are right to decry the hypocrisy that is found in war; for what is easier for a practical man than to dodge the dangers and play tough, when his heart is full of flabbiness? There are so many ways to avoid occasions for risking our individual lives that we can deceive the world a thousand times before engaging ourselves in a dangerous situation; and even then, finding ourselves stuck, we can perfectly well hide our game for the moment with a good face and a confident word, though our soul trembles within us.

AWho craves false honor and fears calumny A liar and a hypocrite must be. HORACE That is why all these judgments that are founded on external appearances are marvelously uncertain and doubtful; and there is no witness so sure as each man to himself.

The offense, both toward God and in the conscience, would be as great in the desiring as in the doing. And then these are actions of themselves hidden and secret; it would be very easy for women to conceal one of them from the knowledge of others, on which honor depends, if they had no other respect for their duty and for the affection they bear to chastity for its own sake.

AThere is another kind of vainglory, which is an over-good opinion we form of our own worth. It is an unreasoning affection, by which we cherish ourselves, which represents us to ourselves as other than we are; as the passion of love lends beauties and graces to the object it embraces, and makes its victims, with muddled and unsettled judgment, think that what they love is other and more perfect than it is. However, I do not want a man to misjudge himself, for fear of erring in that direction, or to think himself less than he is. Judgment must maintain its rights in all matters; it is right that it should see, in this subject as elsewhere, what truth sets before it.

AThe weakness of our condition makes it impossible for things to come into our experience in their natural simplicity and purity. The elements that we enjoy are corrupted, and the metals likewise; and gold must be debased by some other material to fit it for our service.

BIt is likewise true that for the uses of life and for the service of public business there may be excess in the purity and perspicacity of our minds. That penetrating clarity has too much subtlety and curiosity in it. These must be weighted and blunted to make them more obedient to example and practice, and thickened and obscured to relate them to this shadowy and earthy life.

AThere is a wonderful relation and correspondence in this universal government of the works of nature, which well shows that it is neither accidental nor conducted by divers masters. The diseases and conditions of our bodies are seen also in states and governments: kingdoms and republics are born, flourish, and wither with age, as we do. We are subject to a useless and harmful surfeit of humors: either of good humors—for even this the doctors fear; and because there is nothing stable in us, they say that too blithe and vigorous a perfection of health must be artificially reduced and abated for us, for fear that our nature, unable to settle in any certain position and having no room for improvement, may retreat in disorder and too suddenly; therefore they order purgings and bleedings for athletes to draw off this superabundance of health—or of evil humors, which is the ordinary cause of diseases. States are often seen to be sick of a similar repletion, and it has been customary to use various sorts of purgation.

AI want to say only a word about this infinite subject to show the simplicity of those who compare the pitiful grandeurs of this time with those of Rome.

AI have often heard it said that cowardice is the mother of cruelty. BAnd I have found by experience that the bitterness and hardness of a malicious and inhuman heart are usually accompanied by feminine weakness. I have observed that some of the most cruel are subject to weeping easily and for frivolous reasons.

What is it that makes our quarrels all mortal these days; and why, whereas our fathers recognized some degrees in revenge, do we nowadays begin with the ultimate, and from the outset speak of nothing but killing? What is it, if it is not cowardice? Every man clearly feels that there is more defiance and disdain in beating his enemy than in finishing him off, and in making him lick the dust than in making him die. Moreover, the appetite for vengeance is thereby better assuaged and contented, for it aims only at making itself felt. That is why we do not attack an animal or a stone when they hurt us, because they are incapable of feeling our revenge. And to kill a man is to put him in shelter from our harm.

BIt is also a type of cowardice that has introduced into our single combats this custom of being accompanied by seconds, and thirds, and fourths. Formerly they were duels; nowadays they are encounters and battles.