On Friendship (Penguin)

by Michelde Montaigne

  I have just read through at one go Tacitus’ History (something which rarely happens to me: it is twenty years since I spent one full hour at a time on a book. I did it on the recommendation of a nobleman highly esteemed in France both for his own virtue and for that sustained quality of ability and goodness which he is seen to share with his many brothers). I know of no author who combines a chronicle of public events with so much reflection on individual morals and biases. And it appears to me (contrary to what appears to him) that, as he has the particular task of following the careers of the contemporary Emperors (men so odd and so extreme in their various characters) as well as the noteworthy deeds which they provoked in their subjects above all by their cruelty, he has a more striking and interesting topic to relate and discourse upon than if he had to tell of battles and world revolutions. Consequently I find him unprofitable when he dashes through those fair, noble deaths as though he were afraid of tiring us by accounts both too long and too numerous.

  This manner of history is by far the most useful. The unrolling of public events depends more on the guiding hand of Fortune: that of private ones, on our own. Tacitus’ work is more a judgement on historical events than a narration of them. There are more precepts than accounts. It is not a book to be read but one to be studied and learnt. It is so full of aphorisms that, apposite or not, they are everywhere. It is a seed-bed of ethical and political arguments to supply and adorn those who hold high rank in the governing of this world. He pleads his case with solid and vigorous reasons, in an epigrammatic and exquisite style following the affected manner of his century. (They were so fond of a high style that when they found no wit or subtlety in their subject-matter they resorted to witty subtle words.) He is not all that different from Seneca, but while he seems to have more flesh on him Seneca is more acute. Tacitus can more properly serve a sickly troubled nation like our own is at present: you could often believe that we were the subject of his narrating and berating. Those who doubt his good faith clearly betray that they resent him from prejudice. He has sound opinions and inclines to the right side in the affairs of Rome. I do regret though that, by making Pompey no better than Marius and Scylla only more secretive, he judged him more harshly than is suggested by the verdict of men who lived and dealt with him.* True, Pompey’s striving to govern affairs has not been cleared of ambition nor a wish for vengeance: even his friends feared that victory might make him go out of his mind, though not to the extremes of insanity of those other two. Nothing in his life suggests to us the menace of such express tyranny and cruelty. Besides we ought never to let suspicions outweigh evidence: so on this point I do not trust Tacitus.

  That the accounts which he gives are indeed simple and straight can perhaps be argued from the very fact that they do not exactly fit his concluding judgements, to which he is led by the slant he had adopted; they often go beyond the evidence which he provides – which he had not deigned to bias in the slightest degree. He needs no defence for having assented to the religion of his day, in accordance with the laws which bade him to do so, and for being ignorant of the true religion. That is his misfortune not his fault.

  What I have chiefly been considering is his judgement: I am not entirely clear about it. For example, take these words from the letter sent to the Senate by the aged ailing Tiberius: ‘What, Sirs, should I write to you, what indeed should I not write to you at this time? I know that I am daily nearing death; may the gods and goddesses make my end worse if I know what to write.’ I cannot see why he applies them with such certainty to a poignant remorse tormenting Tiberius’ conscience. Leastways when I came across them I saw no such thing.*

  It also seemed to me a bit weak of him when he was obliged to mention that he had once held an honourable magistracy in Rome to go on and explain that he was not referring to it in order to boast about it. That line seemed rather shoddy to me for a soul such as his: not to dare to talk roundly of yourself betrays a defect of thought. A man of straight and elevated mind who judges surely and soundly employs in all circumstances examples taken from himself as well as from others, and frankly cites himself as witness as well as third parties. We should jump over those plebeian rules of etiquette in favour of truth and freedom. I not only dare to talk about myself but to talk of nothing but myself. I am wandering off the point when I write of anything else, cheating my subject of me. I do not love myself with such lack of discretion, nor am I so bound and involved in myself, that I am unable to see myself apart and to consider myself separately as I would a neighbour or a tree. The error is the same if you fail to see the limits of your worth or if you report more than you can see. We owe more love to God than to ourselves. We know him less, yet talk about him till we are glutted.

  If Tacitus’ writings tell us anything at all about his character, he was a very great man, upright and courageous, whose virtue was not of the superstitious kind but philosophical and magnanimous. You could find some of his testimony rather rash; for example he maintains that when a soldier’s hands grew stiff with the cold while carrying a pile of wood they adhered to his load, broke away from his arms and stuck there dead.* In similar cases my custom is to bow to the authority of such great witnesses. When he says that, by favour of Serapis the god, Vespasian cured a blind woman in Alexandria by anointing her eyes with his saliva and also performed some additional miracle or other, he was following the dutiful example of all good historians who keep a chronicle of important happenings: included among public events are popular rumours and opinions. Their role is to give an account of popular beliefs, not to account for them: which part is played by Theologians and philosophers as directors of consciences. That is why his fellow-historian, great man as he was, most wisely said: ‘Equidem plura transcribo quam credo: nam nec affirmare sustineo, de quibus dubito, nec subducere quae accepi.’ [I do indeed pass on more than I believe. I cannot vouch for the things which I doubt, nor can I omit what I have been told by tradition.] And another says: ‘Haec neque affirmare, neque refellere operae pretium est: famae rerum standum est.’ [These things are neither to be vouched for nor denied: we must cling to tradition.]* Tacitus, writing during a period in which belief in portents was on the wane, says that he nevertheless does not wish to fail to provide a foothold for them, and so includes in his Annals matters accepted by so many decent people with so great a reverence for antiquity.

  That is very well said. Let them pass on their histories to us according to what they find received, not according to their own estimate. I, who am monarch of the subject which I treat and not accountable for it to anyone, do not for all that believe everything I say. Sometimes my mind launches out with paradoxes which I mistrust and with verbal subtleties which make me shake my head; but I let them take their chance. I know that some men gain a reputation from such things. It is not for me alone to judge them. I describe myself standing up and lying down, from front and back, from right and left and with all my inborn complexities. Even minds of sustained power are not always sustained in their application and discernment.

  That is, grosso modo, the Tacitus which is presented to me, vaguely enough, by my memory. All grosso-modo judgements are lax and defective.

  * Plato, Laws, XI, 934 A–B.

  † Horace, Satires, I, iv, 109–11.

  * Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Cato Senior, XXXIX.

  † Anecdote not traced. Perhaps a confusion with the practice of the ancient musician Timotheus of Miletus. Cf. Quintilian, II, iii, 3.

  * Cicero, De finibus, I, viii, 28 (Torquatus defending Epicurus’ style of conversation).

  * Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la mauvaise honte, 81 B.

  * Plato, Republic, 539 A–C.

  * Seneca, Epist. moral., LIX, 15; then, Cicero, De finibus, I, xix, 63, criticizing Epicurean logic.

  * Seneca, Epist. moral., XXXIII, 7.

  * Heraclitus, the Sage who wept at the folly of the world; normally coupled with Democritus, who laughed at it. Followed by the most famous saying of Myson (Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, M
yson, I).

  * Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on pourra recevoir utilité de ses ennemis, 110 E–F (and for Plato’s saying about to be quoted).

  † Erasmus, Adages, III, IV, II.

  * Terence, Andria, IV, ii, 9.

  * Plato, Gorgias, 480 B–C.

  * Juvenal, Satires, VIII, 73–4.

  * Perhaps a reference to Plato, Republic, VI, 495 C–D.

  * Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VI, Diversorum Graecorum, XXXII.

  † Martial, Epigrams, VIII, 15.

  * Cited by Amyot in his Prologue to Les Vies de Plutarque.

  † Virgil, Aeneid, III, 395; then, Horace, Odes, I, ix, 9.

  * Virgil, Georgics, I, 420–2.

  † Thucydides, cited (with others of the above) from Justus Lipsius’ Politici, as is the following, from Plautus’ Pseudolus.

  * Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment il faut ouïr, 64 H.

  † Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Antisthenes, XXX.

  ‡ Lopez de Gomara (tr. Fumée), Histoire générale des Indes, II, lxxvii.

  * Cicero, De officiis, I, xli, 147.

  † Diogenes Laertius, Life of Aristippus.

  * Xenophon, Cyropaedia, III, iii, 49–50.

  * Henry II was killed while jousting; Henry, Marquess of Beaupréau died of wounds received in a tournament.

  † Ovid, Tristia, I, vii, 9.

  * Philippe de Commines, III, xii; Tacitus, Annals, IV, xviii; Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXVI, 32; Cicero, De petitione consultatus, ix.

  * Tacitus, Histories, II, xxxviii.

  * Tacitus, Annals, VI, vi.

  * Tacitus, Annals, XIII, xxxv; then, IV, lxxi (seen by some as a parody of Christ’s curing the blind man in Mark 8:23).

  * Quintus Curtius, IX, i; Livy, VIII, vi.

  4

  On idleness

  Just as fallow lands, when rich and fertile, are seen to abound in hundreds and thousands of different kinds of useless weeds so that, if we would make them do their duty, we must subdue them and keep them busy with seeds specifically sown for our service; and just as women left alone may sometimes be seen to produce shapeless lumps of flesh but need to be kept busy by a semen other than her own in order to produce good natural offspring: so too with our minds. If we do not keep them busy with some particular subject which can serve as a bridle to reign them in, they charge ungovernably about, ranging to and fro over the wastelands of our thoughts:

  Sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis

  Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunae

  Omnia pervolitat late loca jamque sub auras

  Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti.

  [As when ruffled water in a bronze pot reflects the light of the sun and the shining face of the moon, sending shimmers flying high into the air and striking against the panelled ceilings].*

  Then, there is no madness, no raving lunacy, which such agitations do not bring forth:

  velut aegri somnia, vanae

  Finguntur species.

  [they fashion vain apparitions as in the dreams of sick men.]*

  When the soul is without a definite aim she gets lost; for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere.

  Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat.

  [Whoever dwells everywhere, Maximus, dwells nowhere at all.]†

  Recently I retired to my estates, determined to devote myself as far as I could to spending what little life I have left quietly and privately; it seemed to me then that the greatest favour I could do for my mind was to leave it in total idleness, caring for itself, concerned only with itself, calmly thinking of itself. I hoped it could do that more easily from then on, since with the passage of time it had grown mature and put on weight.

  But I find –

  Variam semper dant otia mentis

  [Idleness always produces fickle changes of mind].‡

  – that on the contrary it bolted off like a runaway horse, taking far more trouble over itself than it ever did over anyone else; it gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monstrosities, one after another, without order or fitness, that, so as to contemplate at my ease their oddness and their strangeness, I began to keep a record of them, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself.

  * Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, 22.

  * Horace, Ars poetica, 7.

  † Martial, VII, lxxiii.

  ‡ Lucan, Pharsalia, IV, 704.

  5

  On the affection of fathers for their children

  For Madame d’Estissac

  Madame: unless I am saved by oddness or novelty (qualities which usually give value to anything) I shall never extricate myself with honour from this daft undertaking; but it is so fantastical and presents an aspect so totally unlike normal practice that it may just get by.

  It was a melancholy humour (and therefore a humour most inimical to my natural complexion) brought on by the chagrin caused by the solitary retreat I plunged myself into a few years ago, which first put into my head this raving concern with writing. Finding myself quite empty, with nothing to write about, I offered myself to myself as theme and subject matter. It is the only book of its kind in the world, in its conception wild and fantastically eccentric. Nothing in this work of mine is worthy of notice except that bizarre quality, for the best craftsman in the world would not know how to fashion anything remarkable out of material so vacuous and base.

  Now, Madame, having decided to draw a portrait of myself from life, I would have overlooked an important feature if I had failed to portray the honour which I have always shown you for your great merits. I particularly wanted to do so at the head of this chapter, since of all your fine qualities one of the first in rank is the love you show your children.

  Anyone who knows how young you were when your husband Monsieur d’Estissac left you a widow; the proposals which have been made to you by such great and honourable men (as many as to any lady of your condition in France); the constancy and firmness of purpose with which you have, for so many years and through so many difficulties, carried the weight of responsibility for your children’s affairs (which have kept you busy in so many corners of France and still besiege you); and the happy prosperity which your wisdom or good fortune have brought to those affairs: he will readily agree with me that we have not one single example of maternal love today more striking than your own.

  I praise God, Madame, that your love has been so well employed. For the great hopes of himself raised by your boy, Monsieur d’Estissac, amply assure us that when he comes of age you will be rewarded by the duty and gratitude of an excellent son. But he is still a child, unable to appreciate the innumerable acts of devotion he has received from you: so I should like him, if this book should fall into his hands one day, to be able to learn something from me at a time when I shall not even have a mouth to tell it to him – something I can vouch for quite truthfully and which will be made even more vigorously evident, God willing, by the good effects he will be aware of in himself: namely, that there is no nobleman in France who owes more to his mother than he does, and that in the future he will be able to give no more certain proof of his goodness and virtue than by acknowledging your qualities.

  If there truly is a Law of Nature – that is to say, an instinct which can be seen to be universally and permanently stamped on the beasts and on ourselves (which is not beyond dispute) – I would say that, in my opinion, following hard on the concern for self-preservation and the avoidance of whatever is harmful, there would come second the love which the begetter feels for the begotten. And since Nature seems to have committed this love to us out of a concern for the effective propagation of the successive parts of the world which she has contrived, it is not surprising if love is not so great when we go backwards, from children to fathers. To which we may add a consideration taken from Aristotle,* that anyone who does a kindness to another loves him more than he is loved in return; that anyone to whom a debt is owed feels greater love than the one by whom the debt is owed; and that every creator l
oves what he has made more than it would love him if it were capable of emotions. This is especially true because each holds his being dear: and being consists in motion and activity; in a sense, therefore, everyone is, to some degree, within anything he does: the benefactor has performed an action both fair and noble: the recipient, on the other hand, has only performed a useful one, and mere usefulness is less lovable than nobility. Nobility is stable and lasting, furnishing the one who has practised it with a constant satisfaction. Usefulness, however, can easily disappear or diminish, and the memory of it is neither so refreshing nor so sweet. The things which have cost us most are dearest to us – and it costs us more to give than to receive.

  Since it has pleased God to bestow some slight capacity for discursive reasoning on us so that we should not be slavishly subject to the laws of Nature as the beasts are but should conform to them by our free-will and judgement, we should indeed make some concessions to the simple authority of the common laws of Nature but not allow ourselves to be swept tyrannously away by her: Reason alone must govern our inclinations.

  For my part, those propensities which are produced in us without the command and mediation of our judgement taste strangely flat. In the case of the subject under discussion, I am incapable of finding a place for that emotion which leads people to cuddle new-born infants while they are still without movements of soul or recognizable features of body to make themselves lovable. And I have never willingly allowed them to be nursed in my presence. A true and well-regulated affection should be born, and then increase, as children enable us to get to know them; if they show they deserve it, we should cherish them with a truly fatherly love, since our natural propensity is then progressing side by side with reason; if they turn out differently, the same applies, mutatis mutandis: we should, despite the force of Nature, always yield to reason.