The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [A] One more point of contrast between those two couples: from the writings of Cicero and of the younger Pliny (who in my judgement is [C] not much1 [A] like his uncle in character) there can be drawn a great many details which witness to an overweeningly ambitious nature: among others that they publicly urged contemporary historians not to forget them in their chronicles; and Fortune – as though moved by pique – has made the vanity behind those requests last to our own day, while the chronicles themselves have long since been lost.2 But what surpasses all vulgarity of mind in people of such rank is to have sought to extract some major glory from chatter and verbiage, using to that end even private letters written to their friends; when some of their letters could not be sent as the occasion for them had lapsed they published them all the same, with the worthy excuse that they did not want to waste their long nights of toil! How becoming in two Roman consuls, sovereign governors of the commonwealth which was mistress of the world, to use their leisure to construct and nicely clap together some fair missive or other, in order to gain from it the reputation of having thoroughly mastered the language of their nanny! What more could some wretched schoolteacher do, who earned his money by it!

  If the eloquent language of Xenophon and Caesar had not been far surpassed by their deeds I do not believe they would ever have written about them. They sought to commend their actions not their style. And if a perfect mastery of language could contribute anything worthy of a great public figure, Scipio and Laelius would certainly not have allowed the credit for their comedies, with all their grace and delightful language, to be attributed to an African slave – for the beauty and excellence of those works are adequate proof that they are really theirs, and Terence himself admits it.3 [B] I would be deeply displeased to have that belief of mine shaken.

  [A] It is a kind of mockery and insult to value a man for qualities unbecoming to his rank, even if they are otherwise commendable, or for qualities which should not be his chief ones – as though we were to praise a monarch for being a good painter painter or a good architect, or even for being good with the harquebus or at tilting in the jousting-ring; such praises bring no honour unless they are put forward, among many others, after those which are proper to his rank: after justice, that is, and knowing how to lead his people in peace and war. In this way Cyrus can be honoured by his farming and Charlemagne for his eloquent style and his knowledge of literature. [C] More strangely I have known in my time great men whose professional reputation is indeed based on writing but who disown their indentured skills, corrupt their style and affect an ignorance of so menial a quality, which Frenchmen think is hardly ever found in clever men; they prefer to commend themselves by better qualities.

  [B] The comrades of Demosthenes during their embassy to Philip praised that monarch for his beauty, eloquence and his taste in wine: Demosthenes commented that praises such as those belonged rather to a woman, a barrister and a sponge than to a king.4

  Imperet bellante prior, jacentem

  Lenis in hostem.

  [Let him be first triumphant over the enemy, then generous to the defeated.]5

  It is not his profession to know how to hunt well or to dance well.

  Orabunt causas alii, cælique meatus

  Describent radio, et fulgentia sidera dicent;

  Hic regere imperio populos sciat.

  [Others shall make better legal pleas, trace the paths of the heavens with their measuring-rods and tell which stars are rising: you must remember to rule the nations with authority.]6

  [A] Plutarch goes further, asserting that to appear to excel in such unnecessary accomplishments is to bear witness against yourself of time ill-spent on leisure and study which ought to be better spent on things more necessary and more useful. So Philip, King of Macedonia, when he heard his son Alexander the Great singing at a feast and rivalling the best musicians, remarked: ‘Are you not ashamed of singing so well?’ And to this same Philip, a musician with whom he was arguing about his art, said, ‘God forbid, Sire, that you should ever have the ill fortune to understand such things better than I do.’ [B] A king should be able to reply like Iphicrates did to the ambassador who was haranguing him with invectives and saying, ‘What have you got to boast about? Are you an infantryman? Are you an archer? Are you a pikesman?’ – ‘None of these,’ he replied. ‘But I am the one who can lead them all.’ [A] Antisthenes took it as evidence of Ismenias’ lack of valour when he was praised for being an outstanding flautist.7

  [C] What I do know is that when I hear anyone lingering over the language of these Essays I would rather he held his peace: it is not a case of words being extolled but of meaning being devalued; it is all the more irritating for being oblique. I may be wrong but there are not many writers who put more matter in your grasp than I do and who, with such concern for this matter, scatter at least the seeds of it so thickly over their paper. To make room for more, I merely pile up the heads of argument: if I were to develop them as well I would increase the size of this tome several times over. And how many tacit exempla have I scattered over my pages which could all give rise to essays without number if anyone were to pluck them apart with a bit of intelligence. Neither they nor my quotations serve always as mere examples, authorities or decorations: I do not only have regard for their usefulness to me: they often bear the seeds of a richer, bolder subject-matter; they often sound a more subtle note on the side, both for me, who do not wish to press more out of them, and also for those who get my gist.

  To return to verbosity: I cannot find much difference between always handling words badly and knowing nothing save how to handle them well: ‘Non est ornamentum virile concinnitas.’ [An elegant garb is no manly adornment.]8

  [A] Wise men say that the only qualities which are proper to every rank and class in general are, where knowledge is concerned, a love of wisdom and, where deeds are concerned, virtue.

  There is something to the same effect in the other two, Epicurus and Seneca (since they do promise their friends lasting fame from the letters they pen to them). But it is in a different guise, making compromises – for a good end – with the other people’s vanity; for they do urge that if an anxious concern with renown and for making themselves known to future centuries keeps their correspondents still managing the affairs of state and makes them afraid of the solitude and withdrawal to which they would summon them, such things should trouble them no more, since they have sufficient influence over posterity to guarantee that their correspondents’ names will be as well-known and as famous from these very letters as they could ever be from their public duties.9

  But even allowing for that difference, their letters are not skinny empty ones, propped up merely by a nice choice of words amassed and arranged with an elegant rhythm, but are fully fleshed out with arguments both beautiful and wise, by which we acquire not eloquence but wisdom, instructing us not how to talk well but how to act well.

  Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself not for its substance – unless you could say in Cicero’s case that the ultimate perfection of his style gives it a substance of its own.

  I will add a tale which we can read on this topic about Cicero which lets us put our finger on the kind of man he was. He had to deliver a public oration and was a bit short of time to get himself conveniently ready. One of his slaves called Eros came and told him that the case had been put off till the following day: he was so delighted at this good news that he gave him his freedom.10

  [B] On the subject of letters, I would like to note that it is a genre in which my friends say I show some ability. [C] 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 we
re 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.

  [B] My natural style is that of comedy, but one whose form is personal to me, a private style unsuited to public business – as is my language in all its aspects, being too compact, ill-disciplined, disjointed and individual;12 and I know nothing about formal letter-writing where the substance consists in merely stringing courtly words together. I have neither the gift nor the taste for all those long drawn-out offers of affection and service. I do not believe in them much and dislike going much beyond what I do believe. That is far removed from present-day practice: there never was so servile and abject a prostitution of formal courtesies: my life, my soul, devotion, adoration, serf, slave – all such words are so current and common that when anyone wishes to convey a more explicit intention, one showing more respect, he has no means left to express it.

  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.13 [C] I pay most honour to those to whom I show it least: when my soul is happily cantering along I forget all the conventional paces. [B] I present myself meagrely and proudly to those to whom I am really devoted; [C] and I commend myself least to those to whom I have given myself most; [B] I feel that they ought to be able to read all that in my mind, as well as the fact that my verbal expressions do wrong to my thoughts.

  [C] When welcoming people, taking my leave, thanking them, greeting them, expressing my devotion, as well as in all those verbose compliments required by the rules of courtesy in our etiquette, I know no one who is so stupid and bereft of words as I am. I have never been asked to write letters of support or recommendation without those for whom I was doing it finding them lukewarm and desiccated.

  [B] The Italians are great printers of their letters. I believe I have a hundred separate volumes of them; the best seem to me to be those of Annibal Caro. If all the paper were still in existence which I had once scribbled upon for the ladies when my pen was really carried away by my passion, you might have found a page or two there which deserved to be read by idle youth befuddled with such madness.

  I always write my letters at the gallop, with so headlong a dash that I prefer to write them by hand than to dictate them (despite my appalling writing) since I can never find anyone who can keep up with me; I never have them copied out neatly. I have accustomed the great men who know me to put up with my scratchings-out and erasings as well as with paper which is not folded double or which has no margins. The most useless of my letters are those which cost me most trouble: as soon as I flag, that is a sign that my heart is not in it. I prefer to begin without a plan, the first phrase leading on to the next. Letters nowadays are more full of lace borders and prefaces than of matter. Just as I would rather write two letters than fold and seal up one and always leave that job to somebody else, so too, when I have said what I have to say, I would like to be able to make someone else responsible for those long formulas, those offers of service and I-beg-you-Sirs which we place at the end; I wish some new custom would liberate us from them, as well as from having to address our letters with a list of qualities and titles. For fear of tripping up over them I have often not written at all, especially to men of law and finance; there are so many changes of function, such difficulty of arrangement and in giving everyone his various honorific titles; and they have cost them so dear that you cannot mix them up or forget them without causing offence.

  I find it particularly bad grace to load them on to the title page and frontispieces of any books we send to be printed.

  41. On not sharing one’s fame

  [A series of exempla showing rare examples of selflessness over fame and amusing examples of casuistry.]

  [A] 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 to.

  a fama, ch’ invaghisce a un dolce dolce suono

  Gli superbi mortali, & par si bella,

  E un echo, un sogno, anzi d’un sogno un ombra

  Ch’ ad ogni vento si dilegua et sgombra.

  [That fame, which enchants proud mortals with its fair words and which seems so beautiful, is but an echo, a dream, nay, the shadows of a dream, dissolved and scattered by each breath of wind.]

  And among all the irrational humours of men, it seems that even philosophers free themselves from this one later and more reluctantly than from all others. [B] It is the most tetchy and stubborn lunacy of them all: [C] ‘Quia etiam bene proficientes animos tentare non cessat’ [since it never ceases to tempt even those souls who are advancing in virtue].1 [B] None of the others is more clearly accused of vanity by reason, but its roots are so active within us that I doubt if anyone has managed to cast it clean off. When you have said everything to disavow it, and believed all of it, it still marshals such an inner persuasion against your arguments that you have scant means of holding out against it.

  [A] 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 Everything else is subject to barter: we will let our friends have our goods and our lives if needs be: but a case of sharing our fame and making someone else the gift of our reputation is hardly to be found.

  In the war against the Cimbrians, Catulus Luctatius made every effort to stop his soldiers who were fleeing before their enemies: he then joined the rout and pretended to be a coward himself so that they might appear to be following their commander rather than fleeing from the enemy.

  When the Emperor Charles V invaded Provence in 1537, it is believed that Antonio de Leyva, seeing that his monarch was quite determined on this expedition and believing that it would wonderfully add to his fame, spoke against it and counselled him not to do it; his sole aim was that all the fame and honour of the decision should be attributed to his monarch, with everyone saying that his judgement and his foresight had been such as to carry through so fair an enterprise against everybody’s opinion. That was to honour his master to his own detriment.

  When the Thracian ambassadors were consoling Argelionidis over the death of her son Brasidas and praising him so highly as to lament that there was no one like him left, she rejected such private praise of one individual and rendered it general: ‘Do not say that to me,’ she replied. ‘I know that the city of Sparta has many a citizen greater and more valiant than my son was.’

  In the battle of Crécy the Prince of Wales, a youngster still, was leading the vanguard; the main thrust of the battle was concentrated against it. The lords who accompanied him, finding the fighting tough, sent a dispatch asking King Edward to come to their aid: he inquired how his son was doing: when he was told that he was alive and in the saddle, he said, ‘I would do him wrong to come and rob him now of the honour of the victory in this battle where he has held out so well; whatever the risk, that honour will be his alone.’ And he would not go himself nor would he send help, well aware that if he did so men would say that without his succour all had been lost, and that the credit for this exploit would have been attributed to himself: [C] ‘semper enim quod postremum adjectum est, id remtotam videtur traxisse’ [the last forces to be thrown in always seem to have done it all themselves].3

  [B] Several people in Rome thought, as was commonly said, that the chief of Scipio’s fine achievements were [C] partly [B] due to Laelius who nevertheless was ever moving and seconding the honour and greatness of Scipio, taking no care of his own.

  To the man who told Theopompus King of Sparta that the citizens were at his feet because he was so good at giving orders he replied, ‘It is rather because they are so good at obeying them.’4r />
  [C] Just as, despite their sex, women who succeeded to peerages had the right to attend and give their opinion in cases falling within the jurisdiction of the peers of the realm, so too the lords spiritual, despite their calling, were required to assist our kings in their wars not only with their allies and retainers but also in person. The Bishop of Beauvais was with Philip Augustus at the battle of Bouvines and fought very bravely in that encounter; but it did not seem right to him to win gain or glory from such a violent and bloody action. He personally took several of his enemies that day, but gave them to the first gentleman he came across, who was allowed to do what he liked with them, either cut their throats or keep them prisoner; in this way he handed Count William of Salisbury over to Messire Jean de Nesle. By a refinement of conscience similar to the above he was prepared to knock a man senseless but not to slash at him: that is why he fought only with a club.5 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.

  42. On the inequality there is between us

  [Wisdom not rank constitutes the only inequality that matters. The changes and additions made to this chapter show Montaigne’s growing sympathy for the common peasant.]