The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [A] But Hieron regrets above all that he finds himself deprived of mutual friendship and companionship, in which consists the most perfect and the sweetest fruit of human life: ‘For what proof of love or affection can I draw from a man who, whether he wants to or not, owes me everything in his power? Can I attach importance to his humble address and his courteous respect, seeing that he cannot refuse them to me? The honour we receive from those who fear us is not honour at all: their respect is due to my royal state not to myself:’

  [B] maximum hoc regni bonum est,

  Quod facta domini cogitur populus sui

  Quam ferre tam laudare.

  [The greatest advantage of being a king is that his people are not only forced to put up with whatever their Master does: they must praise it.]25

  [A] ‘Can I not see the same respect shown to the good king and to the bad, to the king they hate and to the one they love? The same outward show and the same ceremonial were offered to my predecessor and will be offered to my successor. If my subjects do nothing to displease me that is no proof of their good-will towards me: why should I take it to be so, since they could not do anything else even if they should wish to? No one follows me for any love that is between us, since loving-friendship cannot be plaited together when there is so little contact and correlation. My high rank has put me outside all human relationships: there is too great a disparity and disproportion. It is by convention and custom that they follow me – [C] not so much me as my fortune, so as to amass fortunes of their own.26 [A] All they say and do for me is merely cosmetic. Since their freedom is everywhere bridled by the mighty power I wield over them, I can see nothing around me but hypocrisy and disguise.’

  Courtiers were praising the Emperor Julian one day for administering such good justice: ‘I would be prepared to be proud of such praises,’ he said, ‘if they came from persons who could dare to condemn and censure any actions of mine when they were contrary to justice.’27

  [B] All the real prerogatives of monarchs are held in common by all men of moderate wealth. (It is for gods to mount wingèd horses and to sup on ambrosia!) They have no other sleep, no other appetites but ours; their steel is not better tempered than that of our swords; their crown does not protect them from sun or from rain. Diocletian, who wore a crown of such honour and good omen, gave it up to withdraw to the pleasures of private life; some time later when a crisis of state solicited him to return and take up his burden, he replied to those who were begging him to do so: ‘If only you could see the ordered beauty of the trees I have planted in my garden and the fine melons I have sown there you would not try and persuade me.’

  The conviction of Anacharsis was that the happiest establishment for a State would be one in which all else being equal, degrees of honour went according to virtue and those of reprobation to vice.28

  [A] When King Pyrrhus was planning to cross over into Italy his wise counsellor Cyneas, wishing to make him realize the inanity of his ambition, asked him, ‘Well now, Sire, what end do you propose in planning this great project?’ – ‘To make myself master of Italy,’ came his swift reply. ‘And when that is done?’ – ‘I will cross into Gaul and Spain.’ – ‘And then?’ – ‘I will go and subjugate Africa.’ – ‘And in the end?’ – ‘When I have brought the whole world under my subjection, I shall seek my repose, living happily at my ease.’ Cyneas then returned to the attack: ‘Then by God tell me, Sire, if that is what you want, what is keeping you from doing it at once? Why do you not place yourself now where you say you aspire to be, and so spare yourself all the toil and risk that you are putting between you and it?’

  Nimirum quia non bene norat quæ esset habendi

  Finis, et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas.

  [It is because he does not seem to know the bounds one should set to desire nor how far true pleasure can extend.]29

  I am going to close this chapter with an ancient phrase which I find particularly beautiful and apt: ‘Mores cuique sui fingunt fortunam.’ [Each man’s morals shape his destiny.]30

  43. On sumptuary laws

  [A whole series of sumptuary laws sought to restrain rash expenditure on clothing and jewels and to limit extravagances in eating and dressing to certain classes of society. These laws were reiterated under Francis I, Henry II and Charles IX. Montaigne was inspired to write on the subject by Amyot’s translation of Diodorus Siculus. His conservatism is deep-rooted and based on moral commitment. Dress and so on are ‘matters indifferent’, but constant giddy change undermines the very foundations of a culture.]

  [A] The way our laws make an assay at limiting insane and inane expenditure on table and clothing seems to run contrary to their end. The right way would be to engender in men a contempt for gold and silk as things vain and useless: we increase their honour and esteem, which is a most inappropriate way of putting people off them. For to declare that only princes may [C] eat turbot and [A] wear velvet and gold braid, forbidding them to the people, what is that but enhancing such things and making everyone want to have them? Let kings stoutly renounce such symbols of greatness: they have others enough; [B] such excess is more pardonable in anyone else but a king. [A] We can learn from the example of many a nation plenty of better ways of indicating our different ranks and distinctions – something which I do indeed think to be requisite in a state – without encouraging such manifest corruption and evil. It is wonderful how quickly and easily custom plants her authoritative foothold in matters so indifferent. In mourning for Henry II we have been wearing plain-cloth at Court for barely a year now, yet it is already certain that silk has become so unaristocratic that if you do see anyone wearing it you [C] immediately take him for one of the townsfolk.1 [A] It has become the lot of doctors and barber-surgeons. Even if everyone dressed more or less identically there would still be enough other ways of showing differences of rank.

  [B] (How quickly do muddy doublets of chamois-leather or coarse-cloth come to be honoured by our soldiers in the field, and rich elegant clothes bring reproach and contempt.)

  [A] Let our kings start giving up spending money on such things and it would be all over in a month, without edict or ordinance: we will all follow suit. The Law ought to state, on the contrary, that purple and goldsmithery are forbidden to all ranks of society except whores and travelling-players.

  It was with astuteness like that that Zeleucus reformed the debauched customs of the Locrians. He ordained as follows: ‘That no free-born woman be attended by more than one chambermaid, except when she be drunk; That no woman leave the city by night or wear any golden jewellery about her person nor any richly embroidered dress, unless she be a public prostitute; That except for such as live on immoral earnings, no man shall wear gold rings on his fingers nor any elegant robes such as those tailored from cloth woven in Miletus.’ Thus, with those shaming exceptions, he cleverly diverted the inhabitants of his city away from pernicious superfluities and luxuries. [B] That was a most useful way to bring men to obedience by honour and ambition.2

  French kings are all-powerful over the reformation of such externals: their fancy is law. [C] ‘Quidquid principes faciunt, praecipere videntur.’ [Any actions of princes seem like commands.]3 The rest of the country4 adopts as canon the canons of the Court. [B] Let the Court stop liking those vulgar codpieces which make a parade of our [C] hidden [A] parts, those heavily padded doublets which make our shape look different and our armour so hard to put on; those long effeminate tresses; the custom of kissing any gift offered to our companions, and our hands, too, when we greet them (an honour formerly due only to princes); allowing a nobleman to appear in respectable company with no sword at his side, untidy and unbuttoned, as though he had just come straight from the privy; the custom (something contrary to the practice of our forefathers and the express privilege of the nobility of this Kingdom) of remaining hat-in-hand even when at some distance from our monarchs, wherever they happen to be (as well as in the presence of dozens of others, so many tercelets and quartlets of kings do
we have);5 and so on for similar recent and depraved innovations: then they would soon all vanish in disapproval. Such defects may be all on the surface, but they augur badly: when we see cracks in the plaster and the cladding of our walls it warns us that there are fissures in the actual masonry.

  [C] In his Laws Plato concludes that no plague in this world can do more damage to his city than allowing liberty to the young to change from fashion to fashion in their dress, comportment, dances, sports and songs, constantly changing the basis of their ideas this way and that, running after novelties and honouring those who invent them; by such things are morals corrupted and all ancient principles brought into disdain and contempt. In all things – except quite simply for those which are evil – change is to be feared, including changes of seasons, winds, diets and humours; and no laws are truly respected except those to which God has vouchsafed so long a continuance that no one knows how they were born or that they had ever been different.6

  44. On sleep

  [Classical philosophy tends to see the Sage as a man untouched by emotion. Montaigne, preoccupied as often by war, treats of sleep in the context of exempla relating to great men in wartime.]

  [A] Reason ordains that we should keep to the same road but not to the same rate; and although the wise man must never allow his human passions to make him stray from the right path, he may without prejudice to his duty certainly quicken or lessen his speed, though never plant himself down like some fixed and impassive Colossus. If Virtue herself were incarnate I believe that even her pulse would beat faster when attacking the foe than when attacking a dinner – indeed it is necessary that she should be moved and inflamed. That is why I have noted as something quite rare the sight of great persons who remain so utterly unmoved when engaged in high enterprises and in affairs of some moment that they do not even cut short their sleep.1

  On the day appointed for his desperate battle against Darius, Alexander the Great slept so soundly and so late that when the hour of battle was pressing close, Parmenion was obliged to enter his chamber and call out his name two or three times to wake him up.2

  The very same night that the Emperor Otho had resolved to end his life, he put his private affairs in order, distributed his money between his followers, sharpened the edge of the sword he intended to use for his blow and then, waiting only to know that each one of his friends had withdrawn to safety, fell so soundly asleep that his servants of the bedchamber heard him snoring.

  The death of that Emperor has much in common with the death of the great Cato, and especially that feature; for when Cato was ready to take his own life, he was waiting for news to be brought that the Senators he had sent away had sailed out of the port of Utica when he fell into so deep a sleep that his breathing could be heard in the neighbouring room; and when the man he had sent to the port woke him to tell him of the storm which had prevented the Senators from sailing away in safety, he dispatched another and, settling down in his bed, he went off to sleep again until the man came back and told him that they had left.

  And we can again compare him to Alexander, when during the Cataline Conspiracy there was such a storm over the treachery of Metellus the tribune who was determined to publish the decree summoning Pompey and his army back to Rome. Cato alone opposed that decree and he and Metellus had exchanged gross insults and great threats in the Senate; but the decision had to be carried out the following morning in the public Forum. Metellus was to come there, favoured by the plebs as well as by Caesar who was then allied to Pompey’s interests: he was to be accompanied by a crowd of foreign mercenaries and gladiators who would fight to the last; Cato was to come supported by nothing but his own constancy. His family and friends and many others were deeply anxious about this: some of them spent the night together with no desire to sleep, drink or eat because of the danger they saw awaiting him; his wife and his sisters especially did nothing but fill his home with weeping and wailing; he on the contrary reassured everyone there; having dined as usual, he went to lie down and slept a deep sleep until morning, when one of his fellow tribunes came to wake him up to enter the affray. What we know of the courage of [C] this man from the rest of his life3 [A] enables us to judge with absolute certainty that what he did proceeded from a soul high high above such events, which he did not deign to take to heart more than any ordinary occurrence.

  In that sea-fight which Augustus won against Sextus Pompeius off Sicily, he was just about to go into battle when he was overcome by so sound a sleep that his friends had to come and wake him up to get him to give the signal for the engagement. That provided Mark Antony later on with an excuse for accusing him of not having the will even to look straight in the eye of the troops he had drawn up for battle and of not daring to face his soldiers before Agrippa came to tell him the news of his own victory over his enemies.

  But to turn to young Marius, he did worse: for on the day of his last encounter with Sylla, he drew up his army, gave the signal for battle, then went to lie down for a rest in the shade of a tree where he fell so fast asleep that he could scarcely be awakened by the rout of his fleeing soldiers, having seen nothing of the combat; they say it was from being so exhausted by fatigue and want of sleep that nature could stand no more.

  While on this topic it is for the doctors to decide whether sleep is such a necessity that our very life depends on it: for we are certainly told that King Perseus of Macedonia, when a prisoner in Rome, was done to death by being prevented from sleeping.

  [C] Herodotus mentions nations where men sleep and wake a half-year at a time. And the biographer of Epimenides the Wise says that he slept for fifty-seven years in a row.4

  45. On the Battle of Dreux

  [The Battle of Dreux, 19 December 1562, between the victorious Duc de Guise (for the Roman Catholics) and the Constable Montmorency (for the Reformed Church) evokes a comparison with analogous exempla, in Plutarch’s Life of Philopoemen and Life of Agesilaus.]

  [A] There was a full bag of remarkable incidents in our battle at Dreux; but those who are not strongly inclined towards the reputation of Monsieur de Guise like to allege that he cannot be forgiven for having called a halt and marking time with the forces under his command while the Constable, who was leading his army, was being battered by our artillery: it would have been better to have exposed himself to risk and to have attacked the enemy’s flank than to have waited to see his rear, so incurring a heavy loss. But apart from what is proved by the outcome, anyone who will debate the matter dispassionately will, I think, readily concede that the target in the sights of any soldier, let alone a commander, must be overall victory and that no events, no matter what their importance to individuals, should divert him from that aim.

  Philopoemen, in his encounter with Machanidas, advanced a good troop of archers and spearmen to open the affray; his enemy knocked them about and, after this success, spent time galloping after them slipping right along the flank of the company commanded by Philopoemen who, despite his soldiers’ excitement, decided not to budge from his positions and not to offer the enemy battle even to save those men; but after allowing them to be hunted down and cut to pieces before his eyes, he opened an attack against the enemy foot-soldiers once he saw that they had been quite abandoned by their cavalry. And even though they were Spartans he quickly achieved his end, especially because he surprised them at a time when they thought they had already won and were beginning to break ranks. Only when that was done did he set about pursuing Machanidas.

  That case is germane to that of Monsieur de Guise.

  [B] In that harsh battle of Agesilaus against the Boeotians (which Xenophon who was there said was the cruellest he had ever seen) Agesilaus refused the opportunity which Fortune gave him – even though he foresaw certain victory from it – of letting the Boeotian battalion slip through and then charging their rear; he considered there was more art in that than valour. And so, to display his prowess, he preferred by an extraordinary act of ardent courage to make a frontal attack. But he was thoroughly
beaten and wounded; he was obliged to disengage and accept the opportunity he had first rejected: he split his ranks and let the Boeotians pour through. Once they had all done so, he noted that they were marching in some disorder like men who thought they were out of danger: he commanded them to be pursued and attacked on their flanks. Even then he was unable to make them retreat in a headlong rout: they withdrew foot by foot, still showing their teeth until they had reached safety.

  46. On names

  [Platonic philosophy attached a real power to names; Montaigne is sceptical. Even a great ‘name’ (a well-deserved reputation after death) is an empty thing for the dead heroes themselves. This chapter is in many ways a diptych to I:37, ‘On Cato the Younger’.]

  [A] No matter how varied the greenstuffs we put in, we include them all under the name of salad. So too here: while surveying names I am going to make up a mixed dish from a variety of items.

  I do not know why but every nation has some names which are taken in a bad sense: we do so with Jean, Guillaume and Benoît.

  Item: in the genealogy of kings there seem to be some names beloved by Fate, as Ptolomey was for kings in Egypt, Henry in England, Charles in France, Baldwin in Flanders and, in our own Aquitania in olden times, Guillaume, from which they say is derived the name of Guyenne – a poor enough pun were there not equally crude ones in Plato himself.1