The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [B] There is no valour greater in its kind than Alexander’s; yet it is but one kind of valour; it is not in all cases sufficiently whole or all-pervasive. [C] Absolutely incomparable it may be, but it has its blemishes, [B] with the result that we see him worried to distraction over the slightest suspicion he may have that his men are plotting against his life, and see him conducting his investigations with an injustice so chaotic and ecstatic and with a fear which overturned his natural reason. Then there is the superstition from which he so markedly suffered: it bears some image of faint-heartedness. [C] And the excessive repentance he showed for murdering Clytus is another testimony to the inconstancy of his mind.13

  [A] We are fashioned out of oddments put together – [C] ‘voluptatem contemnunt, in dolore sunt molliores; gloriam negligunt, franguntur infamia’ [they despise pleasure but are rather weak in pain; they are indifferent to glory, but are broken by disgrace]14 – [A] and we wish to win honour under false flags. Virtue wants to be pursued for her own sake: if we borrow her mask for some other purpose then she quickly rips it off our faces. Virtue, once the soul is steeped in her, is a strong and living dye which never runs without taking the material with her.

  That is why to judge a man we must follow his tracks long and carefully. If his constancy does not rest firmly upon its own foundations; [C] ‘cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est’; [the path which his life follows having been thought about and prepared for beforehand;] [A] if various changes make him change his pace – I mean his path, for his pace may be hastened by them or made heavy and slow – then let him go free,15 for that man will always ‘run with the wind’, A vau le vent, as the crest of our Lord Talbot puts it.

  No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live. Anyone who has not groomed his life in general towards some definite end cannot possibly arrange his individual actions properly. It is impossible to put the pieces together if you do not have in your head the idea of the whole. What is the use of providing yourself with paints if you do not know what to paint? No man sketches out a definite plan for his life; we only determine bits of it. The bowman must first know what he is aiming at: then he has to prepare hand, bow, bowstring, arrow and his drill to that end. Our projects go astray because they are not addressed to a target.16 No wind is right for a seaman who has no predetermined harbour. I do not agree with the verdict given in favour of Sophocles in the action brought against him by his son, which argued, on the strength of seeing a performance of one of his tragedies, that he was fully capable of managing his domestic affairs.17 [C] Neither do I agree that the inferences drawn by the Parians sent to reform the Milesian government justified the conclusion they reached: visiting the island they looked out for the best-tended lands and the best-run country estates and, having noted down their owners’ names, summoned all the citizens of the town to assemble and appointed those owners as the new governors and magistrates, judging that those who took care of their private affairs would do the same for the affairs of state.18

  [A] We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people. [C] ‘Magnam rem puta unum hominem agere’ [Let me convince you that it is a hard task to be always the same man.]19 [A] Since ambition can teach men valour, temperance and generosity – and, indeed, justice; since covetousness can plant in the mind of a shop-boy, brought up in obscurity and idleness, enough confidence to cast himself on the mercy of the waves and angry Neptune in a frail boat, far from his hearth and home, and also teach him discernment and prudence; and since Venus herself furnishes resolution and hardiness to young men still subject to correction and the cane, and puts a soldier’s heart into girls still on their mothers’ knees:

  [B] Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes,

  Ad Juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:

  [With Venus as her guide, the maiden, quite alone, comes to the young man, sneaking carefully through her sleeping guardians:]20

  it is not the act of a settled judgement to judge us simply by our outward deeds: we must probe right down inside and find out what principles make things move; but since this is a deep and chancy undertaking, I would that fewer people would concern themselves with it.

  2. On drunkenness

  [Drunkenness was considered a form of ecstasy, in which body and soul became separated or loosely joined. From Ancient times it was associated with the higher ecstasies (those of mystics, poets, prophets and lovers) as well as with the ecstasy of wonder, of bravery and of fear. (In his Paraphrases on the New Testament Erasmus has a long section explaining the rapture of the disciples at Pentecost by analogy with the effects of drunkenness, of which the disciples were accused.) Montaigne is wary of ecstasy and despises excessive drinking, which is for him a rapture not of the mind but the body.]

  [A] The world is all variation and dissimilarity. Vices are all the same in that they are vices – and doubtless the Stoics understand matters after that fashion: but even though they are equally vices they are not equal vices. That a man who has overstepped by a hundred yards those limits

  quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum,

  [beyond which, and short of which, there is no right way,]

  should not be in a worse condition than a man who has only overstepped them by ten yards is not believable; nor that sacrilege should be no worse than stealing a cabbage from our garden:

  Nec vincet ratio, tantumdem ut peccet idemque

  Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti,

  Et qui nocturnus divum sacra legerit.

  [Reason cannot convince me that there is equal sinfulness in trampling down someone’s spring cabbages and in robbing the temple-treasures in the night.]1

  There is as much diversity in vice as in anything else.

  [B] It is dangerous to confound the rank and importance of sins: murderers, traitors and tyrants gain too much by it. It is not reasonable that they should be able to salve their consciences because somebody else is lazy, lascivious or not assiduous in his prayers. Each man comes down heavily on his neighbours’ sins and lessens the weight of his own. Even the doctors of the Church often rank sins badly to my taste.

  [C] Just as Socrates said that the prime duty of wisdom is to distinguish good from evil,2 we, whose best always partakes of vice, should say the same about knowing how to distinguish between the vices: if that is not done exactingly, the virtuous man and the vicious man will be jumbled unrecognizedly together.

  [A] Now drunkenness, considered among other vices, has always seemed to me gross and brutish. In others our minds play a larger part; and there are some vices which have something or other magnanimous about them, if that is the right word. There are some which are intermingled with learning, diligence, valour, prudence, skill and finesse: drunkenness is all body and earthy. Moreover the grossest nation of our day is alone in honouring it.3 Other vices harm our intellect: this one overthrows it; [B] and it stuns the body:

  cum vini vis penetravit,

  Consequitur gravitas membrorum, præpediuntur

  Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens,

  Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia gliscunt.

  [when the strength of the wine has sunk in, our limbs become heavy, we stagger and trip over our legs; our speech becomes slow; our mind, sodden; our eyes are a-swim. Then comes the din, the hiccoughs and the fights.]4

  [C] The worst state for a man is when he loses all consciousness and control of himself.

  [A] And among other things they say that, just as the must fermenting in the wine-jar stirs up all the lees at the bottom, so too does wine unbung the most intimate secrets of those who have drunk beyond measure:

  [B] tu sapientium

  Curas et arcanum jocoso

  Consilium retegis Lyæo.

  [in those jolly Bacchic revels you, my
wine-jar, uncover worries and the secret counsels of the wise.]5

  [A] Josephus6 tells how he wheedled secrets out of an ambassador sent to him by his enemies by making him drink a lot. Nevertheless Augustus confided his most private secrets to Lucius Piso, the conqueror of Thrace, and was never let down; nor was Tiberius let down by Cossus on whom he unburdened all of his plans: yet we know that those two men were so given to drinking that they had often to be carried out of the Senate, both drunk,7

  Externo inflatum venas de more Lyæo.

  [With veins swollen with others’ wine, as usual.]8

  [C] And the plan to kill Caesar was well kept when confided to Cassius, who drank water, but also when confided to Cimber, who often got drunk; which explains his joking reply: ‘Should I bear the weight of a tyrant, when I cannot bear the weight of my wine!’9 [A] Even our German mercenaries when drowned in their wine remember where they are quartered, the password and their rank:

  [B] nec facilis victoria de madidis, et

  Blæsis, atque mero titubantibus.

  [it is not easy to beat them, even when they are sodden-drunk, incoherent and staggering about.]10

  [C] I would never have thought anybody could be buried so insensibly in drunkenness if I had not read the following in the history books. With the purpose of inflicting on him some notable indignity, Attalus invited to supper that Pausanias who, on this very subject, later killed Philip King of Macedonia (a king whose fine qualities nevertheless bore witness to the education he had received in the household and company of Epaminondas). He got him to drink so much that he could bring him, quite unaware of what he was doing, to abandon his fair body to mule-drivers and to many of the most abject scullions in his establishment, as if it were the body of some whore in a hedgerow.11

  And then there is the case told me by a lady whom I honour and hold in the greatest esteem: towards Castres, near Bordeaux, where her house is, there was a village woman, a widow of chaste reputation, who, becoming aware of the first hints that she might be pregnant, told the women of the neighbourhood that if only she had a husband she would think she was expecting. But as the reason for her suspicions grew bigger every day and finally became evident, she was reduced to having a declaration made from the pulpit in her parish church, stating that if any man would admit what he had done she promised to forgive him and, if he so wished, to marry him. One of her young farm-labourers took courage at this proclamation and stated that he had found her one feast-day by her fireside after she had drunk her wine freely; she was so deeply and provocatively asleep that he had been able to have her without waking her up. They married each other and are still alive.

  [A] Antiquity, certainly, did not greatly condemn this vice. The very writings of several philosophers speak of it indulgently; even among the Stoics there are those who advise you to let yourself drink as much as you like occasionally and to get drunk so as to relax your soul:

  [B] Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum

  Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt.

  [They say that Socrates often carried off the prize in this trial of strength too.]12

  [C] That Censor and corrector of others,13 [A] Cato was reproached for his heavy drinking:

  [B] Narratur et prisci Catonis

  Sæpe mero caluisse virtus.

  [It is told how the virtue of old Cato was often warmed with wine].14

  [A] Such a famous King as Cyrus cited among the praiseworthy qualities which made him preferable to his brother Artaxerxes the fact that he knew how to drink better. Even among the best regulated and best governed peoples it was very common to assay men by making them drunk. I have heard one of the best doctors in Paris, Silvius, state that it is a good thing once a month to arouse our stomachs by this excess so as to stop their powers from getting sluggish and to stimulate them in order to prevent their growing dull. [B] And we can read that the Persians discussed their most important affairs after drinking wine.15

  [A] My taste and my complexion are more hostile than my reason to this vice. For, leaving aside the fact that I readily allow my beliefs to be captive to the Ancients, I find this vice base and stultifying but less wicked and a cause of less harm than the others, which virtually all do more direct public damage to our society. And if, as they maintain, we can never enjoy ourselves without it costing us something, I find that this vice costs our conscience less than the others: besides it is not a negligible consideration that it is easy to provide for and easy to find.

  [C] A man advanced in years and rank told me that he counted drink among the three main pleasures left to him in this life.16 But he set about it in the wrong way; for fine palates and an anxious selecting of wine are to be absolutely avoided. If you base your pleasure on drinking good wine you are bound to suffer from sometimes drinking bad. Your taste ought to be more lowly and more free. To be a good drinker you must not have too tender a palate. The Germans enjoy drinking virtually any wine. Their aim is to gulp it rather than to taste it. They get a better bargain. Their pleasure is more abundant and closer at hand.

  Secondly, to drink in the French style at both meals, but moderately for fear of your health, is too great a restraint on the indulgence of god Bacchus: more time and constancy are required. The Ancients spent entire nights in this occupation and often went on into the next day. So we should train our habit in wider firmer ways. I have seen in my time a great lord, a person famous for his successes in several expeditions of high importance, who effortlessly and in the course of his ordinary meals never drank less than two gallons of wine and who, after that, never showed himself other than most sage and well-advised in the conduct of our affairs.

  We should allow more time to that pleasure which we wish to count on over the whole of our lives. Like shop-apprentices and workmen we ought to refuse no opportunity for a drink; we ought always to have the desire for one in our heads: it seems that we are cutting down this particular one all the time and that, as I saw as a boy, dinner parties, suppers, and late-night feasts used to be much more frequent and common in our houses than they are now. Could we really be moving towards an improvement in something at least! Certainly not. It is because we throw ourselves into lechery much more than our fathers did. Those two occupations impede each other’s strength. On the one hand lechery has weakened our stomachs: on the other, sober drinking has rendered us vigorous and lively in our love-making.

  It is wonderful what accounts I heard my father give of the chastity of his times. He had the right to say so, as he was both by art and nature most graceful in the company of ladies. He talked little and well; he intermingled his speech with elegant references to books in the vernacular, especially Spanish, and among the Spanish he frequently cited the so-called Marco Aurelio.17 His face bore an expression of gentle seriousness, humble and very modest; he took particular care to be respectable and decent in his person and his dress both on horse and on foot. He was enormously faithful to his word and, in all things, conscientious and meticulous, tending rather towards over-scrupulousness. For a small man he was very strong, straight and well-proportioned; his face was pleasing and rather brown; he was skilled and punctilious in all gentlemanly sports. I have also seen some canes filled with lead with which he is said to have exercised his arms for throwing the bar and the stone or for fencing, as well as shoes shod with lead to improve his running and jumping. Folk recall little miracles of his at the long-jump. When he was over sixty I remember him laughing at our own agility by vaulting into the saddle in his furry gown, by putting his weight on his thumb and leaping over a table and by never going up to his room without jumping three or four steps at a time. But more to my subject, he said that there was hardly one woman of quality in the whole province who was ill-spoken of, and he would tell of men – especially himself – who were on remarkably intimate terms with decent women without a breath of suspicion. In his own case he solemnly swore that he came virgin to his marriage-bed; and yet he had long done his bit in the transalpine wars, leaving a det
ailed diary of events there, both public and personal. And he married on his return from Italy in 1528 at the mature age of thirty-three.

  Let us get back to our bottles.

  [A] The disadvantages of old age (which has need of support and renewal) could reasonably give birth to a desire for drink, since a capacity for wine is virtually the last pleasure which the passing years steal from us.

  According to our drinking fraternity natural heat first gets a hold on our feet; that concerns our childhood; from there it rises to our loins where it long settles in, producing there if you ask me the only true bodily pleasures of this life: [C] in comparison, the other pleasures are half asleep. [A] Finally, like a mist rising and evaporating, it lands in the gullet and makes there its last abode.