The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [A] My advice would be that exemplary severity intended to keep the populace to their duty should be practised not on criminals but on their corpses: for to see their corpses deprived of burial, boiled or quartered would strike the common people virtually as much as pains inflicted on the living, though in reality they amount to little or nothing – [C] as God says, ‘Qui corpus occidunt, et postea non habent quod faciant.’ [Who kill the body and after that have nothing that they can do.]29 And the poets particularly emphasize the descriptions of such horrors as something deeper than death.

  Heu! relliquias semiassi regis, denudatis ossibus,

  Per terram sanie delibutas fæde divexarier.

  [O grief! that the remains of a half-burnt king, his flesh torn to the bone, and spattered with mud and blood, should be dragged along in shame.]30

  [A1] I found myself in Rome at the very moment when they were dispatching a notorious thief called Catena. The crowd showed no emotion when he was strangled, but when they proceeded to quarter him the executioner never struck a blow without the people accompanying it with a plaintive cry and exclamation, as if each person had transferred his own feelings to that carcass.31

  [B] Such inhuman excesses should be directed against the dead bark not the living tree. In somewhat similar circumstances Artaxerxes tempered the harshness of the ancient laws of Persia: he ordained that noblemen who had failed in their tasks should not be whipped as they used to be but stripped naked and their clothes whipped instead, and that whereas they used to have their hair torn out by the root they should merely be deprived of their tall headdresses.32

  [C] The scrupulously devout Egyptians reckoned that they adequately satisfied divine justice by sacrificing swine in figure and effigy; it was a bold innovation to wish to pay in shadow and effigy God whose substance is very essence.33

  [A] I live in a season when unbelievable examples of this vice of cruelty flourish because of the licence of our civil wars; you can find nothing in ancient history more extreme than what we witness every day. But that has by no means broken me in. If I had not seen it I could hardly have made myself believe that you could find souls so monstrous that they would commit murder for the sheer fun of it; would hack at another man’s limbs and lop them off and would cudgel their brains to invent unusual tortures and new forms of murder, not from hatred or for gain but for the one sole purpose of enjoying the pleasant spectacle of the pitiful gestures and twitchings of a man dying in agony, while hearing his screams and groans. For there you have the farthest point that cruelty can reach: [C] ‘Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens, tantum spectaturus occidat.’ [That man should kill man not in anger or in fear but merely for the spectacle.]34

  [A] As for me, I have not even been able to witness without displeasure an innocent defenceless beast which has done us no harm being hunted to the kill. And when as commonly happens the stag, realizing that it has exhausted its breath and its strength, can find no other remedy but to surrender to us who are hunting it, throwing itself on our mercy which it implores with its tears:

  [B] quæstuque, cruentus

  Atque imploranti similis;

  [all covered with blood, groaning, and seeming to beg for grace;]35

  [A] that has always seemed to me the most disagreeable of sights.

  [B] I hardly ever catch a beast alive without restoring it to its fields. Pythagoras used to do much the same, buying their catches from anglers and fowlers:

  [A] primoque a cæde ferarum

  Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum.

  [it was, I think, by the slaughter of beasts in the wild that our iron swords were first spattered with warm blood.]36

  Natures given to bloodshed where beasts are concerned bear witness to an inborn propensity to cruelty.

  [B] In Rome, once they had broken themselves in by murdering animals they went on to men and to gladiators. I fear that Nature herself has attached to Man something which goads him on towards inhumanity. Watching animals playing together and cuddling each other is nobody’s sport: everyone’s sport is to watch them tearing each other apart and wrenching off their limbs.

  [A] And lest anyone should laugh at this sympathy which I feel for animals,37 Theology herself ordains that we should show some favour towards them; and when we consider that the same Master has lodged us in this palatial world for his service, and that they like us are members of his family, Theology is right to enjoin upon us some respect and affection for them.

  Pythagoras borrowed his metempsychosis from the Egyptians, but it was subsequently accepted by many peoples including our Druids:38

  Morte carent animaæ; semperque, priore relicta

  Sede, novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receptæ.

  [Souls have no death: they live for ever welcome in new abodes, having left their former ones.]39

  The religion of our Ancient Gauls included the belief that souls, being eternal, never cease changing and shifting from one body to another. In addition the Gauls attached to this idea some concern with divine justice: they said that for the Soul which had made her home in, say, Alexander there was ordained by God, depending on how she had behaved, a different body, more [C] painful [A] or less so,40 according to her behaviour:

  [B] muta ferarum

  Cogit vincla pati, truculentos ingerit ursis,

  Prædonesque lupis, fallaces vulpibus addit;

  Atque ubi per varios annos, per mille figuras

  Egit, lethæo purgatos flumine, tandem

  Rursus ad humanæ revocat primordia formæ.

  [He compels those souls to accept the mute fetters of the beasts: the merciless are imprisoned in bears; thieves, in wolves; cheats in foxes; then, having driven them over many a year through thousands of shapes, He at last purges them in the waters of Lethe and summons them back to their original human shape].41

  [A] If the Soul had been valiant, she was lodged in the body of a lion; if a voluptuary, in a pig’s; if a coward, in a stag’s or a hare’s; if cunning, in a fox’s; and so on until, purified by such chastisement, she took on the shape of some other man.

  Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempore belli

  Panthoides Euphorbus eram.

  [For I, Pythagoras, as I remember well, was Euphorbus, son of Pantheus during the Trojan war.]42

  I do not attach much importance to such cousinship between us and the beasts;43 nor to the fact that many nations, particularly some of the oldest and noblest, not only welcomed animals to companionship and fellowship with themselves but even ranked them far above themselves, sometimes reckoning that they were the familiar friends and favourites of their gods, respecting them and reverencing them as above mankind, sometimes acknowledging no other god nor godhead but them: [C] ‘belluæ a barbaris propter beneficium consecratæ.’ [beasts were sacred to the Barbarians because of the blessings they bestowed.]44

  [B] Crocodilon adorat

  Pars hæc, illa pavet saturam serpentibus Ibin;

  Effigies hic nitet aurea cercopitheci;

  hic piscem fluminis, illic

  Oppida tola canem venerantur.

  [This region worships the crocodile; another trembles before the ibis, gorged with snakes; here on the altar stands a golden image of a long-tailed monkey; in this town they venerate a river-fish; in another, a dog.]45

  [A] And the actual interpretation which Plutarch makes of this error (which is a very sound one) is to their honour. For he states that it was not the cat or (for example) the bull which the Egyptians worshipped: what they worshipped in those beasts was an image of the divine attributes: in the bull, patience and utility; in the cat, quickness,46 [C] or, like our neighbours the Burgundians as well as all the Germans, its refusal to let itself be shut in: by the cat they represented that freedom which they loved and adored above any other of God’s attributes. And so on.

  [A] But when among other more moderate opinions I come across arguments which assay to demonstrate the close resemblance we bear to the animals, and how much they share in our gr
eatest privileges and how convincingly they can be compared to us, I am led to abase our presumption considerably and am ready to lay aside that imaginary kingship over other creatures which is attributed to us.

  Even if all of that remained unsaid, there is a kind of respect and a duty in man as a genus which link us not merely to the beasts, which have life and feelings, but even to trees and plants. We owe justice to men: and to the other creatures who are able to receive them we owe gentleness and kindness. Between them and us there is some sort of intercourse and a degree of mutual obligation. [C] I am not afraid to admit that my nature is so childishly affectionate that I cannot easily refuse an untimely gambol to my dog wherever it begs one.

  [Al] The Turks have charities and hospitals for their beasts. [A] The Romans had a public duty to care for geese, by the vigilance of which their Capitol had been saved;47 the Athenians commanded that the he-mules and she-mules which had been used in building the temple named the Hecatompedon should be set free and allowed to graze anywhere without hindrance.48

  [C] It was the usual practice of the citizens of Agrigentum to give solemn burial to the beasts they loved, such as to horses of some rare merit, to working birds and dogs or even to those which their children had played with. And their customary magnificence in all things was particularly paraded in the many splendid tombs which they erected for that purpose; they remained on display many centuries afterwards. The Egyptians buried wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs and cats in hallowed places; they embalmed their corpses and wore mourning at their deaths. [A] Cimon gave honourable burial to the mules which had thrice won him the prize for racing in the Olympic Games. In Antiquity Xantippus had his dog buried on a coastal headland which has borne its name ever since.49 And Plutarch says that it offended his conscience to make a little money by sending to the slaughter-house an ox which had long been in his service.50

  12. An apology for Raymond Sebond

  [The chapter which follows is by far the longest one which Montaigne ever wrote. It is discussed in the Introduction (pp. xx–xliv). In the Appendices to that Introduction are given a translation of Montaigne’s dedication to his father of his French version of Raymond Sebond’s Theologia naturalis, as well as a translation of Montaigne’s French version of the Prologue of Raymond Sebond himself].

  [A] Truly, learning is a most useful accomplishment and a great one. Those who despise it give ample proof of their animal-stupidity. Yet I do not prize its worth at that extreme value given to it by some, such as the philosopher Erillus who lodged Supreme Good in it, holding that it was within the power of learning to make us wise and contented.1 That, I do not believe – nor what others have said: that learning is the Mother of virtue and that all vice is born of Ignorance. If that is true, it needs a lengthy gloss.2

  My house has long been open to erudite men and is well known to them, since my father, who had the ordering of it for fifty years and more, all ablaze with that new ardour with which King Francis I embraced letters and raised them in esteem, spent a great deal of trouble and money seeking the acquaintance of the learned, welcoming them into his house as holy persons who had been granted private inspiration by Divine Wisdom; he collected their sayings and their reasonings as though they were oracles – with all the more awe and devotion in that he had less right to judge: he had no acquaintance with literature, [A1] any more than his forebears did. [A] I like learned men myself, but I do not worship them.

  Among others there was Pierre Bunel, a man who, in his own time, enjoyed a great reputation for learning.3 He and other men of his kind stayed several days at Montaigne in my father’s company; when leaving, Bunel gave him a book called Theologia Naturalis sive Liber creaturarum magistri Raymondi de Sabonde – Natural Theology, or, The Book of Creatures by Master Raymond Sebond. My father was familiar with Italian and Spanish and so, since the book is composed in a kind of pidgin – Spanish with Latin endings – Bunel hoped that my father could profit by it with only very little help. He recommended it to him as a book which was very useful for the period in which he gave it to him: that was when the novelties of Luther were beginning to be esteemed, in many places shaking our old religion. He was well advised, clearly deducing that this new disease would soon degenerate into loathsome atheism. The mass of ordinary people4 lack the faculty of judging things as they are, letting themselves be carried away by chance appearances. Once you have put into their hands the foolhardiness of despising and criticizing opinions which they used to hold in the highest awe (such as those which concern their salvation), and once you have thrown into the balance of doubt and uncertainty [C] any [A] articles of their religion, they soon cast all the rest of their beliefs into similar uncertainty. They had no more authority for them, no more foundation, than for those you have just undermined; and so, as though it were the yoke of a tyrant, they shake off all those other concepts which had been impressed upon them by the authority of Law and the awesomeness of ancient custom.

  [B] Nam cupide conculcatur nimis ante metutum.

  [That which once was feared too greatly is now avidly trampled underfoot.]5

  [A] They then take it upon themselves to accept nothing on which they have not pronounced their own approval, subjecting it to their individual assent.

  Now, my father, a few days before he died, happened to light upon this book beneath a pile of old papers; he ordered me to put it into French for him. It is good to translate authors like these, where there is little to express apart from the matter. Authors much devoted to grace and elegance of language are a dangerous6 undertaking, [C] especially when you are turning them into a weaker language. [A] It was a strange and novel occupation for me, but, happening to be at leisure and never being able to refuse any command from the best father that ever was, I did what I could and finished it. He took particular delight in it and gave instructions to have it printed. They were carried out after his death.7

  I found the concepts of Sebond to be beautiful, the structure of his book well executed and his project full of piety. Many people spend time reading it – especially ladies, to whom we owe greater courtesy. I have often been able to help them by relieving this book of the weight of the two main objections made against it. (Sebond’s aim is a bold and courageous one, since he undertakes to establish against the atheists and to show by human, natural reasons the truth of all the articles of the Christian religion.)

  Frankly, I find him so firm and so successful in this, that I do not think it is possible to do better on this topic and I do not believe that anyone has done so well.

  It seemed too rich and too fine a book for an author whose name is so obscure – all we know of him is that he was a Spaniard professing medicine in Toulouse some two hundred years ago; so I once asked Adrian Turnebus – who knew everything – what he made of it.8 He replied that he thought it was a quintessence distilled from St Thomas Aquinas, only a wit like Thomas’s, full of infinite learning and staggering subtlety, being capable of such concepts. Anyway, whoever it was who conceived and wrote this book (and it is not reasonable to deprive Sebond of his title without greater cause), he was a most talented man, having many fine accomplishments.

  The first charge made against the book is that Christians do themselves wrong by wishing to support their belief with human reasons: belief is grasped only by faith and by private inspiration from God’s grace.

  A pious zeal may be seen behind this objection; so any assay at satisfying those who put it forward must be made with gentleness and respect. It is really a task for a man versed in Theology rather than for me, who know nothing about it. Nevertheless, this is my verdict: in a matter so holy, so sublime, so far surpassing Man’s intellect as is that Truth by which it has pleased God in his goodness9 to enlighten us, we can only grasp that Truth and lodge it within us if God favours us with the privilege of further help, beyond the natural order.

  I do not believe, then, that purely human means have the capacity to do this; if they had, many choice and excellent souls in ancient
times – souls abundantly furnished with natural faculties – would not have failed to reach such knowledge by discursive reasoning. Only faith can embrace, with a lively certainty, the high mysteries of our religion.10

  But that is not to imply that it is other than a most fair and praiseworthy undertaking to devote to the service of our faith those natural, human tools which God has granted us. It is not to be doubted that it is the most honourable use that we could ever put them to and that there is no task, no design, more worthy of a Christian than to aim, by assiduous reflection, at beautifying, developing and clarifying the truth of his beliefs. We are not content merely to serve God with our spirits and our souls: we owe him more than that, doing him reverence with our bodies; we honour him with our very members, our actions and with things external. In the same way we must accompany our faith with all the reason that lies within us – but always with the reservation that we never reckon that faith depends upon ourselves or that our efforts and our conjectures can ever themselves attain to a knowledge so supernatural, so divine.