The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [B] It is written of Curio the orator that after he had announced that he would divide his speech into three parts or four, or had stated the number of his arguments and reasons, he would often forget one of them or add one or two more.57 I have always taken care not to fall into that trap, loathing all such promises and outlines, not simply out of distrust for my memory but also because that style is too donnish: [C] ‘Simpliciora militates decent’ [In soldiers more bluntness is appropriate.]

  [B] It is enough that from this day forth I have promised myself never again to accept the task of speaking in formal situations.

  As for reading from a prepared script, that is not only a monstrosity but greatly to the disadvantage of those who by nature are capable of achieving anything directly. And as for throwing myself on the mercy of improvisation, that is even less acceptable: my powers of improvisation are stolid and confused and could never respond to sudden emergencies of any consequence.

  Reader: just let this tentative essay, this third prolongation of my self-portrait, run its course. I make additions but not corrections: firstly, that is because when a man has mortgaged his book to the world I find it reasonable that he should no longer have any rights over it. Let him put it better elsewhere if he can, not corrupt the work he has already sold. From such folk you should buy nothing until they are dead. Let them do their thinking properly before they publish. Who is making them hurry? [C] My book is ever one: except that, to avoid the purchaser’s going away quite empty-handed when a new edition is brought out, I allow myself, since it is merely a piece of badly joined marquetry, to tack on some additional ornaments. That is no more than a little extra thrown in, which does not damn the original version but does lend some particular value to each subsequent one through some ambitious bit of precision. From this there can easily arise however some transposition of the chronological order, my tales finding their place not always by age but by opportuneness.

  [B] My second reason is this: I fear that I will personally lose by the change. My mind does not always move straight ahead but backwards too. I distrust my present thoughts hardly less than my past ones and my second or third thoughts hardly less than my first. We are often as stupid when correcting ourselves as others.58 [C] My first edition dates from fifteen hundred and eighty: I have long since grown old but not one inch wiser. ‘I’ now and ‘I’ then are certainly twain, but which ‘I’ was better? I know nothing about that. If we were always progressing towards improvement, to be old would be a beautiful thing. But it is a drunkard’s progress, formless, staggering, like reeds which the wind shakes as it fancies, haphazardly.

  Antiochus had written vigorously in support of the Academy. In old age he took a different line. Would I not be following Antiochus whichever I followed? After having established doubt he wished to establish the validity of human opinions: that amounted, did it not, to establishing doubt not validity, suggesting that if longer life were granted him he would have been ready for some new upset, not so much better as different.

  [B] The approval of the public has made me a little more adventurous than I expected; but what I most fear is to surfeit. Like a certain scholar of my time, I would rather provoke than bore. Praise is always pleasant, no matter why it comes or from whom it comes; but genuinely to delight in it you need to discover its cause: even defects have ways of finding favour. The approval of ordinary common folk rarely hits the point, and I am mistaken if, in my own time, it is not the worst books which come top in popular approbation. I am indeed grateful to those gentlemen who deign to take my feeble efforts in good part. Nowhere are defects of style more obvious than when the subject-matter itself has little to commend it.

  I do not, Reader, accept responsibility for misprints which slip in through the carelessness or fantasy of the various craftsmen; each hand introduces his own. I do not concern myself with the spelling (merely telling them to follow the traditional one) nor with punctuation: I am expert in neither. Even where they completely destroy my meaning, that does not worry me over-much: they at least take some weight off me; but when (as they often do) they substitute a false meaning and deflect me towards their own conception, they destroy me. So whenever the thought does not measure up to my own standard a gentleman should decline to accept it as mine. Anyone who knows how little industrious I am, and how far I am cast in a mould of my own, will not find it hard to believe that I would more readily compose as many essays again than subject myself to going through them once more to make schoolboy corrections.

  I said just now that, being set in the deepest mine of that new metal,59 not only am I deprived of close contact with people whose manners and opinions hold them together by a bond which allows no other and which differs from mine, but I also run some risk by living among people who think that all deeds are equally lawful, most of whom have debts to pay to our justice which could not be made worse – whence arises the ultimate degree of licence. When I tot up all the details which concern me as an individual, I find that there is no man hereabouts to whom the defence of our laws costs more than it does to me, ‘either’ (as the law-clerks say) ‘in gains forgone or damages incurred’. [C] Some there are who boast of their zeal and toughness who, if you weigh things properly, do far less than I do.

  [B] My house, being always open, easily approached and ever ready to welcome all men (since I have never let myself be persuaded to turn it into a tool for a war in which I play my part most willingly when it is farthest from my neighbourhood) has earned quite a lot of popular affection, so that it would be difficult to challenge me on my own dunghill. It is, I judge, a miraculous and exemplary achievement that it should remain unspotted by blood or sack during so long a tempest and so many upheavals and changes hereabouts. For to tell the truth it would have been possible for a man of my complexion to escape the effects of pressure of any kind, provided that it was constant and continuous, but these alternating invasions and incursions, these reversals and vicissitudes of Fortune round about me have, to date, hardened the temper of the local people rather than softened it, loading upon me insurmountable dangers and hardships. I escape, but it displeases me that I do so by Fortune and, indeed, by my cleverness rather than by justice; it displeases me to be outside the safeguard of our laws and under any other protection but theirs. As things stand I live more than half by somebody else’s favour, which is a harsh obligation. I do not want to owe my safety to the bounty and good-will of great men who respect my loyalty and independence, nor to the affable manners of my forebears or of myself. Supposing I had been different! And if my conduct and the frankness of my dealings do impose obligations on my neighbours and kinsmen, there is cruelty in their being able to pay off their debt by letting me stay alive and in their being able to say: ‘We allow him60 [C] to continue freely to have divine service in the chapel of his house now that we have pillaged and smashed all the neighbouring churches;61 and we allow him to keep his property and his life, [B] since, when the need arises, he protects our wives and our cattle.’ (We are old hands in my home at sharing in the praise given to Lycurgus of Athens, that he was the guardian and general depository of the purses of his fellow-citizens.)62

  I maintain that we ought to live by the authority of the law, not by [C] recompense and [B] favour. How many gallant men have preferred to lose their life rather than to owe it to anyone. I avoid any sort of obligation, but above all the kind which binds me by a debt of honour. For me nothing costs dearer than what is vouchsafed to me and for which my will remains mortgaged under the title of gratitude: I prefer to receive services which are up for sale. And I should think so too! For the latter I give mere money: for the others I give myself. Such knots as bind me by the laws of honour seem tighter to me and heavier than the knots of civil constraint. A lawyer ties me in his knots more loosely than I do myself. And is it not reasonable that my conscience should be under a far greater obligation when anyone has put simple trust in it. In other cases my trustworthiness owes them nothing: they never lent it anything. Le
t them seek help from the trust and reliance which they placed in others than me. I would much rather break the restrictions of walls or of laws than of my word. [C] Being nice to the point of superstition over keeping my promises, I prefer on all subjects to make them conditional and provisional. To unimportant promises I attach weight because I keep jealously to my rule, which racks me and burdens me out of concern for itself. Why, even in such undertakings as are freely and entirely my own, once I have declared my intention I feel that I have ordered myself to carry it out, and that, by letting others into the know, I have prescribed it to myself. It seems to me that to state it is to promise it. That is why I do not give much wind of my projects.

  [B] Any sentence which I pass on myself is far stiffer and more rigorous than any given by judges who can seize me only by aspects of common obligation, whereas my conscience is stricter and more severe. But in the case of duties towards which they would drag me if I would not go willingly, I pursue them but slackly: [C] ‘Hoc ipsum ita justum est quod recte fit, si est voluntarium.’ [The essence of a just deed lies in being voluntary.]63 [B] If the deed has none of the splendour of freedom it has neither grace nor honour:

  Quod me jus cogit, vix voluntate impetrent.

  [You will not easily get me to do what the law says I must.]

  When necessity compels me, I like to slacken my will, ‘quia quicquid imperio cogitur exigenti magis quam praestanti acceptum refertur’ [because when anything is commanded, gratitude is given to the one who issues the order not the one who obeys it].

  I know some who adopt that position to the point of unfairness: they would rather give away than return, and lend out rather than repay, doing good most meanly to those to whom they are most beholden. I do not go that far, but I get close to it.

  I am so fond of ridding myself of the weight of obligations that I have occasionally counted as gains such attacks or insults or acts of ingratitude as came from those to whom, by nature or accident, I owed some duty of affection, taking their offence, as it occurred, as so much towards the settling or discharge of my debt. Even when I continue to pay them the visible courtesies which society requires, I still find it a great saving [C] to do for justice what I used to do for affection and [B] to alleviate a little the inward stress and anxiety of my will [C] ‘Est prudentis sustinere ut cursum, sic impetum benevolentiae.’ [Wise men should stop a rush of benevolence as they would a runaway chariot.]64 [B] I have a will which, when I yield to it, is rather too impulsive and pressing, at least for a man who wishes never to be under any pressure. My restraint can reconcile me to the imperfections of those who are in contact with me: I am sorry that they are worth the less for it but I can nevertheless economize a little over my attachment and engagement towards them. I approve of the man who loves his son65 less if he is scabby or a hunchback, not merely when he is wicked but also when he is unfortunate or ill-endowed (for God has himself, to that extent, reduced his natural worth and value), provided that he behave, in his absence of warmth, with moderation and scrupulous fairness. In my own case a close relationship does not lighten defects: it tends to aggravate them.

  After all that, insofar as I understand the subject of beneficence and gratitude (which is a delicate and most useful science) I know no one more free and under less obligation than I am so far. I owe whatever I do owe to common natural obligations: no one is more purely unindebted:66

  nec sunt mihi nota potentum

  Munera.

  [and as for presents from powerful men, I know them not.]

  Princes [C] give me plenty if they take nothing from me and [B] do me enough good if they do me no harm. That is all I ask of them. Oh how beholden I am to God that it should have pleased Him that I should receive all I have directly from His grace and for His reserving all my debt to Him alone! [C] How urgently I beg God of His mercy that I may never owe a fundamental ‘Thank you’ to any man. Blessed freedom, which has guided me thus far! May it last to the end.

  [B] I try to have no express need of anyone: [C] ‘in me omnis spes est mihi’ [all my hope is in myself].67 [B] That is something all can do, but it is easier for those whom God has protected from pressing natural needs. To depend upon another is pitiful and hazardous. Even our own self (which is the most secure and right place to turn to) does not provide adequate security. I own nothing but myself, yet even my possession of that is partly imperfect and defective. I husband myself68 [C] and put heart into myself (which is more important) while still fortunate, [B] so as to find there the wherewithal to satisfy me when all else should abandon me.

  [C] Eleus Hippias did not equip himself solely with learning so as to be able, if needs be, to withdraw happily from all other company into the lap of the Muses, nor solely with philosophy so as to teach his soul to be content with itself, manfully doing without all external goods when Fate demands it: he took care to learn to be his own cook and barber, to make his own clothes, shoes and rings so as to be able to rely as far as possible entirely on himself and to relieve himself of the need of others’ help.69 [B] You can enjoy more freely and contentedly the use of good things which do not derive from yourself when your enjoyment of them is not bound and constrained by necessity and when your will has the power, and your financial resources the means, of doing without them.

  [C] I know myself well, but it is hard for me to conceive of any act of kindness from anyone or any hospitality so frank and free but that, if I were to become involved in it out of necessity, it would be to me painful, tyrannical and stained with reproach. Just as giving is a pretentious quality, a prerogative, receiving is an act of subordination – witness Bajazet’s insulting and bellicose rejection of the gifts sent to him by Tamberlane;70 and the gifts sent on the part of the Emperor Soleiman put the Emperor of Calicut in such a rage that he not only bluntly rejected them, saying that neither he nor his predecessors were accustomed to take, it being their place to bestow, but he also had the envoys who had been sent with them cast into a dungeon.

  Aristotle says that when Thetis flatters Jupiter, and the Spartans the Athenians, they do not start reminding them again of all that they themselves have done for them – that is always odious – but of all they have received from them.71 Those whom I see readily using the good offices of each and everyone and pawning themselves to them would not do so if they attached the weight which wise men should to the bond of an obligation: it can sometimes be repaid but never untied – a cruel trussing-up for anyone who likes to give his freedom elbow-room everywhere. Those who are acquainted with me (both those above and below me) know whether they have ever met anyone who puts fewer burdens upon others. If I am excessive about this by today’s standards, that is no great marvel, since so many elements in my character contribute to it: a little innate pride, the inability to bear a refusal, my restricted needs and my lack of flair for any kind of business – and my most cherished characteristics: idleness and frankness. For all of which reasons I have a mortal hatred of being beholden to anyone or through anyone but myself. Under any circumstances whatever, before I will make use of another’s kindly services, no matter how trivial or unimportant, I make vigorous use of every means of doing without them. Those whom I hold in affection distress me hugely when they beg me to beg a favour for them from a third party. If I make use of anyone, it seems to cost me no less to redeem what he has in pawn to me than, if he owes me nothing, to pawn myself to him on behalf of others. But apart from that condition and the next (that they do not want anything from me which requires anxious bargaining, for I have declared a war unto death against bother of any sort), I am easily accessible to the needs of everyone.72

  [B] But even more than seeking to bestow I have fled from all receiving – [C] which Aristotle says is an easier thing to do.73 [B] My Fortune has not allowed me to give much to others, and the little she has allowed me has been lodged with the very poor.

  If Fortune had brought me into this world to hold high rank among men I would have been ambitious to be loved, not feared or held in
awe. Shall I express it more cheekily? I would have been more concerned to please than to bring moral improvement. [C] Cyrus said most wisely (through the mouth of an excellent captain and better philosopher)74 that he reckoned that his generosity and benefactions far excelled his valour and his conquests in war. And whenever Scipio the Elder wants to make himself esteemed he rates his affability and humanity above his bravery and victories, and always has this proud saying on his lips: he had given his foes as much reason to love him as his friends.

  [B] What I mean, then, is that if I must owe anyone anything it should be for some other more legitimate pretext than the one I mentioned just now, in which I am implicated by the laws of this wretched war, one where the debt does not amount to my entire preservation. Such a debt overwhelms me. I have gone to bed in my own home hundreds of times thinking that I would be betrayed and killed that night, bargaining with Fortune that the event should not be terrifying and long drawn-out. And after reciting my Lord’s Prayer I have exclaimed,

  Impius hœc tam culta novalia miles habebit!