The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  [B] To see the exertions that Seneca imposed upon himself in order to steel himself against death, to see him sweat and grunt in order to stiffen and reassure himself during his long struggles on his pedestal, would have shaken his reputation for me if he had not sustained it with such valour as he was dying. His burning emotion, [C] so oft repeated, shows that he himself was ardent and impetuous. (We must convict him out of his own mouth: ‘Magnus animus remissius loquitur et securius’ [A great mind speaks with more calm and assurance]; ‘Non est alius ingenio, alius animo color.’ [There is not one colour for the wit another for the mind.]) And it also [B] shows that14 he was to some extent hard pressed by his adversary. The style of Plutarch, being more detached and relaxed, is for me more manly and persuasive: I would find it easier to believe that his soul’s emotions were more assured and steady. Seneca, more [C] lively [B], puts in the goad15 and wakes us up with a start; he stimulates, rather, our wit: Plutarch, more [C] settled, [B] constantly16 reassures and strengthens us; he stimulates, rather, our understanding. [C] Seneca enraptures our judgement: Plutarch wins it.

  I have likewise seen even more hallowed writings which, in their portrayal of the conflict sustained against the prickings of the flesh, show them to be so sharp, so strong and invincible, that the likes of us, who are but the off-scourings of the commonality, are as struck with wonder by the strangeness and unknown power of the temptations as by the resistance put up to them.17

  [B] Why do we go on stiffening our morale by such learned maxims?18

  Let us look to the land and to the wretched people we can see scattered over it, bending low over their toil, ignorant of Aristotle, Cato, example and precept: from them Nature draws every day deeds of constancy and steadfastness which are purer and more unbending than those which we so carefully study in our schools. How many country-folk do I see ignoring poverty; how many yearning for death or meeting it without panic or distress? That man over there who is trenching my garden has, this morning, buried his father or his son. The very names by which they call our afflictions soften them and sweeten their bitter taste: for them consumption is ‘the cough’; dysentery, a ‘runny stomach’; pleurisy, ‘a chill’. And as they give them mild names they endure them better too. Ills have to be grievous indeed to interrupt their habitual toil. They take to their beds only to die: [C] ‘Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscurant et solertam scientiam versa est.’ [Virtue, simple and open, has been converted into obscure and subtle erudition.]19

  [B] I wrote this round about the time when the huge burdens of our civil disturbances were for several months pressing right down on me with all their weight. I had the enemy at my gates on one side and on the other side a worse enemy, marauders: [C] ‘non armis sed vitiis certatur’ [not with arms is the fight but with crimes].20 [B] I was being assayed by every kind of military outrage all at once.

  Hostis adest dextra levaque a parte timendus,

  Vicinoque malo terret utrumque lotus.

  [A redoubtable enemy I have to left and right: on either side immediate danger threatens.]

  What a monstrosity this war is! Other wars are external: this one also gnaws at itself and destroys itself with its own poison. Its nature is so malign and so destructive that it destroys itself along with everything else, tearing itself limb from limb in its frenzy. As often as not we can see it falling apart, more by itself than from lack of any necessary commodity or by enemy action. All military lore flees it: it came to cure sedition, yet it is full of it; it seeks to punish disobedience, and is an example of it; it is used to defend our laws, but it takes part in a rebellion against its own. Where has it got us? Our medicines are infected:

  Nostre mal s’empoisonne

  Du secours qu’on luy donne.

  [Our illness draws Venom from the succour we bring it.]21

  Exuperat magis aegrescitque medendo;

  [The illness grows greater and more sickly with the cure;]

  Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo pemista furore,

  Justificam nobis mentem avertere Deorum.

  [Now that right and wrong have been confounded by our wicked frenzy, it has brought the gods to turn away their righteous will from us.]

  When such distempers attack a whole people, at first you can tell the sound from the sickly; but when they come to drag on as ours do, the whole body politic feels it from head to heel: no organ is free from corruption. For there is no air which is so greedily breathed as the air of licence, nor which spreads and permeates as far. Our armies are bound and held together now only by the cement of foreign mercenaries: you can no longer make up one reliable and disciplined body of soldiers. How ignominious! There is only as much discipline as our hired soldiers care to show us: every man Jack of us follows his own discretion not that of his commander, who has more trouble with his own troops than with the enemy. The General it is who must follow, woo and bow: he alone has to obey; all the rest are free and untrammelled.22

  I take pleasure in seeing how much baseness and faint-heartedness there are in ambition, and how much abject servitude it requires to achieve its end. But what displeases me is daily to see decent characters who are capable of justice corrupted by their management and command of this disorder. Long sufferance begets habit: habit, acceptance and imitation. We have enough men with ill-endowed souls without spoiling the good and generous ones. If we go on this way there will scarcely be one man left to whom we could entrust the welfare of our State, should Fortune ever restore its health to us.

  Hunc saltern everso Juvenem succurrere seclo

  Ne prohibite.

  [At least do not prevent this Youth from bringing succour to this prostrate world.]23

  [C] What has become of that old axiom that soldiers should go more in fear of their captain than of their enemy? And what of that wonderful example of an apple tree which happened to be enclosed within the limits of a Roman army-camp, yet, when the camp was struck next day, was still there, leaving its owner with his full complement of ripe and delicious apples?24 I wish that our young men, instead of the time they spend on less useful tours and less honourable apprenticeships, would devote half of it to watching the war at sea under some good Captain-Commander of Rhodes, and the other half to studying the discipline of the Turkish armies, for it has many superiorities and advantages over ours. One is, that whereas our soldiers become more disorderly during our campaigns, there they become more self-controlled and circumspect, since such offences and larcenies against the common people as are punishable by cudgelling in times of peace become capital in time of war. There is a pre-established tariff; for one egg taken without payment: fifty strokes of the cane; for anything else, no matter how trivial, which cannot be used as food: immediate impaling or beheading. It amazed me to read in the history of Selim, the cruellest conqueror there has ever been, that, when he had subdued Egypt, those wonderful gardens which surround the City of Damascus and abound in delicacies remained unsullied by the hands of his soldiers. Yet those gardens were all open and unfenced.

  [B] But is there any affliction in a polity which it is worth tackling with so fatal a cure? According to Favonius, not even the usurping of a tyrannous hold upon the State.25 [C] Similarly Plato does not allow that violence be done against the peace of one’s country even to cure it, and will accept no correction which costs the blood and ruination of the citizens, laying down that it is a good thing man’s duty in such a case to leave things as they are, simply praying God to exceed the normal Order and to bring His hand to bear. He appears to have criticized his close friend Dion for having acted just a little out of line.26 I was a Platonist in that way before I ever knew there had been a Plato in this world. And although that great man must be simply excluded from our communion – he who by the purity of his conscience deserved so well of God’s favour as to penetrate through the widespread darkness of his time deeply into the light of Christianity – I do not think it well becomes us to let ourselves be taught by a pagan how impious it is to expect from God no succour whats
oever which is His alone, requiring no cooperation on our part.27

  I often doubt whether, among all those who engage in such disorders, there has ever been found one man who was so feeble of understanding that he actually let himself be convinced that he was advancing towards reformation by way of the ultimate in deformation; that he was ensuring his salvation by means of the most explicit causes we know of most certain damnation;28 or that, by overthrowing the constitution, the authorities and the laws under the tutelage of which God has placed him, and by the dismembering of his motherland (tossing parts of her to be gnawed by her ancient foes, filling brotherly hearts with parricidal hatreds and summoning up devils and the Furies to help him) he can somehow bring succour to the most holy loveliness and justice of God’s word.29 [B] Ambition, greed, cruelty, revenge do not have enough natural violence of their own, so let us light the match and stir the fire under the glorious pretext of justice and devotion! No worse state of affairs can be imagined than one in which wickedness becomes lawful, donning, by leave of the magistrate, the mantle of authority. [C] ‘Nihil in speciem fallacius quam prava relligio, ubi deorum numen praetenditur sceleribus.’ [Nothing is more deceitful than a depraved piety by which the will of the gods serves as a pretext for crimes.]30 According to Plato, the ultimate species of injustice is when what is unjust is held to be just.

  [B] The common people suffered then not merely present depravations –

  undique totis

  Usque adeo turbatur agris,

  [all fields devasted everywhere,]31

  – but future ones as well: the living had to suffer; so too those who were yet unborn. They were robbed of everything, even of hope (and so, in consequence, was I): they ravished from them all the means they possessed, which for long years would have provided their livelihood:

  Quœ nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere perdunt,

  Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas.

  [They smash whatever they cannot carry or cart away; the mob of ruffians burn down innocent cottages.]

  Muris nulla fides, squallent populatibus agri.

  [There is no safety within city walls: outside, the fields are ravaged.]

  Apart from that attack, I suffered others as well. I incurred the penalties which moderation entails during such disorders. I was trounced on every hand: I was Guelph to the Ghibelline, Ghibelline to the Guelph. (One of our poets says just that, but I do not remember where.) The fact that my home is where it is, coupled with my affability towards the men of my neighbourhood, made me appear one thing, my life and actions another.32 No formal indictments were made: folk had nothing to get their teeth into. I never break the laws: if a proper investigation had been made, any remaining doubt would have been owed to me. But there were unspoken suspicions [C] circulating underhand [B] for33 which there is never any lack of pretext in so confused a chaos, no more than there is any lack of envious minds or silly ones. [C] I usually have a way of aggravating any harmful inferences which Fortune strews against me by refusing to justify, defend or explain myself, reckoning that to plead for my good conscience is to compromise it:34‘Perspicuitas enim argumentatione elevatur.’

  [Argument merely removes the perspicuity.]35 And so, as though each man can see into me as clearly as I can, instead of distancing myself from an accusation I advance towards it, improving upon it by an ironic and mocking admission of guilt – if, that is, I do not flatly keep silent about it, as being unworthy of a reply.

  But those who take that for some excessive arrogance on my part wish me scarcely less harm than those who take it for the weakness of an indefensible case – especially those great lords for whom the ultimate crime is lack of submissiveness and who are insolent in face of any justice which knows what is what, and which fails to be humble, submissive and begging. I have often bumped up against that pillar. Be that as it may, over what befell me then [B] an ambitious man would have hanged himself; so would a covetous man. I am in no wise acquisitive –

  Sit mihi quod nunc est, etiam minus, ut mihi vivant

  Quod superest œvi, si quid superesse volent dii.

  [Let me keep what I have now – or less even – so that I may live the rest of my life for myself (if the gods grant me any more life to live).]36

  – yet such losses as do befall me through another’s wrong-doing, be it larceny or violence, pain me just about as much as they do a man sick and tortured by covetousness. The affront is immeasurably more bitter than the loss.

  Hundreds of different kinds of misfortune rushed upon me one after another: if they had come together I could have borne them more cheerfully. I had already thought about entrusting my impoverished and straitened old age to one of my loved ones, but after letting my eyes rove over all my affairs, I realized that I was reduced to my shirt. To plummet down from such a height you need to be caught by firmly loving arms, solid and favoured by fortune. Such arms are rare – if there be any at all. In the end I realized that the surest way was to entrust my needs and my person to myself and that, if I should chance to be coldly treated by Fortune’s favour, then I should commend myself even more strongly to my own, clinging to myself and becoming more intimately beholden to myself. [C] In all their concerns men dash to seek props from others so as to spare their own, which alone, for anyone who knows how to arm himself with them, are certain and strong. Each man rushes elsewhere and towards the future, since no man has reached his own self.

  [B] I concluded that my afflictions were useful ones. Firstly, because bad pupils, when reason proves inadequate, have to be taught by a good hiding, [C] just as we straighten back wood, when it has become warped, by driving in wedges over a fire. [B] For such a long time now I have been lecturing myself about holding to myself and keeping apart from matters external, yet I still go on turning my gaze sideways: I am tempted by a nod, by a gracious word from some great man or by an encouraging face. (God knows there is a dearth of those nowadays, and how little they imply!) I can still hear without a frown the seductions of those who would try to put me up for auction, resisting them so feebly that it appears that I would really rather be convinced by them. A mind so unwilling to learn requires flogging: I am a cask which is splitting apart, leaking and failing in its duty: it needs knocking together and tightening up with good whacks from the mallet.

  Secondly, because my misfortune served me as practice, preparing me for the worst (should I, who by the bounty of Fortune and the properties of my character hope to be among the last, happen to be among the first to be caught up in this tempest), teaching me in good time to limit my way of life, and to order it for a new estate. True freedom is to have power over oneself to do anything with oneself. [C] ‘Potentissimus est qui se habet in potestate.’ [Most powerful is he who has himself in his power.]37 [B] In ordinary tranquil times we prepare ourselves for moderate and common ills. But during the disorders in which we have lived these last thirty years, every man in France sees himself, both individually and collectively and hour by hour, on the point of having his entire fate reversed: all the more reason, then, to keep one’s mind supplied with stronger and more manly provender. Let us be grateful to our fate for having made us live in an age which is neither soft and idle nor lazy: nowadays a man who would never otherwise have become famous may do so because of his misfortunes.

  [C] I rarely read in my history books about the disorders in other States without regretting that I could not have been there to study them more closely: so, too, my desire for knowledge leads me to find at least some satisfaction in being able to see with my own eyes this remarkable spectacle of the death of our institutions, the manner of it and its symptoms. Since I cannot retard it, I am happy to be destined to be present and to learn from it. After all, we make great efforts so that we can eagerly witness performances of fictional portrayings of the tragedies of human fortune; it is not that we lack sympathy for what we hear there but that we delight in awakening our grief by the exceptional nature of those pitiable events. Nothing thrills without hurting. Good hist
orians avoid telling of calm events – still waters and dead seas – in order to sail again into wars and seditions, to which (as they know) we summon them.

  I doubt whether I can properly admit how little it has cost me in terms of my life’s repose and tranquillity to have passed more than a half of my days during the collapse of my country. Faced with misfortunes which do not concern me directly, I buy my resignation a little too cheaply; as for lamenting on my own behalf, I have regard not so much for what has been taken from me but for what still remains to me, both within and without. There is some consolation in dodging, one after another, the successive evils which have us in their sights, only to strike elsewhere around us. Moreover, where public misfortunes are concerned, the more my compassion is spread overall the weaker it becomes. To which add that it is certainly more or less true that ‘tantum ex publicis malis sentimus, quantum ad privatas res pertinet’ [from public ills we feel only as much as touches us directly],38 and that our original health was such as to diminish any sorrow we ought to have felt for its loss. It was indeed ‘health’, but only by comparison with the malady which followed it. We did not have far to fall; least tolerable of all, it seems to me, are honoured corruption and institutionalized brigandry: there is less wrong in stealing from us in a forest than in a place of safety. The ‘health’ of our State concerned a body entirely composed of organs each rivalling one another in corruption, and (for the most part) of aged sores, no longer being cured nor wanting to be cured.