Essays of Michel de Montaigne

--[These passages are, the basis of a small volume by the Abbe Mangin: “Education de Montaigne; ou, L’Art d’enseigner le Latin a l’instar des meres latines.”]--It is not to be imagined how great an advantage this proved to the whole family; my father and my mother by this means learned Latin enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a degree as was sufficient for any necessary use; as also those of the servants did who were most frequently with me.

This story shall go by itself; for I will leave it to physicians to discourse of. Two days ago I saw a child that two men and a nurse, who said they were the father, the uncle, and the aunt of it, carried about to get money by showing it, by reason it was so strange a creature.

[“All vices are less dangerous when open to be seen, and then most pernicious when they lurk under a dissembled good nature.” --Seneca, Ep. 56]

The greatest part, I should say above two-thirds of the medicinal virtues, consist in the quintessence or occult property of simples, of which we can have no other instruction than use and custom; for quintessence is no other than a quality of which we cannot by our reason find out the cause.

We do not intend it for a commendation when we say that such a one is careful in the education of his children, by reason it is a common act, how just and well done soever; no more than we commend a great tree, where the whole forest is the same. I do not think that any citizen of Sparta glorified himself much upon his valour, it being the universal virtue of the whole nation; and as little upon his fidelity and contempt of riches. There is no recompense becomes virtue, how great soever, that is once passed into a custom; and I know not withal whether we can ever call it great, being common.

These discourses are, in my opinion, very true and rational; but we are, I know not how, double in ourselves, which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn. Let us see the last and dying words of Epicurus; they are grand, and worthy of such a philosopher, and yet they carry some touches of the recommendation of his name and of that humour he had decried by his precepts. Here is a letter that he dictated a little before his last gasp:

To those who asked him why he did not find out a more commodious place to eat in than in the open street, he made answer, “Because I am hungry in the open street.” The women philosophers who mixed with their sect, mixed also with their persons, in all places, without reservation; and Hipparchia was not received into Crates’s society, but upon condition that she should, in all things, follow the practice and customs of his rule.

And yet I saw, some years ago, a person, whose name and memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there was neither law nor justice, nor magistrate who performed his office, no more than there is now, publish I know not what pitiful reformations about cloths, cookery, and law chicanery. Those are amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill-used, to show that they are not totally forgotten.

Witness the Lacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by his master commanded to some base employment: “Thou shalt see,” says the boy, “whom thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty,” and having so said, threw himself from the top of the house.

The violent gripings and contest betwixt the drug and the disease are ever to our loss, since the combat is fought within ourselves, and that the drug is an assistant not to be trusted, being in its own nature an enemy to our health, and by trouble having only access into our condition. Let it alone a little; the general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles, also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself.

have you not lived?” I have lived longer by this one day than I should have done I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead I have not a wit supple enough to evade a sudden question I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment I honour those most to whom I show the least honour I lay no great stress upon my opinions; or of others I look upon death carelessly when I look upon it universally I love stout expressions amongst gentle men I love temperate and moderate natures I need not seek a fool from afar; I can laugh at myself I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason I receive but little advice, I also give but little I scorn to mend myself by halves I see no people so soon sick as those who take physic I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare I take hold of, as little glorious and exemplary as you will I understand my men even by their silence and smiles I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence I was too frightened to be ill “I wish you good health”--“No health to thee” replied the other I would as willingly be lucky as wise I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing I write my book for few men and for few years Idleness is to me a very painful labour Idleness, the mother of corruption If a passion once prepossess and seize me, it carries me away If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me If I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it If it be a delicious medicine, take it If it be the writer’s wit or borrowed from some other If nature do not help a little, it is very hard If they can only be kind to us out of pity If they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report If they hear no noise, they think men sleep If to philosophise be, as ‘tis defined, to doubt Ignorance does not offend me, but the foppery of it Impotencies that so unseasonably surprise the lover Ill luck is good for something Imagne the mighty will not abase themselves so much as to live Imitating other men’s natures, thou layest aside thy own Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation Impose them upon me as infallible Impostures: very strangeness lends them credit Improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair Impunity pass with us for justice In everything else a man may keep some decorum In ordinary friendships I am somewhat cold and shy In solitude, be company for thyself--Tibullus In sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure In the meantime, their halves were begging at their doors In this last scene of death, there is no more counterfeiting In those days, the tailor took measure of it In war not to drive an enemy to despair Inclination to love one another at the first sight Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both Incline the history to their own fancy Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation Inconveniences that moderation brings (in civil war) Indiscreet desire of a present cure, that so blind us Indocile liberty of this member Inquisitive after everything Insensible of the stroke when our youth dies in us Insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not Intemperance is the pest of pleasure Intended to get a new husband than to lament the old Interdict all gifts betwixt man and wife Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden It (my books) may know many things that are gone from me It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in It is better to die than to live miserable It is no hard matter to get children It is not a book to read, ‘tis a book to study and learn It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part It’s madness to nourish infirmity Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience Judge by justice, and choose men by reason Judge by the eye of reason, and not from common report Judgment of duty principally lies in the will Judgment of great things is many times formed from lesser thing Justice als takes cognisance of those who glean after the reaper Killing is good to frustrate an offence to come, not to revenge Knock you down with the authority of their experience Knot is not so sure that a man may not half suspect it will slip Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment Knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment Knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists Known evil was ever more supportable than one that was, new Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs Language: obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts Lascivious poet: Homer Last death will kill but a half or a quarter of a man Law: breeder of altercation and division Laws (of Plato on travel), which forbids it after threescore Laws cannot subsist without mixture of injustice Laws do what they can, when they cannot do what they would Laws keep up their credit, not for being just--but as laws Lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me Laying themselves low to avoid the danger of falling Learn my own debility and the treachery of my understanding Learn the theory from those who best know the practice Learn what it is right to wish Learning improves fortunes enough, but not minds Least end of a hair will serve to draw them into my discourse Least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole Leave society when we can no longer add anything to it Leaving nothing unsaid, how home and bitter soever Led by the ears by this charming harmony of words Lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself Lessen the just value of things that I possess “Let a man take which course he will,” said he; “he will repent” Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man Let him be satisfied with correcting himself Let him examine every man’s talent Let it alone a little Let it be permitted to the timid to hope Let not us seek illusions from without and unknown Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; ‘tis in us Liberality at the expense of others Liberty and laziness, the qualities most predominant in me Liberty of poverty Liberty to lean, but not to lay our whole weight upon others Library: Tis there that I am in my kingdom License of judgments is a great disturbance to great affairs Life of Caesar has no greater example for us than our own Life should be cut off in the sound and living part Light griefs can speak: deep sorrows are dumb Light prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years Little affairs most disturb us Little knacks and frivolous subtleties Little learning is needed to form a sound mind--Seneca Little less trouble in governing a private family than a kingdom Live a quite contrary sort of life to what they prescribe others Live at the expense of life itself Live, not so long as they please, but as long as they ought Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting Living well, which of all arts is the greatest Llaying the fault upon the patient, by such frivolous reasons Lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust Long a voyage I should at last run myself into some disadvantage Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation Look on death not only without astonishment but without care Look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger Look, you who think the gods have no care of human things Lose what I have a particular care to lock safe up Loses more by defending his vineyard than if he gave it up Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage Love them the less for our own faults Love we bear to our wives is very lawful Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty Loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men Lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence Made all medicinal conclusions largely give way to my pleasure Making their advantage of our folly, for most men do the same Malice must be employed to correct this arrogant ignorance Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom Malicious kind of justice Man (must) know that he is his own Man after who held out his pulse to a physician was a fool Man can never be wise but by his own wisdom Man may say too much even upon the best subjects Man may with less trouble adapt himself to entire abstinence Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance Man must have a care not to do his master so great service Man must learn that he is nothing but a fool Man runs a very great hazard in their hands (of physicians) Mark of singular good nature to preserve old age Marriage Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love Melancholy: Are there not some constitutions that feed upon it?

If we see one while one art and one belief flourish, and another while another, through some celestial influence; such an age to produce such natures, and to incline mankind to such and such a propension, the spirits of men one while gay and another gray, like our fields, what becomes of all those fine prerogatives we so soothe ourselves withal?

[“Nothing has a more deceiving face than false religion, where the divinity of the gods is obscured by crimes.”--Livy, xxxix. 16.]

Those others do the same, who insist upon prohibiting particular ways of speaking, dances, and games, to a people totally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices. ‘Tis no time to bathe and cleanse one’s self, when one is seized by a violent fever; it was for the Spartans alone to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they were just upon the point of running headlong into some extreme danger of their life.

and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will.

And we see that the soul, in its passions, inclines rather to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical a subject, even contrary to its own belief, than not to have something to work upon. After this manner brute beasts direct their fury to fall upon the stone or weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth a even execute revenge upon themselves for the injury they have received from another:

The very names by which they call diseases sweeten and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never keep their beds but to die:

Life depends upon the pleasure of others; death upon our own. We ought not to accommodate ourselves to our own humour in anything so much as in this. Reputation is not concerned in such an enterprise; ‘tis folly to be concerned by any such apprehension. Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting.

We see horses take such an acquaintance with one another that we have much ado to make them eat or travel, when separated; we observe them to fancy a particular colour in those of their own kind, and, where they meet it, run to it with great joy and demonstrations of good will, and have a dislike and hatred for some other colour. Animals have choice, as well as we, in their amours, and cull out their mistresses; neither are they exempt from our jealousies and implacable malice.

And the practice of a man who mixes devotion with an execrable life seems in some sort more to be condemned than that of a man conformable to his own propension and dissolute throughout; and for that reason it is that our Church denies admittance to and communion with men obstinate and incorrigible in any notorious wickedness.

“That what we see exists I will maintain, And if our feeble reason can’t explain Why things seem square when they are very near, And at a greater distance round appear; ‘Tis better yet, for him that’s at a pause, ‘T’ assign to either figure a false cause, Than shock his faith, and the foundations rend On which our safety and our life depend: For reason not alone, but life and all, Together will with sudden ruin fall; Unless we trust our senses, nor despise To shun the various dangers that arise.”

Such a tutor will make a pupil digest this new lesson, that the height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; it is by order, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.

Quare etiam atque etiam tales fateare necesse est Esse alios alibi congressus materiali; Qualis hic est, avido complexu quem tenet æther.

[“Truly he, with a great effort will shortly say a mighty trifle.” ---Terence, Heaut., act iii., s. 4.]

On the Monday morning he had become so ill that he quite despaired of himself; and he said to me very pitifully: “Brother, do not you feel pain for all the pain I am suffering? Do you not perceive now that the help you give me has no other effect than that of lengthening my suffering?”

Discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the po Downright and sincere obedience Every day travels towards death; the last only arrives at it. Fear is more importunate and insupportable than death itself Fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented?

I know not whether or no I shall bring it about. I could wish that, instead of some other member of his succession, my father had resigned to me the passionate affection he had in his old age to his household affairs; he was happy in that he could accommodate his desires to his fortune, and satisfy himself with what he had; political philosophy may to much purpose condemn the meanness and sterility of my employment, if I can once come to relish it, as he did. I am of opinion that the most honourable calling is to serve the public, and to be useful to many,

for the most trivial cause imaginable, I irritate that humour, which afterwards nourishes and exasperates itself of its own motion; attracting and heaping up matter upon matter whereon to feed:

Sire, your letter of the last of November came to my hand only just now, when the time which it pleased you to name for meeting you at Tours had already passed. I take it as a singular favour that you should have deigned to desire a visit from so useless a person, but one who is wholly yours, and more so even by affection than from duty.

But they found at last that it was a profound meditation and a retiring into herself, her thoughts exercising and preparing her voice to imitate the sound of those trumpets, so that the first voice she uttered was perfectly to imitate their strains, stops, and changes; having by this new lesson quitted and taken in disdain all she had learned before.

Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terrain, Os homini sublime dédit, columque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus,

Let us observe, as to the rest, that man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who in his natural actions withdraws and hides himself from his own kind. And really ‘tis also an effect worth consideration, that they who are masters in the trade prescribe, as a remedy for amorous passions, the full and free view of the body a man desires; for that to cool the ardour there needs no more but freely and fully to see what he loves:--

[“For what is that friendly love? why does no one love a deformed youth or a comely old man?”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 33.]

To admit so many foreign conceptions, so great, and so high fancies, it is necessary (as a young lady, one of the greatest princesses of the kingdom, said to me once, speaking of a certain person) that a man’s own brain must be crowded and squeezed together into a less compass, to make room for the others; I should be apt to conclude, that as plants are suffocated and drowned with too much nourishment, and lamps with too much oil, so with too much study and matter is the active part of the understanding which, being embarrassed, and confounded with a great diversity of things, loses the force and power to disengage itself, and by the pressure of this weight, is bowed, subjected, and doubled up.

We have reason to magnify the power of our imagination; for all our goods are only in dream. Hear this poor calamitous animal huff!

Away with the thorny subtleties of dialectics; they are abuses, things by which our lives can never be amended: take the plain philosophical discourses, learn how rightly to choose, and then rightly to apply them; they are more easy to be understood than one of Boccaccio’s novels; a child from nurse is much more capable of them, than of learning to read or to write. Philosophy has discourses proper for childhood, as well as for the decrepit age of men.

[“Where thou wilt, they won’t; where thou wilt not, they spontaneously agree; they are ashamed to go in the permitted path.” --Terence, Eunuchus, act iv., sc. 8, v 43]

So that it is no so great wonder, as they make of it, that our ancestors had letters in no greater esteem, and that even to this day they are but rarely met with in the principal councils of princes; and if the end and design of acquiring riches, which is the only thing we propose to ourselves, by the means of law, physic, pedantry, and even divinity itself, did not uphold and keep them in credit, you would, with doubt, see them in as pitiful a condition as ever.

No man divulges his revenue; or, at least, which way it comes in but every one publishes his acquisitions. The advantages of our study are to become better and more wise. ‘Tis, says Epicharmus, the understanding that sees and hears, ‘tis the understanding that improves everything, that orders everything, and that acts, rules, and reigns: all other faculties are blind, and deaf, and without soul.

Both kings and philosophers go to stool, and ladies too; public lives are bound to ceremony; mine, that is obscure and private, enjoys all natural dispensation; soldier and Gascon are also qualities a little subject to indiscretion; wherefore I shall say of this act of relieving nature, that it is desirable to refer it to certain prescribed and nocturnal hours, and compel one’s self to this by custom, as I have done; but not to subject one’s self, as I have done in my declining years, to a particular convenience of place and seat for that purpose, and make it troublesome by long sitting; and yet, in the fouler offices, is it not in some measure excusable to require more care and cleanliness?

Husbandry is otherwise a very servile employment, as Sallust calls it; though some parts of it are more excusable than the rest, as the care of gardens, which Xenophon attributes to Cyrus; and a mean may be found out betwixt the sordid and low application, so full of perpetual solicitude, which is seen in men who make it their entire business and study, and the stupid and extreme negligence, letting all things go at random which we see in others

The highest place of honour amongst them was the middle. The name going before, or following after, either in writing or speaking, had no signification of grandeur, as is evident by their writings; they will as soon say Oppius and Caesar, as Caesar and Oppius; and me and thee, as thee and me. This is the reason that made me formerly take notice in the life of Flaminius, in our French Plutarch, of one passage, where it seems as if the author, speaking of the jealousy of honour betwixt the AEtolians and Romans, about the winning of a battle they had with their joined forces obtained, made it of some importance, that in the Greek songs they had put the AEtolians before the Romans: if there be no amphibology in the words of the French translation.

does he not forget his palaces and girandeurs? If he be angry, can his being a prince keep him from looking red and looking pale, and grinding his teeth like a madman? Now, if he be a man of parts and of right nature, royalty adds very little to his happiness;

There is nothing to which nature seems so much to have inclined us, as to society; and Aristotle , says that the good legislators had more respect to friendship than to justice. Now the most supreme point of its perfection is this: for, generally, all those that pleasure, profit, public or private interest create and nourish, are so much the less beautiful and generous, and so much the less friendships, by how much they mix another cause, and design, and fruit in friendship, than itself. Neither do the four ancient kinds, natural, social, hospitable, venereal, either separately or jointly, make up a true and perfect friendship.

[“Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word, are tempted to something they had no intention to treat of.”--Seneca, Ep., 59.]

Is it reason that even the arts themselves should make an advantage of our natural stupidity and weakness?

His design is bold and daring, for he undertakes, by human and natural reasons, to establish and make good, against the atheists, all the articles of the Christian religion: wherein, to speak the truth, he is so firm and so successful that I do not think it possible to do better upon that subject; nay, I believe he has been equalled by none.

There is greater temerity required in this age of ours, which our young men excuse under the name of heat; but should women examine it more strictly, they would find that it rather proceeds from contempt. I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence, and have ever had a great respect for her I loved: besides, he who in this traffic takes away the reverence, defaces at the same time the lustre. I would in this affair have a man a little play the child, the timorous, and the servant.

Is it not likely that there are sensitive faculties in nature that are fit to judge of and to discern those which we call the occult properties in several things, as for the loadstone to attract iron; and that the want of such faculties is the cause that we are ignorant of the true essence of such things?

And what gentle flame soever may warm the heart of modest and wellborn virgins, yet are they fain to be forced from about their mothers’ necks to be put to bed to their husbands, whatever this boon companion is pleased to say: