Essays of Michel de Montaigne

A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may A person’s look is but a feeble warranty Accept all things we are not able to refute Admiration is the foundation of all philosophy Advantageous, too, a little to recede from one’s right All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice Apt to promise something less than what I am able to do As if anything were so common as ignorance Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses Best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd Books have not so much served me for instruction as exercise Books of things that were never either studied or understood Condemn the opposite affirmation equally Courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal--Socrates Death conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss Decree that says, “The court understands nothing of the matter” Deformity of the first cruelty makes me abhor all imitation Enters lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it Establish this proposition by authority and huffing Extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question Fabric goes forming and piling itself up from hand to hand Fortune heaped up five or six such-like incidents Hard to resolve a man’s judgment against the common opinions Haste trips up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself He cannot be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course “How many things,” said he, “I do not desire!” How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out I am a little tenderly distrustful of things that I wish I am no longer in condition for any great change I am not to be cuffed into belief I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable I do not judge opinions by years I ever justly feared to raise my head too high I would as willingly be lucky as wise If I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it If they hear no noise, they think men sleep Impose them upon me as infallible Inconveniences that moderation brings (in civil war) Lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself Let not us seek illusions from without and unknown “Little learning is needed to form a sound mind.”--Seneca Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation Men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions Merciful to the man, but not to his wickedness--Aristotle Miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me My humour is no friend to tumult Nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of my own Not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding Number of fools so much exceeds the wise Opinions we have are taken on authority and trust Others adore all of their own side Pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death Profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams Reasons often anticipate the effect Refusin to justify, excuse, or explain myself Remotest witness knows more about it than those who were nearest Restoring what has been lent us, wit usury and accession Richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow Right of command appertains to the beautiful-Aristotle Rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny a stated fact Suffer my judgment to be made captive by prepossession Swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking Taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance The last informed is better persuaded than the first The mind grows costive and thick in growing old The particular error first makes the public error Their souls seek repose in agitation They gently name them, so they patiently endure them (diseases) Those oppressed with sorrow sometimes surprised by a smile Threats of the day of judgment Tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance--Augustine Tis no matter; it may be of use to some others To forbear doing is often as generous as to do To kill men, a clear and strong light is required Too contemptible to be punished True liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself Vast distinction betwixt devotion and conscience We have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death What did I say?

[“A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a mighty stream; and so with other things--a tree, a man--anything appears greatest to him that never knew a greater.”--Idem, vi. 674.]

The only profit a man can reap from these Memoirs is in the special narrative of battles and other exploits of war wherein these gentlemen were personally engaged; in some words and private actions of the princes of their time, and in the treaties and negotiations carried on by the Seigneur de Langey, where there are everywhere things worthy to be known, and discourses above the vulgar strain.”

“Ubi mortifero jacta est fax ultima lecto, Uxorum fusis stat pia turba comis Et certamen habent lethi, quae viva sequatur Conjugium: pudor est non licuisse mori. Ardent victrices, et flammae pectora praebent, Imponuntque suis ora perusta viris.”

Montaigne, on leaving Paris, stayed a short time at Blois, to attend the meeting of the States-General. We do not know what part he took in that assembly: but it is known that he was commissioned, about this period, to negotiate between Henry of Navarre (afterwards Henry IV.) and the Duke of Guise. His political life is almost a blank; but De Thou assures us that Montaigne enjoyed the confidence of the principal persons of his time.

Pyrrho knows nothing about it. We are never without sickness. Agues have their hot and cold fits; from the effects of an ardent passion we fall again to shivering; as much as I had advanced, so much I retired:--

these complaints are false; there is in the polity of the world a greater equality and more uniform relation. Our skins are as sufficient to defend us from the injuries of the weather as theirs are; witness several nations that yet know not the use of clothes.

A man may say with some colour of truth that there is an Abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it: an ignorance that knowledge creates and begets, at the same time that it despatches and destroys the first. Of mean understandings, little inquisitive, and little instructed, are made good Christians, who by reverence and obedience simply believe and are constant in their belief.

And as the Egyptians after their feasts were wont to present the company with a great image of death, by one that cried out to them, “Drink and be merry, for such shalt thou be when thou art dead”; so it is my custom to have death not only in my imagination, but continually in my mouth.

I pretend to no other fruit by acting than to act, and add to it no long arguments or propositions; every action plays its own game, win if it can.

And as they say that in our bodies there is a congregation of divers humours, of which that is the sovereign which, according to the complexion we are of, is commonly most predominant in us: so, though the soul have in it divers motions to give it agitation, yet must there of necessity be one to overrule all the rest, though not with so necessary and absolute a dominion but that through the flexibility and inconstancy of the soul, those of less authority may upon occasion reassume their place and make a little sally in turn.

Do but observe with what horrid impudence we toss divine arguments to and fro, and how irreligiously we have both rejected and retaken them, accord--as fortune has shifted our places in these intestine storms.

The most extreme degree of courageously treating death, and the most natural, is to look upon it not only without astonishment but without care, continuing the wonted course of life even into it, as Cato did, who entertained himself in study, and went to sleep, having a violent and bloody death in his heart, and the weapon in his hand with which he was resolved to despatch himself.

And also for this design of mine ‘tis convenient for me for me to write at home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me; where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Paternoster, and of French a little less. I might have made it better elsewhere, but then the work would have been less my own; and its principal end and perfection is to be exactly mine.

And therefore it is that they called it sacred and divine, and conceive that nothing but the violence of tyrants and the baseness of the common people are inimical to it. Finally, all that can be said in favour of the Academy is, that it was a love which ended in friendship, which well enough agrees with the Stoical definition of love:

Let them never tell me that it is a medicine too dear bought: for what avail so many stinking draughts, so many caustics, incisions, sweats, setons, diets, and so many other methods of cure, which often, by reason we are not able to undergo their violence and importunity, bring us to our graves? So that when I have the stone, I look upon it as physic; when free from it, as an absolute deliverance.

Metellus having, of all the Roman senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand the violence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at Rome, who would, by all means, cause an unjust law to pass in favour of the commons, and, by so doing, having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus had established against the dissentient, entertained those who, in this extremity, led him to execution with words to this effect: That it was a thing too easy and too base to do ill; and that to do well where there was no danger was a common thing; but that to do well where there was danger was the proper office of a man of virtue.

I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have not feared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects these are confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselves in all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend with disaster:

The notary, who had been summoned to draw up his will, came in the evening, and when he had the documents prepared, I inquired of La Boetie if he would sign them.

[“Why does no man confess his vices? because he is yet in them; ‘tis for a waking man to tell his dream.”--Seneca, Ep., 53.]

I have kept my, word in things wherein I might easily have been dispensed; they sometimes surrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that they were willing enough should be broken by the conqueror: I have, more than once, made pleasure in its greatest effort strike to the interest of their honour; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against myself; so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my rules, when they frankly referred themselves to them, than they would have done by their own.

I live from hand to mouth, and content myself in having sufficient for my present and ordinary expense; for as to extraordinary occasions, all the laying up in the world would never suffice. And ‘tis the greatest folly imaginable to expect that fortune should ever sufficiently arm us against herself; ‘tis with our own arms that we are to fight her; accidental ones will betray us in the pinch of the business.

But I have yet more avoided receiving than sought occasions of giving, and moreover, according to Aristotle, it is more easy., My fortune has allowed me but little to do others good withal, and the little it can afford, is put into a pretty close hand. Had I been born a great person, I should have been ambitious to have made myself beloved, not to make myself feared or admired: shall I more plainly express it? I should more have endeavoured to please than to profit others.

Married people, having all their time before them, ought never to compel or so much as to offer at the feat, if they do not find themselves quite ready: and it is less unseemly to fail of handselling the nuptial sheets, when a man perceives himself full of agitation and trembling, and to await another opportunity at more private and more composed leisure, than to make himself perpetually miserable, for having misbehaved himself and been baffled at the first assault.

I could have been glad that of other infirmities age has to present long-lived men withal, it had chosen some one that would have been more welcome to me, for it could not possibly have laid upon me a disease for which, even from my infancy, I have had so great a horror; and it is, in truth, of all the accidents of old age, that of which I have ever been most afraid.

‘Tis not to heaven only that art sends her ropes, engines, and wheels; let us consider a little what she says of us ourselves, and of our contexture.

“Pejoraque saecula ferri Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;”

If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love and acknowledge it; ‘tis treachery to marry without espousing.

“Verum, ut opinor, habet novitatem summa, recensque Natura est mundi, neque pridem exordia coepit Quare etiam quaedam nunc artes expoliuntur, Nunc etiam augescunt; nunc addita navigiis sunt Multa.”

Arts of persuasion, to insinuate it into our minds Help: no other effect than that of lengthening my suffering Judgment of great things is many times formed from lesser thing Option now of continuing in life or of completing the voyage Two principal guiding reins are reward and punishment Virtue and ambition, unfortunately, seldom lodge together

I am not guilty of the common error of judging another by myself. I easily believe that in another’s humour which is contrary to my own; and though I find myself engaged to one certain form, I do not oblige others to it, as many do; but believe and apprehend a thousand ways of living; and, contrary to most men, more easily admit of difference than uniformity amongst us.

Now, by this account, all things shall be monstrous to the wisest and most understanding men; for human reason has persuaded them that there was no manner of ground nor foundation, not so much as to be assured that snow is white, and Anaxagoras affirmed it to be black; if there be any thing, or if there be nothing; if there be knowledge or ignorance, which Metrodorus of Chios denied that man was able to determine; or whether we live, as Euripides doubts whether the life we live is life, or whether that we call death be not life, [--Greek--] and not without some appearance.

This place might naturally enough admit of some discourse upon the consideration of valour, and the difference of this virtue from others; but, Plutarch having so often handled this subject, I should give myself an unnecessary trouble to repeat what he has said.

And in these short and violent deaths, the consequence that I foresee administers more consolation to me than the effect does fear. They say, that as life is not better for being long, so death is better for being not long. I do not so much evade being dead, as I enter into confidence with dying. I wrap and shroud myself into the storm that is to blind and carry me away with the fury of a sudden and insensible attack.

[“Then the Almighty Father, offended that any mortal should rise to the light of life from the infernal shades, struck the son of Phoebus with his forked lightning to the Stygian lake.” --AEneid, vii. 770.]

The arts that promise to keep our bodies and souls in health promise a great deal; but, withal, there are none that less keep their promise. And, in our time, those who make profession of these arts amongst us, less manifest the effects than any other sort of men; one may say of them, at the most, that they sell medicinal drugs; but that they are physicians, a man cannot say.

I never read this divine description but that, methinks, I there see human folly and vanity represented in their true and lively colours. For these warlike movements, that so ravish us with their astounding noise and horror, this rattle of guns, drums, and cries,

‘Tis a vain employment, ‘tis true, unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but carried on after this manner, I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul and to rouse up a heavy body; and, as an experienced physician, I would prescribe it to a man of my form and condition, as soon as any other recipe whatever, to rouse and keep him in vigour till well advanced in years, and to defer the approaches of age. Whilst we are but in the suburbs, and that the pulse yet beats:

A very pretty way this, to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their book, with a furious countenance, and a rod in hand! A cursed and pernicious way of proceeding! Besides what Quintilian has very well observed, that this imperious authority is often attended by very dangerous consequences, and particularly our way of chastising. How much more decent would it be to see their classes strewed with green leaves and fine flowers, than with the bloody stumps of birch and willows?

[“No victory is complete, which the conquered do not admit to be so.--“Claudius, De Sexto Consulatu Honorii, v. 248.]

There may be disguise and dissimulation in all the rest: where these fine philosophical discourses are only put on, and where accident, not touching us to the quick, gives us leisure to maintain the same gravity of aspect; but, in this last scene of death, there is no more counterfeiting: we must speak out plain, and discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the pot,

Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking, I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying the object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of discharging one’s vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty.

“Non schivar non parar, non ritirarsi, Voglion costor, ne qui destrezza ha parte; Non danno i colpi or finti, or pieni, or scarsi! Toglie l’ira a il furor l’uso de l’arte. Odi le spade orribilmente utarsi A mezzo il ferro; il pie d’orma non parte, Sempre a il pie fermo, a la man sempre in moto; Ne scende taglio in van, ne punta a voto.”

and moreover, that we have learned from their own mouths the proof that, in several ages, was made by an Emperor and Empress of Rome,--[Proclus.] --both famous for ability in that affair! for he in one night deflowered ten Sarmatian virgins who were his captives: but she had five-and-twenty bouts in one night, changing her man according to her need and liking;

And he was a beautiful person in himself, of a fair complexion, tall, and sprightly, full faced, with quick hazel eyes, if we may believe Suetonius; for the statues of him that we see at Rome do not in all points answer this description. Besides his wives, whom he four times changed, without reckoning the amours of his boyhood with Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, he had the maidenhead of the renowned Cleopatra, queen of Egypt; witness the little Caesario whom he had by her. He also made love to.

We still carry our fetters along with us. ‘Tis not an absolute liberty; we yet cast back a look upon what we have left behind us; the fancy is still full of it:

The symptoms of their inclinations in that tender age are so obscure, and the promises so uncertain and fallacious, that it is very hard to establish any solid judgment or conjecture upon them. Look at Cimon, for example, and Themistocles, and a thousand others, who very much deceived the expectation men had of them.

“Illam meae si partem anima tulit Maturior vis, quid moror altera? Nec carus aeque, nec superstes Integer? Ille dies utramque Duxit ruinam.”

I say for it alone; for it often brings several commodities along with it, for which it may justly be desired: it acquires us good-will, and renders us less subject and exposed to insult and offence from others, and the like.

I am more solicitous to improve my health, when I am well, than to restore it when I am sick; prosperities are the same discipline and instruction to me that adversities and rods are to others. As if good fortune were a thing inconsistent with good conscience, men never grow good but in evil fortune. Good fortune is to me a singular spur to modesty and moderation: an entreaty wins, a threat checks me; favour makes me bend, fear stiffens me.