The Essays of Montaigne, Complete

M >> Michel de Montaigne >> The Essays of Montaigne, Complete


"Ad deos id magis, quam ad se, pertinere: ipsos visuros,
ne sacra sua polluantur;"

["Those things belong to the gods to determine than to them; let the
gods, therefore, take care that their sacred mysteries were not
profaned."--Livy, x. 6.]

according to what the oracle answered to those of Delphos who, fearing to
be invaded by the Persians in the Median war, inquired of Apollo, how
they should dispose of the holy treasure of his temple; whether they
should hide, or remove it to some other place? He returned them answer,
that they should stir nothing from thence, and only take care of
themselves, for he was sufficient to look to what belonged to him.
--[Herodotus, viii. 36.].--

The Christian religion has all the marks of the utmost utility and
justice: but none more manifest than the severe injunction it lays
indifferently upon all to yield absolute obedience to the civil
magistrate, and to maintain and defend the laws. Of which, what a
wonderful example has the divine wisdom left us, that, to establish the
salvation of mankind, and to conduct His glorious victory over death and
sin, would do it after no other way, but at the mercy of our ordinary
forms of justice subjecting the progress and issue of so high and so
salutiferous an effect, to the blindness and injustice of our customs
and observances; sacrificing the innocent blood of so many of His elect,
and so long a loss of so many years, to the maturing of this inestimable
fruit? There is a vast difference betwixt the case of one who follows
the forms and laws of his country, and of another who will undertake to
regulate and change them; of whom the first pleads simplicity, obedience,
and example for his excuse, who, whatever he shall do, it cannot be
imputed to malice; 'tis at the worst but misfortune:

"Quis est enim, quem non moveat clarissimis monumentis
testata consignataque antiquitas?"

["For who is there that antiquity, attested and confirmed by the
fairest monuments, cannot move?"--Cicero, De Divin., i. 40.]

besides what Isocrates says, that defect is nearer allied to moderation
than excess: the other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever
shall take upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging,
and should look well about him, and make it his business to discern
clearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he is
about to introduce.

This so vulgar consideration is that which settled me in my station, and
kept even my most extravagant and ungoverned youth under the rein, so as
not to burden my shoulders with so great a weight, as to render myself
responsible for a science of that importance, and in this to dare, what
in my better and more mature judgment, I durst not do in the most easy
and indifferent things I had been instructed in, and wherein the temerity
of judging is of no consequence at all; it seeming to me very unjust to
go about to subject public and established customs and institutions, to
the weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy (for
private reason has but a private jurisdiction), and to attempt that upon
the divine, which no government will endure a man should do, upon the
civil laws; with which, though human reason has much more commerce than
with the other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own proper
judges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to expound and set forth
the law and custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduce
anything, of innovation. If, sometimes, the divine providence has gone
beyond the rules to which it has necessarily bound and obliged us men,
it is not to give us any dispensation to do the same; those are
masterstrokes of the divine hand, which we are not to imitate, but to
admire, and extraordinary examples, marks of express and particular
purposes, of the nature of miracles, presented before us for
manifestations of its almightiness, equally above both our rules and
force, which it would be folly and impiety to attempt to represent and
imitate; and that we ought not to follow, but to contemplate with the
greatest reverence: acts of His personage, and not for us. Cotta very
opportunely declares:

"Quum de religione agitur, Ti. Coruncanium, P. Scipionem,
P. Scaevolam, pontifices maximos, non Zenonem, aut Cleanthem,
aut Chrysippum, sequor."

["When matter of religion is in question, I follow the high priests
T. Coruncanius, P. Scipio, P. Scaevola, and not Zeno, Cleanthes, or
Chrysippus."--Cicero, De Natura Deor., iii. 2.]

God knows, in the present quarrel of our civil war, where there are a
hundred articles to dash out and to put in, great and very considerable,
how many there are who can truly boast, they have exactly and perfectly
weighed and understood the grounds and reasons of the one and the other
party; 'tis a number, if they make any number, that would be able to give
us very little disturbance. But what becomes of all the rest, under what
ensigns do they march, in what quarter do they lie? Theirs have the same
effect with other weak and ill-applied medicines; they have only set the
humours they would purge more violently in work, stirred and exasperated
by the conflict, and left them still behind. The potion was too weak to
purge, but strong enough to weaken us; so that it does not work, but we
keep it still in our bodies, and reap nothing from the operation but
intestine gripes and dolours.

So it is, nevertheless, that Fortune still reserving her authority in
defiance of whatever we are able to do or say, sometimes presents us with
a necessity so urgent, that 'tis requisite the laws should a little yield
and give way; and when one opposes the increase of an innovation that
thus intrudes itself by violence, to keep a man's self in so doing, in
all places and in all things within bounds and rules against those who
have the power, and to whom all things are lawful that may in any way
serve to advance their design, who have no other law nor rule but what
serves best to their own purpose, 'tis a dangerous obligation and an
intolerable inequality:

"Aditum nocendi perfido praestat fides,"

["Putting faith in a treacherous person, opens the door to
harm."--Seneca, OEdip., act iii., verse 686.]

forasmuch as the ordinary discipline of a healthful state does not
provide against these extraordinary accidents; it presupposes a body that
supports itself in its principal members and offices, and a common
consent to its obedience and observation. A legitimate proceeding is
cold, heavy, and constrained, and not fit to make head against a
headstrong and unbridled proceeding. 'Tis known to be to this day cast
in the dish of those two great men, Octavius and Cato, in the two civil
wars of Sylla and Caesar, that they would rather suffer their country to
undergo the last extremities, than relieve their fellow-citizens at the
expense of its laws, or be guilty of any innovation; for in truth, in
these last necessities, where there is no other remedy, it would,
peradventure, be more discreetly done, to stoop and yield a little to
receive the blow, than, by opposing without possibility of doing good,
to give occasion to violence to trample all under foot; and better to
make the laws do what they can, when they cannot do what they would.
After this manner did he--[Agesilaus.]--who suspended them for
four-and-twenty hours, and he who, for once shifted a day in the
calendar, and that other--[Alexander the Great.]--who of the month of
June made a second of May. The Lacedaemonians themselves, who were so
religious observers of the laws of their country, being straitened by
one of their own edicts, by which it was expressly forbidden to choose
the same man twice to be admiral; and on the other side, their affairs
necessarily requiring, that Lysander should again take upon him that
command, they made one Aratus admiral; 'tis true, but withal, Lysander
went general of the navy; and, by the same subtlety, one of their
ambassadors being sent to the Athenians to obtain the revocation of some
decree, and Pericles remonstrating to him, that it was forbidden to take
away the tablet wherein a law had once been engrossed, he advised him to
turn it only, that being not forbidden; and Plutarch commends
Philopoemen, that being born to command, he knew how to do it, not only
according to the laws, but also to overrule even the laws themselves,
when the public necessity so required.




CHAPTER XXIII

VARIOUS EVENTS FROM THE SAME COUNSEL

Jacques Amiot, grand almoner of France, one day related to me this story,
much to the honour of a prince of ours (and ours he was upon several very
good accounts, though originally of foreign extraction),--[The Duc de
Guise, surnamed Le Balafre.]--that in the time of our first commotions,
at the siege of Rouen,--[In 1562]--this prince, having been advertised
by the queen-mother of a conspiracy against his life, and in her letters
particular notice being given him of the person who was to execute the
business (who was a gentleman of Anjou or of Maine, and who to this
effect ordinarily frequented this prince's house), discovered not a
syllable of this intelligence to any one whatever; but going the next day
to the St. Catherine's Mount,--[An eminence outside Rouen overlooking the
Seine. D.W.]--from which our battery played against the town (for it
was during the time of the siege), and having in company with him the
said lord almoner, and another bishop, he saw this gentleman, who had
been denoted to him, and presently sent for him; to whom, being come
before him, seeing him already pale and trembling with the conscience of
his guilt, he thus said, "Monsieur," such an one, "you guess what I have
to say to you; your countenance discovers it; 'tis in vain to disguise
your practice, for I am so well informed of your business, that it will
but make worse for you, to go about to conceal or deny it: you know very
well such and such passages" (which were the most secret circumstances of
his conspiracy), "and therefore be sure, as you tender your own life,
to confess to me the whole truth of the design." The poor man seeing
himself thus trapped and convicted (for the whole business had been
discovered to the queen by one of the accomplices), was in such a taking,
he knew not what to do; but, folding his hands, to beg and sue for mercy,
he threw himself at his prince's feet, who taking him up, proceeded to
say, "Come, sir; tell me, have I at any time done you offence? or have
I, through private hatred or malice, offended any kinsman or friend of
yours? It is not above three weeks that I have known you; what
inducement, then, could move you to attempt my death?" To which the
gentleman with a trembling voice replied, "That it was no particular
grudge he had to his person, but the general interest and concern of his
party, and that he had been put upon it by some who had persuaded him it
would be a meritorious act, by any means, to extirpate so great and so
powerful an enemy of their religion." "Well," said the prince, "I will
now let you see, how much more charitable the religion is that I
maintain, than that which you profess: yours has counselled you to kill
me, without hearing me speak, and without ever having given you any cause
of offence; and mine commands me to forgive you, convict as you are, by
your own confession, of a design to kill me without reason.--[Imitated by
Voltaire. See Nodier, Questions, p. 165.]--Get you gone; let me see you
no more; and, if you are wise, choose henceforward honester men for your
counsellors in your designs."--[Dampmartin, La Fortune de la Coup, liv.
ii., p. 139]

The Emperor Augustus,--[This story is taken from Seneca, De Clementia,
i. 9.]--being in Gaul, had certain information of a conspiracy L. Cinna
was contriving against him; he therefore resolved to make him an example;
and, to that end, sent to summon his friends to meet the next morning in
counsel. But the night between he passed in great unquietness of mind,
considering that he was about to put to death a young man, of an
illustrious family, and nephew to the great Pompey, and this made him
break out into several passionate complainings. "What then," said he,
"is it possible that I am to live in perpetual anxiety and alarm, and
suffer my would-be assassin, meantime, to walk abroad at liberty? Shall
he go unpunished, after having conspired against my life, a life that I
have hitherto defended in so many civil wars, in so many battles by land
and by sea? And after having settled the universal peace of the whole
world, shall this man be pardoned, who has conspired not only to murder,
but to sacrifice me?"--for the conspiracy was to kill him at sacrifice.
After which, remaining for some time silent, he began again, in louder
tones, and exclaimed against himself, saying: "Why livest thou, if it be
for the good of so many that thou shouldst die? must there be no end of
thy revenges and cruelties? Is thy life of so great value, that so many
mischiefs must be done to preserve it?" His wife Livia, seeing him in
this perplexity: "Will you take a woman's counsel?" said she. "Do as
the physicians do, who, when the ordinary recipes will do no good, make
trial of the contrary. By severity you have hitherto prevailed nothing;
Lepidus has followed Salvidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio, Murena;
Egnatius, Caepio. Begin now, and try how sweetness and clemency will
succeed. Cinna is convict; forgive him, he will never henceforth have
the heart to hurt thee, and it will be an act to thy glory." Augustus
was well pleased that he had met with an advocate of his own humour;
wherefore, having thanked his wife, and, in the morning, countermanded
his friends he had before summoned to council, he commanded Cinna all
alone to be brought to him; who being accordingly come, and a chair by
his appointment set him, having ordered all the rest out of the room, he
spake to him after this manner: "In the first place, Cinna, I demand of
thee patient audience; do not interrupt me in what I am about to say, and
I will afterwards give thee time and leisure to answer. Thou knowest,
Cinna,--[This passage, borrowed from Seneca, has been paraphrased in
verse by Corneille. See Nodier, Questions de la Literature llgale, 1828,
pp. 7, 160. The monologue of Augustus in this chapter is also from
Seneca. Ibid., 164.]--that having taken thee prisoner in the enemy's
camp, and thou an enemy, not only so become, but born so, I gave thee thy
life, restored to thee all thy goods, and, finally, put thee in so good a
posture, by my bounty, of living well and at thy ease, that the
victorious envied the conquered. The sacerdotal office which thou madest
suit to me for, I conferred upon thee, after having denied it to others,
whose fathers have ever borne arms in my service. After so many
obligations, thou hast undertaken to kill me." At which Cinna crying out
that he was very far from entertaining any so wicked a thought: "Thou
dost not keep thy promise, Cinna," continued Augustus, "that thou wouldst
not interrupt me. Yes, thou hast undertaken to murder me in such a
place, on such a day, in such and such company, and in such a manner."
At which words, seeing Cinna astounded and silent, not upon the account
of his promise so to be, but interdict with the weight of his conscience:
"Why," proceeded Augustus, "to what end wouldst thou do it? Is it to be
emperor? Believe me, the Republic is in very ill condition, if I am the
only man betwixt thee and the empire. Thou art not able so much as to
defend thy own house, and but t'other day was baffled in a suit, by the
opposed interest of a mere manumitted slave. What, hast thou neither
means nor power in any other thing, but only to undertake Caesar? I quit
the throne, if there be no other than I to obstruct thy hopes. Canst
thou believe that Paulus, that Fabius, that the Cossii and the Servilii,
and so many noble Romans, not only so in title, but who by their virtue
honour their nobility, would suffer or endure thee?" After this, and a
great deal more that he said to him (for he was two long hours in
speaking), "Now go, Cinna, go thy way: I give thee that life as traitor
and parricide, which I before gave thee in the quality of an enemy. Let
friendship from this time forward begin betwixt us, and let us show
whether I have given, or thou hast received thy life with the better
faith"; and so departed from him. Some time after, he preferred him to
the consular dignity, complaining that he had not the confidence to
demand it; had him ever after for his very great friend, and was, at
last, made by him sole heir to all his estate. Now, from the time of
this accident which befell Augustus in the fortieth year of his age, he
never had any conspiracy or attempt against him, and so reaped the due
reward of this his so generous clemency. But it did not so happen with
our prince, his moderation and mercy not so securing him, but that he
afterwards fell into the toils of the like treason,--[The Duc de Guise
was assassinated in 1563 by Poltrot.]--so vain and futile a thing is
human prudence; throughout all our projects, counsels and precautions,
Fortune will still be mistress of events.

We repute physicians fortunate when they hit upon a lucky cure, as if
there was no other art but theirs that could not stand upon its own legs,
and whose foundations are too weak to support itself upon its own basis;
as if no other art stood in need of Fortune's hand to help it. For my
part, I think of physic as much good or ill as any one would have me:
for, thanks be to God, we have no traffic together. I am of a quite
contrary humour to other men, for I always despise it; but when I am
sick, instead of recanting, or entering into composition with it, I
begin, moreover, to hate and fear it, telling them who importune me to
take physic, that at all events they must give me time to recover my
strength and health, that I may be the better able to support and
encounter the violence and danger of their potions. I let nature work,
supposing her to be sufficiently armed with teeth and claws to defend
herself from the assaults of infirmity, and to uphold that contexture,
the dissolution of which she flies and abhors. I am afraid, lest,
instead of assisting her when close grappled and struggling with disease,
I should assist her adversary, and burden her still more with work to do.

Now, I say, that not in physic only, but in other more certain arts,
fortune has a very great part.

The poetic raptures, the flights of fancy, that ravish and transport the
author out of himself, why should we not attribute them to his good
fortune, since he himself confesses that they exceed his sufficiency and
force, and acknowledges them to proceed from something else than himself,
and that he has them no more in his power than the orators say they have
those extraordinary motions and agitations that sometimes push them
beyond their design. It is the same in painting, where touches shall
sometimes slip from the hand of the painter, so surpassing both his
conception and his art, as to beget his own admiration and astonishment.
But Fortune does yet more evidently manifest the share she has in all
things of this kind, by the graces and elegances we find in them, not
only beyond the intention, but even without the knowledge of the workman:
a competent reader often discovers in other men's writings other
perfections than the author himself either intended or perceived, a
richer sense and more quaint expression.

As to military enterprises, every one sees how great a hand Fortune has
in them. Even in our counsels and deliberations there must, certainly,
be something of chance and good-luck mixed with human prudence; for all
that our wisdom can do alone is no great matter; the more piercing,
quick, and apprehensive it is, the weaker it finds itself, and is by so
much more apt to mistrust itself. I am of Sylla's opinion;--["Who freed
his great deeds from envy by ever attributing them to his good fortune,
and finally by surnaming himself Faustus, the Lucky."--Plutarch, How far a
Man may praise Himself, c. 9.]--and when I closely examine the most
glorious exploits of war, I perceive, methinks, that those who carry them
on make use of counsel and debate only for custom's sake, and leave the
best part of the enterprise to Fortune, and relying upon her aid,
transgress, at every turn, the bounds of military conduct and the rules
of war. There happen, sometimes, fortuitous alacrities and strange
furies in their deliberations, that for the most part prompt them to
follow the worst grounded counsels, and swell their courage beyond the
limits of reason. Whence it happened that several of the great captains
of old, to justify those rash resolutions, have been fain to tell their
soldiers that they were invited to such attempts by some inspiration,
some sign and prognostic.

Wherefore, in this doubt and uncertainty, that the shortsightedness of
human wisdom to see and choose the best (by reason of the difficulties
that the various accidents and circumstances of things bring along with
them) perplexes us withal, the surest way, in my opinion, did no other
consideration invite us to it, is to pitch upon that wherein is the
greatest appearance of honesty and justice; and not, being certain of the
shortest, to keep the straightest and most direct way; as in the two
examples I have just given, there is no question but it was more noble
and generous in him who had received the offence, to pardon it, than to
do otherwise. If the former--[The Duc de Guise.]--miscarried in it, he
is not, nevertheless, to be blamed for his good intention; neither does
any one know if he had proceeded otherwise, whether by that means he had
avoided the end his destiny had appointed for him; and he had, moreover,
lost the glory of so humane an act.

You will read in history, of many who have been in such apprehension,
that the most part have taken the course to meet and anticipate
conspiracies against them by punishment and revenge; but I find very few
who have reaped any advantage by this proceeding; witness so many Roman
emperors. Whoever finds himself in this danger, ought not to expect much
either from his vigilance or power; for how hard a thing is it for a man
to secure himself from an enemy, who lies concealed under the countenance
of the most assiduous friend we have, and to discover and know the wills
and inward thoughts of those who are in our personal service. 'Tis to
much purpose to have a guard of foreigners about one, and to be always
fenced about with a pale of armed men; whosoever despises his own life,
is always master of that of another man.--[Seneca, Ep., 4.]--And
moreover, this continual suspicion, that makes a prince jealous of all
the world, must of necessity be a strange torment to him. Therefore it
was, that Dion, being advertised that Callippus watched all opportunities
to take away his life, had never the heart to inquire more particularly
into it, saying, that he had rather die than live in that misery, that he
must continually stand upon his guard, not only against his enemies, but
his friends also;--[Plutarch, Apothegms.]--which Alexander much more
vividly and more roundly manifested in effect, when, having notice by a
letter from Parmenio, that Philip, his most beloved physician, was by
Darius' money corrupted to poison him, at the same time he gave the
letter to Philip to read, drank off the potion he had brought him. Was
not this to express a resolution, that if his friends had a mind to
despatch him out of the world, he was willing to give them opportunity to
do it? This prince is, indeed, the sovereign pattern of hazardous
actions; but I do not know whether there be another passage in his life
wherein there is so much firm courage as in this, nor so illustrious an
image of the beauty and greatness of his mind.

Those who preach to princes so circumspect and vigilant a jealousy and
distrust, under colour of security, preach to them ruin and dishonour:
nothing noble can be performed without danger. I know a person,
naturally of a very great daring and enterprising courage, whose good
fortune is continually marred by such persuasions, that he keep himself
close surrounded by his friends, that he must not hearken to any
reconciliation with his ancient enemies, that he must stand aloof, and
not trust his person in hands stronger than his own, what promises or
offers soever they may make him, or what advantages soever he may see
before him. And I know another, who has unexpectedly advanced his
fortunes by following a clear contrary advice.

Courage, the reputation and glory of which men seek with so greedy an
appetite, presents itself, when need requires, as magnificently in
cuerpo, as in full armour; in a closet, as in a camp; with arms pendant,
as with arms raised.