The Essays of Montaigne, Complete

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


But, be it how it will, and how inconsiderable soever these ineptitudes
may be, I will say I never intended to conceal them, no more than my old
bald grizzled likeness before them, where the painter has presented you
not with a perfect face, but with mine. For these are my own particular
opinions and fancies, and I deliver them as only what I myself believe,
and not for what is to be believed by others. I have no other end in
this writing, but only to discover myself, who, also shall, peradventure,
be another thing to-morrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction to
change me. I have no authority to be believed, neither do I desire it,
being too conscious of my own inerudition to be able to instruct others.

Some one, then, having seen the preceding chapter, the other day told me
at my house, that I should a little farther have extended my discourse on
the education of children.--["Which, how fit I am to do, let my friends
flatter me if they please, I have in the meantime no such opinion of my
own talent, as to promise myself any very good success from my
endeavour." This passage would appear to be an interpolation by Cotton.
At all events, I do not find it in the original editions before me, or in
Coste.]--

Now, madam, if I had any sufficiency in this subject, I could not
possibly better employ it, than to present my best instructions to the
little man that threatens you shortly with a happy birth (for you are too
generous to begin otherwise than with a male); for, having had so great a
hand in the treaty of your marriage, I have a certain particular right
and interest in the greatness and prosperity of the issue that shall
spring from it; beside that, your having had the best of my services so
long in possession, sufficiently obliges me to desire the honour and
advantage of all wherein you shall be concerned. But, in truth, all I
understand as to that particular is only this, that the greatest and most
important difficulty of human science is the education of children. For
as in agriculture, the husbandry that is to precede planting, as also
planting itself, is certain, plain, and well known; but after that which
is planted comes to life, there is a great deal more to be done, more art
to be used, more care to be taken, and much more difficulty to cultivate
and bring it to perfection so it is with men; it is no hard matter to get
children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude,
and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up. 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. Cubs of bears and puppies readily discover
their natural inclination; but men, so soon as ever they are grownup,
applying themselves to certain habits, engaging themselves in certain
opinions, and conforming themselves to particular laws and customs,
easily alter, or at least disguise, their true and real disposition; and
yet it is hard to force the propension of nature. Whence it comes to
pass, that for not having chosen the right course, we often take very
great pains, and consume a good part of our time in training up children
to things, for which, by their natural constitution, they are totally
unfit. In this difficulty, nevertheless, I am clearly of opinion, that
they ought to be elemented in the best and most advantageous studies,
without taking too much notice of, or being too superstitious in those
light prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years, and to
which Plato, in his Republic, gives, methinks, too much authority.

Madam, science is a very great ornament, and a thing of marvellous use,
especially in persons raised to that degree of fortune in which you are.
And, in truth, in persons of mean and low condition, it cannot perform
its true and genuine office, being naturally more prompt to assist in the
conduct of war, in the government of peoples, in negotiating the leagues
and friendships of princes and foreign nations, than in forming a
syllogism in logic, in pleading a process in law, or in prescribing a
dose of pills in physic. Wherefore, madam, believing you will not omit
this so necessary feature in the education of your children, who yourself
have tasted its sweetness, and are of a learned extraction (for we yet
have the writings of the ancient Counts of Foix, from whom my lord, your
husband, and yourself, are both of you descended, and Monsieur de
Candale, your uncle, every day obliges the world with others, which will
extend the knowledge of this quality in your family for so many
succeeding ages), I will, upon this occasion, presume to acquaint your
ladyship with one particular fancy of my own, contrary to the common
method, which is all I am able to contribute to your service in this
affair.

The charge of the tutor you shall provide for your son, upon the choice
of whom depends the whole success of his education, has several other
great and considerable parts and duties required in so important a trust,
besides that of which I am about to speak: these, however, I shall not
mention, as being unable to add anything of moment to the common rules:
and in this, wherein I take upon me to advise, he may follow it so far
only as it shall appear advisable.

For a, boy of quality then, who pretends to letters not upon the account
of profit (for so mean an object is unworthy of the grace and favour
of the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his service to and
depends upon others), nor so much for outward ornament, as for his own
proper and peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich himself within, having
rather a desire to come out an accomplished cavalier than a mere scholar
or learned man; for such a one, I say, I would, also, have his friends
solicitous to find him out a tutor, who has rather a well-made than a
well-filled head;--["'Tete bien faite', an expression created by
Montaigne, and which has remained a part of our language."--Servan.]--
seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but rather of the two to
prefer manners and judgment to mere learning, and that this man should
exercise his charge after a new method.

'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil's
ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the
pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have a
tutor to correct this error, and, that at the very first, he should
according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test,
permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to discern
and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving
him to open it for himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent
and speak, but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn.
Socrates, and since him Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, and
then they spoke to them--[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36.]

"Obest plerumque iis, qui discere volunt,
auctoritas eorum, qui docent."

["The authority of those who teach, is very often an impediment to
those who desire to learn."--Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 5.]

It is good to make him, like a young horse, trot before him, that he may
judge of his going, and how much he is to abate of his own speed, to
accommodate himself to the vigour and capacity of the other. For want of
which due proportion we spoil all; which also to know how to adjust, and
to keep within an exact and due measure, is one of the hardest things I
know, and 'tis the effect of a high and well-tempered soul, to know how
to condescend to such puerile motions and to govern and direct them.
I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.

Such as, according to our common way of teaching, undertake, with one and
the same lesson, and the same measure of direction, to instruct several
boys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken; and
'tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of scholars, there are not found
above two or three who bring away any good account of their time and
discipline. Let the master not only examine him about the grammatical
construction of the bare words of his lesson, but about the sense and let
him judge of the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory,
but by that of his life. Let him make him put what he has learned into a
hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to
see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own, taking
instruction of his progress by the pedagogic institutions of Plato. 'Tis
a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same
condition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its office
unless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to it
to concoct. Our minds work only upon trust, when bound and compelled to
follow the appetite of another's fancy, enslaved and captivated under the
authority of another's instruction; we have been so subjected to the
trammel, that we have no free, nor natural pace of our own; our own
vigour and liberty are extinct and gone:

"Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt."

["They are ever in wardship."--Seneca, Ep., 33.]

I was privately carried at Pisa to see a very honest man, but so great an
Aristotelian, that his most usual thesis was: "That the touchstone and
square of all solid imagination, and of all truth, was an absolute
conformity to Aristotle's doctrine; and that all besides was nothing but
inanity and chimera; for that he had seen all, and said all." A position,
that for having been a little too injuriously and broadly interpreted,
brought him once and long kept him in great danger of the Inquisition at
Rome.

Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything he reads, and
lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust.
Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to him, than those
of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of opinions be propounded
to, and laid before him; he will himself choose, if he be able; if not,
he will remain in doubt.

"Che non men the saver, dubbiar m' aggrata."

["I love to doubt, as well as to know."--Dante, Inferno, xi. 93]

for, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own reason,
they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who follows another,
follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after nothing.

"Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet."

["We are under no king; let each vindicate himself."
--Seneca, Ep.,33]

Let him, at least, know that he knows. It will be necessary that he
imbibe their knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their precepts;
and no matter if he forget where he had his learning, provided he know
how to apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every
one, and are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them
after: 'tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since both
he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several sweets
from this flower and that blossom, here and there where they find them,
but themselves afterwards make the honey, which is all and purely their
own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the several fragments he borrows
from others, he will transform and shuffle together to compile a work
that shall be absolutely his own; that is to say, his judgment:
his instruction, labour and study, tend to nothing else but to form that.
He is not obliged to discover whence he got the materials that have
assisted him, but only to produce what he has himself done with them.
Men that live upon pillage and borrowing, expose their purchases and
buildings to every one's view: but do not proclaim how they came by the
money. We do not see the fees and perquisites of a gentleman of the long
robe; but we see the alliances wherewith he fortifies himself and his
family, and the titles and honours he has obtained for him and his. 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. And certainly we render
it timorous and servile, in not allowing it the liberty and privilege to
do anything of itself. Whoever asked his pupil what he thought of
grammar and rhetoric, or of such and such a sentence of Cicero? Our
masters stick them, full feathered, in our memories, and there establish
them like oracles, of which the letters and syllables are of the
substance of the thing. To know by rote, is no knowledge, and signifies
no more but only to retain what one has intrusted to our memory. That
which a man rightly knows and understands, he is the free disposer of at
his own full liberty, without any regard to the author from whence he had
it, or fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning is
a poor, paltry learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet no
foundation for any superstructure to be built upon it, according to the
opinion of Plato, who says, that constancy, faith, and sincerity, are the
true philosophy, and the other sciences, that are directed to other ends;
mere adulterate paint. I could wish that Paluel or Pompey, those two
noted dancers of my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by only
seeing them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretend
to inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that we
could learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without the
trouble of practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well,
without exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation of
our studies in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before us is
book sufficient; a roguish trick of a page, a sottish mistake of a
servant, a jest at the table, are so many new subjects.

And for this reason, conversation with men is of very great use and
travel into foreign countries; not to bring back (as most of our young
monsieurs do) an account only of how many paces Santa Rotonda--[The
Pantheon of Agrippa.]--is in circuit; or of the richness of Signora
Livia's petticoats; or, as some others, how much Nero's face, in a statue
in such an old ruin, is longer and broader than that made for him on some
medal; but to be able chiefly to give an account of the humours, manners,
customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may
whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others. I
would that a boy should be sent abroad very young, and first, so as to
kill two birds with one stone, into those neighbouring nations whose
language is most differing from our own, and to which, if it be not
formed betimes, the tongue will grow too stiff to bend.

And also 'tis the general opinion of all, that a child should not be
brought up in his mother's lap. Mothers are too tender, and their
natural affection is apt to make the most discreet of them all so
overfond, that they can neither find in their hearts to give them due
correction for the faults they may commit, nor suffer them to be inured
to hardships and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure to
see them return all dust and sweat from their exercise, to drink cold
drink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a
foil in hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine.
And yet there is no remedy; whoever will breed a boy to be good for
anything when he comes to be a man, must by no means spare him when
young, and must very often transgress the rules of physic:

"Vitamque sub dio, et trepidis agat
In rebus."

["Let him live in open air, and ever in movement about something."
--Horace, Od. ii., 3, 5.]

It is not enough to fortify his soul; you are also to make his sinews
strong; for the soul will be oppressed if not assisted by the members,
and would have too hard a task to discharge two offices alone. I know
very well to my cost, how much mine groans under the burden, from being
accommodated with a body so tender and indisposed, as eternally leans and
presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in
their writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind,
which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for I
have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and
insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been less
to them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that would
neither cry out, wince, nor shrink, for a good swinging beating; and when
wrestlers counterfeit the philosophers in patience, 'tis rather strength
of nerves than stoutness of heart. Now to be inured to undergo labour,
is to be accustomed to endure pain:

"Labor callum obducit dolori."

["Labour hardens us against pain."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 15.]

A boy is to be broken in to the toil and roughness of exercise, so as to
be trained up to the pain and suffering of dislocations, cholics,
cauteries, and even imprisonment and the rack itself; for he may come by
misfortune to be reduced to the worst of these, which (as this world
goes) is sometimes inflicted on the good as well as the bad. As for
proof, in our present civil war whoever draws his sword against the laws,
threatens the honestest men with the whip and the halter.

And, moreover, by living at home, the authority of this governor, which
ought to be sovereign over the boy he has received into his charge, is
often checked and hindered by the presence of parents; to which may also
be added, that the respect the whole family pay him, as their master's
son, and the knowledge he has of the estate and greatness he is heir to,
are, in my opinion, no small inconveniences in these tender years.

And yet, even in this conversing with men I spoke of but now, I have
observed this vice, that instead of gathering observations from others,
we make it our whole business to lay ourselves open to them, and are more
concerned how to expose and set out our own commodities, than how to
increase our stock by acquiring new. Silence, therefore, and modesty are
very advantageous qualities in conversation. One should, therefore,
train up this boy to be sparing and an husband of his knowledge when he
has acquired it; and to forbear taking exceptions at or reproving every
idle saying or ridiculous story that is said or told in his presence; for
it is a very unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything that is not
agreeable to our own palate. Let him be satisfied with correcting
himself, and not seem to condemn everything in another he would not do
himself, nor dispute it as against common customs.

"Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia."

["Let us be wise without ostentation, without envy."
--Seneca, Ep., 103.]

Let him avoid these vain and uncivil images of authority, this childish
ambition of coveting to appear better bred and more accomplished, than he
really will, by such carriage, discover himself to be. And, as if
opportunities of interrupting and reprehending were not to be omitted, to
desire thence to derive the reputation of something more than ordinary.
For as it becomes none but great poets to make use of the poetical
licence, so it is intolerable for any but men of great and illustrious
souls to assume privilege above the authority of custom:

"Si quid Socrates ant Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem
fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere: magnis enim illi et
divinis bonis hanc licentiam assequebantur."

["If Socrates and Aristippus have committed any act against manners
and custom, let him not think that he is allowed to do the same; for
it was by great and divine benefits that they obtained this
privilege."--Cicero, De Offic., i. 41.]

Let him be instructed not to engage in discourse or dispute but with a
champion worthy of him, and, even there, not to make use of all the
little subtleties that may seem pat for his purpose, but only such
arguments as may best serve him. Let him be taught to be curious in the
election and choice of his reasons, to abominate impertinence, and
consequently, to affect brevity; but, above all, let him be lessoned to
acquiesce and submit to truth so soon as ever he shall discover it,
whether in his opponent's argument, or upon better consideration of his
own; for he shall never be preferred to the chair for a mere clatter of
words and syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any argument whatever,
than as he shall in his own judgment approve it: nor yet is arguing a
trade, where the liberty of recantation and getting off upon better
thoughts, are to be sold for ready money:

"Neque, ut omnia, qux praescripta et imperata sint,
defendat, necessitate ulla cogitur."

["Neither is their any necessity upon him, that he should defend
all things that are prescribed and enjoined him."
--Cicero, Acad., ii. 3.]

If his governor be of my humour, he will form his will to be a very good
and loyal subject to his prince, very affectionate to his person, and
very stout in his quarrel; but withal he will cool in him the desire of
having any other tie to his service than public duty. Besides several
other inconveniences that are inconsistent with the liberty every honest
man ought to have, a man's judgment, being bribed and prepossessed by
these particular obligations, is either blinded and less free to exercise
its function, or is blemished with ingratitude and indiscretion. A man
that is purely a courtier, can neither have power nor will to speak or
think otherwise than favourably and well of a master, who, amongst so
many millions of other subjects, has picked out him with his own hand to
nourish and advance; this favour, and the profit flowing from it, must
needs, and not without some show of reason, corrupt his freedom and
dazzle him; and we commonly see these people speak in another kind of
phrase than is ordinarily spoken by others of the same nation, though
what they say in that courtly language is not much to be believed.

Let his conscience and virtue be eminently manifest in his speaking, and
have only reason for their guide. Make him understand, that to
acknowledge the error he shall discover in his own argument, though only
found out by himself, is an effect of judgment and sincerity, which are
the principal things he is to seek after; that obstinacy and contention
are common qualities, most appearing in mean souls; that to revise and
correct himself, to forsake an unjust argument in the height and heat of
dispute, are rare, great, and philosophical qualities.

Let him be advised, being in company, to have his eye and ear in every
corner; for I find that the places of greatest honour are commonly seized
upon by men that have least in them, and that the greatest fortunes are
seldom accompanied with the ablest parts. I have been present when,
whilst they at the upper end of the chamber have been only commenting the
beauty of the arras, or the flavour of the wine, many things that have
been very finely said at the lower end of the table have been lost and
thrown away. Let him examine every man's talent; a peasant, a
bricklayer, a passenger: one may learn something from every one of these
in their several capacities, and something will be picked out of their
discourse whereof some use may be made at one time or another; nay, even
the folly and impertinence of others will contribute to his instruction.
By observing the graces and manners of all he sees, he will create to
himself an emulation of the good, and a contempt of the bad.

Let an honest curiosity be suggested to his fancy of being inquisitive
after everything; whatever there is singular and rare near the place
where he is, let him go and see it; a fine house, a noble fountain, an
eminent man, the place where a battle has been anciently fought, the
passages of Caesar and Charlemagne:

"Qux tellus sit lenta gelu, quae putris ab aestu,
Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat."

["What country is bound in frost, what land is friable with heat,
what wind serves fairest for Italy."--Propertius, iv. 3, 39.]

Let him inquire into the manners, revenues, and alliances of princes,
things in themselves very pleasant to learn, and very useful to know.

In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who only
live in the records of history; he shall, by reading those books,
converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages. 'Tis an idle
and vain study to those who make it so by doing it after a negligent
manner, but to those who do it with care and observation, 'tis a study of
inestimable fruit and value; and the only study, as Plato reports, that
the Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall he not reap
as to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But,
withal, let my governor remember to what end his instructions are
principally directed, and that he do not so much imprint in his pupil's
memory the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and
Scipio; nor so much where Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of his
duty that he died there. Let him not teach him so much the narrative
parts of history as to judge them; the reading of them, in my opinion,
is a thing that of all others we apply ourselves unto with the most
differing measure. I have read a hundred things in Livy that another has
not, or not taken notice of at least; and Plutarch has read a hundred
more there than ever I could find, or than, peradventure, that author
ever wrote; to some it is merely a grammar study, to others the very
anatomy of philosophy, by which the most abstruse parts of our human
nature penetrate. There are in Plutarch many long discourses very worthy
to be carefully read and observed, for he is, in my opinion, of all
others the greatest master in that kind of writing; but there are a
thousand others which he has only touched and glanced upon, where he only
points with his finger to direct us which way we may go if we will, and
contents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in the nicest
article of the question, whence we are to grope out the rest. As, for
example, where he says'--[In the Essay on False Shame.]--that the
inhabitants of Asia came to be vassals to one only, for not having been
able to pronounce one syllable, which is No. Which saying of his gave
perhaps matter and occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary
Servitude." Only to see him pick out a light action in a man's life, or
a mere word that does not seem to amount even to that, is itself a whole
discourse. 'Tis to our prejudice that men of understanding should so
immoderately affect brevity; no doubt their reputation is the better by
it, but in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch had rather we should
applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us
with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have already
read. He knew very well, that a man may say too much even upon the best
subjects, and that Alexandridas justly reproached him who made very good.
but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: "O stranger! thou
speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as thou shouldst speak
them."--[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedamonians.]--Such as have lean
and spare bodies stuff themselves out with clothes; so they who are
defective in matter endeavour to make amends with words.