The Essays of Montaigne, Complete

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


Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation
with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves,
and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses. One asking
Socrates of what country he was, he did not make answer, of Athens, but
of the world;--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 37; Plutarch, On Exile, c. 4.]--
he whose imagination was fuller and wider, embraced the whole world for
his country, and extended his society and friendship to all mankind;
not as we do, who look no further than our feet. When the vines of my
village are nipped with the frost, my parish priest presently concludes,
that the indignation of God has gone out against all the human race, and
that the cannibals have already got the pip. Who is it that, seeing the
havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out, that the machine of
the world is near dissolution, and that the day of judgment is at hand;
without considering, that many worse things have been seen, and that in
the meantime, people are very merry in a thousand other parts of the
earth for all this? For my part, considering the licence and impunity
that always attend such commotions, I wonder they are so moderate, and
that there is no more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones
patter about his ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and
tempest; like the ridiculous Savoyard, who said very gravely, that if
that simple king of France could have managed his fortune as he should
have done, he might in time have come to have been steward of the
household to the duke his master: the fellow could not, in his shallow
imagination, conceive that there could be anything greater than a Duke of
Savoy. And, in truth, we are all of us, insensibly, in this error, an
error of a very great weight and very pernicious consequence. But
whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image
of our mother nature, in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her face
shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever shall observe
himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger
than the least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole,
that man alone is able to value things according to their true estimate
and grandeur.

This great world which some do yet multiply as several species under one
genus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able to
know ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In short, I would
have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most
attention. So many humours, so many sects, so many judgments, opinions,
laws, and customs, teach us to judge aright of our own, and inform our
understanding to discover its imperfection and natural infirmity, which
is no trivial speculation. So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and
so many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough
to make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous
victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our
hopes ridiculous of eternising our names by the taking of half-a-score of
light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin.
The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps, the inflated majesty of
so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our sight without
closing our eyes to behold the lustre of our own; so many trillions of
men, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such good
company in the other world: and so of the rest Pythagoras was want to
say,--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 3.]--that our life resembles the great
and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the
body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize: others bring
merchandise to sell for profit: there are also some (and those none of
the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and
consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the
lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their
own.

To examples may fitly be applied all the profitable discourses of
philosophy, to which all human actions, as to their best rule, ought to
be especially directed: a scholar shall be taught to know--

"Quid fas optare: quid asper
Utile nummus habet: patrix carisque propinquis
Quantum elargiri deceat: quern te Deus esse
Jussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re;
Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur."

["Learn what it is right to wish; what is the true use of coined
money; how much it becomes us to give in liberality to our country
and our dear relations; whom and what the Deity commanded thee to
be; and in what part of the human system thou art placed; what we
are ant to what purpose engendered."--Persius, iii. 69]

what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the end and
design of study; what valour, temperance, and justice are; the difference
betwixt ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection, licence and
liberty; by what token a man may know true and solid contentment; how far
death, affliction, and disgrace are to be apprehended;

"Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem."

["And how you may shun or sustain every hardship."
--Virgil, AEneid, iii. 459.]

by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitations
and irresolutions: for, methinks the first doctrine with which one should
season his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his manners
and his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to dig
and well to live. Amongst the liberal sciences, let us begin with that
which makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure to
the instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort also
do; but let us make choice of that which directly and professedly serves
to that end. If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life
within their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the
sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are,
that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we
had better let alone, and, following Socrates' direction, limit the
course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real
utility:

"Sapere aude;
Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam,
Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum."

["Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living well is
like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out: but
the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to
ages without end."--Horace, Ep., i. 2.]

'Tis a great foolery to teach our children:

"Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,"

["What influence Pisces have, or the sign of angry Leo, or
Capricorn, washed by the Hesperian wave."--Propertius, iv. I, 89.]

the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere before
their own:

["What care I about the Pleiades or the stars of Taurus?"
--Anacreon, Ode, xvii. 10.]

Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, "To what purpose," said he, "should I
trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or
slavery continually before my eyes?" for the kings of Persia were at that
time preparing to invade his country. Every one ought to say thus,
"Being assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, superstition,
and having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder over
the world's changes?"

After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you may
then entertain him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry,
rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to,
his judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quickly
make his own. The way of instructing him ought to be sometimes by
discourse, and sometimes by reading; sometimes his governor shall put the
author himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands,
and sometimes only the marrow and substance of it; and if himself be not
conversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the books
contain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him,
that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he stands in need of,
to furnish it to his pupil. And who can doubt but that this way of
teaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza,--[Theodore
Gaza, rector of the Academy of Ferrara.]--in which the precepts are so
intricate, and so harsh, and the words so vain, lean; and insignificant,
that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that quickens and
elevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to feed upon
and to digest. This fruit, therefore, is not only without comparison,
much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early ripe.

'Tis a thousand pities that matters should be at such a pass in this age
of ours, that philosophy, even with men of understanding, should be,
looked upon as a vain and fantastic name, a thing of no use, no value,
either in opinion or effect, of which I think those ergotisms and petty
sophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it, are the cause. And
people are much to blame to represent it to children for a thing of so
difficult access, and with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect.
Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostly
countenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I
had like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting
and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit
there. Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot
of philosophers set chatting together, said to them,--[Plutarch, Treatise
on Oracles which have ceased]--"Either I am much deceived, or by your
cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no, very deep
discourse." To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied:
"Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of
the verb ------ is spelt with a double A, or that hunt after the
derivation of the comparatives ----- and -----, and the superlatives ----
and ------, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science: but
as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those
that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad."

"Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro
Corpore; deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque
Inde habitum facies."

["You may discern the torments of mind lurking in a sick body; you
may discern its joys: either expression the face assumes from the
mind."--Juvenal, ix. 18]

The soul that lodges philosophy, ought to be of such a constitution of
health, as to render the body in like manner healthful too; she ought to
make her tranquillity and satisfaction shine so as to appear without, and
her contentment ought to fashion the outward behaviour to her own mould,
and consequently to fortify it with a graceful confidence, an active and
joyous carriage, and a serene and contented countenance. The most
manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like
that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
'Tis Baroco and Baralipton--[Two terms of the ancient scholastic
logic.]--that render their disciples so dirty and ill-favoured, and not
she; they do not so much as know her but by hearsay. What! It is she
that calms and appeases the storms and tempests of the soul, and who
teaches famine and fevers to laugh and sing; and that, not by certain
imaginary epicycles, but by natural and manifest reasons. She has virtue
for her end, which is not, as the schoolmen say, situate upon the summit
of a perpendicular, rugged, inaccessible precipice: such as have
approached her find her, quite on the contrary, to be seated in a fair,
fruitful, and flourishing plain, whence she easily discovers all things
below; to which place any one may, however, arrive, if he know but the
way, through shady, green, and sweetly-flourishing avenues, by a
pleasant, easy, and smooth descent, like that of the celestial vault.
'Tis for not having frequented this supreme, this beautiful, triumphant,
and amiable, this equally delicious and courageous virtue, this so
professed and implacable enemy to anxiety, sorrow, fear, and constraint,
who, having nature for her guide, has fortune and pleasure for her
companions, that they have gone, according to their own weak imagination,
and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful, querulous, despiteful,
threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and others, and placed it
upon a rock apart, amongst thorns and brambles, and made of it a
hobgoblin to affright people.

But the governor that I would have, that is such a one as knows it to be
his duty to possess his pupil with as much or more affection than
reverence to virtue, will be able to inform him, that the poets have
evermore accommodated themselves to the public humour, and make him
sensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenues
of the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva. And when he shall
once find him begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamante
or an Angelica--[Heroines of Ariosto.]--for a mistress, a natural,
active, generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparison
of a soft, delicate, artificial simpering, and affected form; the one in
the habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the other
tricked up in curls and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then look
upon his own affection as brave and masculine, when he shall choose quite
contrary to that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia.

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. Socrates, her first
minion, is so averse to all manner of violence, as totally to throw it
aside, to slip into the more natural facility of her own progress; 'tis
the nursing mother of all human pleasures, who in rendering them just,
renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in
breath and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses,
whets our desire to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal
mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if
not to lassitude: unless we mean to say that the regimen which stops the
toper before he has drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he has eaten
to a surfeit, and the lecher before he has got the pox, is an enemy to
pleasure. If the ordinary fortune fail, she does without it, and forms
another, wholly her own, not so fickle and unsteady as the other. She
can be rich, be potent and wise, and knows how to lie upon soft perfumed
beds: she loves life, beauty, glory, and health; but her proper and
peculiar office is to know how to regulate the use of all these good
things, and how to lose them without concern: an office much more noble
than troublesome, and without which the whole course of life is
unnatural, turbulent, and deformed, and there it is indeed, that men may
justly represent those monsters upon rocks and precipices.

If this pupil shall happen to be of so contrary a disposition, that he
had rather hear a tale of a tub than the true narrative of some noble
expedition or some wise and learned discourse; who at the beat of drum,
that excites the youthful ardour of his companions, leaves that to follow
another that calls to a morris or the bears; who would not wish, and find
it more delightful and more excellent, to return all dust and sweat
victorious from a battle, than from tennis or from a ball, with the prize
of those exercises; I see no other remedy, but that he be bound prentice
in some good town to learn to make minced pies, though he were the son of
a duke; according to Plato's precept, that children are to be placed out
and disposed of, not according to the wealth, qualities, or condition of
the father, but according to the faculties and the capacity of their own
souls.

Since philosophy is that which instructs us to live, and that infancy has
there its lessons as well as other ages, why is it not communicated to
children betimes?

"Udum et molle lutum est; nunc, nunc properandus, et acri
Fingendus sine fine rota."

["The clay is moist and soft: now, now make haste, and form the
pitcher on the rapid wheel."--Persius, iii. 23.]

They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living.
A hundred students have got the pox before they have come to read
Aristotle's lecture on temperance. Cicero said, that though he should
live two men's ages, he should never find leisure to study the lyric
poets; and I find these sophisters yet more deplorably unprofitable.
The boy we would breed has a great deal less time to spare; he owes but
the first fifteen or sixteen years of his life to education; the
remainder is due to action. Let us, therefore, employ that short time in
necessary instruction. 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.

I am of Plutarch's mind, that Aristotle did not so much trouble his great
disciple with the knack of forming syllogisms, or with the elements of
geometry; as with infusing into him good precepts concerning valour,
prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt of fear; and with this
ammunition, sent him, whilst yet a boy, with no more than thirty thousand
foot, four thousand horse, and but forty-two thousand crowns, to
subjugate the empire of the whole earth. For the other acts and
sciences, he says, Alexander highly indeed commended their excellence and
charm, and had them in very great honour and esteem, but not ravished
with them to that degree as to be tempted to affect the practice of them
In his own person:

"Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque,
Finem ammo certum, miserisque viatica canis."

["Young men and old men, derive hence a certain end to the mind,
and stores for miserable grey hairs."--Persius, v. 64.]

Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to Meniceus,--[Diogenes
Laertius, x. 122.]--says, "That neither the youngest should refuse to
philosophise, nor the oldest grow weary of it." Who does otherwise,
seems tacitly to imply, that either the time of living happily is
not yet come, or that it is already past. And yet, a for all that, I
would not have this pupil of ours imprisoned and made a slave to his
book; nor would I have him given up to the morosity and melancholic
humour of a sour ill-natured pedant.

I would not have his spirit cowed and subdued, by applying him to the
rack, and tormenting him, as some do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day,
and so make a pack-horse of him. Neither should I think it good, when,
by reason of a solitary and melancholic complexion, he is discovered to
be overmuch addicted to his book, to nourish that humour in him; for that
renders him unfit for civil conversation, and diverts him from better
employments. And how many have I seen in my time totally brutified by an
immoderate thirst after knowledge? Carneades was so besotted with it,
that he would not find time so much as to comb his head or to pare his
nails. Neither would I have his generous manners spoiled and corrupted
by the incivility and barbarism of those of another. The French wisdom
was anciently turned into proverb: "Early, but of no continuance." And,
in truth, we yet see, that nothing can be more ingenious and pleasing
than the children of France; but they ordinarily deceive the hope and
expectation that have been conceived of them; and grown up to be men,
have nothing extraordinary or worth taking notice of: I have heard men of
good understanding say, these colleges of ours to which we send our young
people (and of which we have but too many) make them such animals as they
are.--[Hobbes said that if he Had been at college as long as other people
he should have been as great a blockhead as they. W.C.H.] [And Bacon
before Hobbe's time had discussed the "futility" of university teaching.
D.W.]

But to our little monsieur, a closet, a garden, the table, his bed,
solitude, and company, morning and evening, all hours shall be the same,
and all places to him a study; for philosophy, who, as the formatrix of
judgment and manners, shall be his principal lesson, has that privilege
to have a hand in everything. The orator Isocrates, being at a feast
entreated to speak of his art, all the company were satisfied with and
commended his answer: "It is not now a time," said he, "to do what I can
do; and that which it is now time to do, I cannot do."--[Plutarch,
Symp., i. I.]--For to make orations and rhetorical disputes in a company
met together to laugh and make good cheer, had been very unreasonable and
improper, and as much might have been said of all the other sciences.
But as to what concerns philosophy, that part of it at least that treats
of man, and of his offices and duties, it has been the common opinion of
all wise men, that, out of respect to the sweetness of her conversation,
she is ever to be admitted in all sports and entertainments. And Plato,
having invited her to his feast, we see after how gentle and obliging a
manner, accommodated both to time and place, she entertained the company,
though in a discourse of the highest and most important nature:

"Aeque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus aeque;
Et, neglecta, aeque pueris senibusque nocebit."

["It profits poor and rich alike, but, neglected, equally hurts old
and young."--Horace, Ep., i. 25.]

By this method of instruction, my young pupil will be much more and
better employed than his fellows of the college are. But as the steps we
take in walking to and fro in a gallery, though three times as many, do
not tire a man so much as those we employ in a formal journey, so our
lesson, as it were accidentally occurring, without any set obligation of
time or place, and falling naturally into every action, will insensibly
insinuate itself. By which means our very exercises and recreations,
running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunting, riding, and fencing, will
prove to be a good part of our study. I would have his outward fashion
and mien, and the disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time with
his mind. 'Tis not a soul, 'tis not a body that we are training up, but
a man, and we ought not to divide him. And, as Plato says, we are not to
fashion one without the other, but make them draw together like two
horses harnessed to a coach. By which saying of his, does he not seem to
allow more time for, and to take more care of exercises for the body, and
to hold that the mind, in a good proportion, does her business at the
same time too?

As to the rest, this method of education ought to be carried on with a
severe sweetness, quite contrary to the practice of our pedants, who,
instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle
ways, do in truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules,
horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion!
than which, I certainly believe nothing more dulls and degenerates a
well-descended nature. If you would have him apprehend shame and
chastisement, do not harden him to them: inure him to heat and cold, to
wind and sun, and to dangers that he ought to despise; wean him from all
effeminacy and delicacy in clothes and lodging, eating and drinking;
accustom him to everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris,
a carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man. I have
ever from a child to the age wherein I now am, been of this opinion, and
am still constant to it. But amongst other things, the strict
government of most of our colleges has evermore displeased me;
peradventure, they might have erred less perniciously on the indulgent
side. 'Tis a real house of correction of imprisoned youth. They are
made debauched by being punished before they are so. Do but come in
when they are about their lesson, and you shall hear nothing but the
outcries of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their
pedagogues drunk with fury. 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? Were it left to my
ordering. I should paint the school with the pictures of joy and
gladness; Flora and the Graces, as the philosopher Speusippus did his.
Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too. Such
viands as are proper and wholesome for children, should be sweetened
with sugar, and such as are dangerous to them, embittered with gall.
'Tis marvellous to see how solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerning
the gaiety and diversion of the youth of his city, and how much and
often he enlarges upon the races, sports, songs, leaps, and dances: of
which, he says, that antiquity has given the ordering and patronage
particularly to the gods themselves, to Apollo, Minerva, and the Muses.
He insists long upon, and is very particular in, giving innumerable
precepts for exercises; but as to the lettered sciences, says very
little, and only seems particularly to recommend poetry upon the account
of music.