The Essays of Montaigne, Complete

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


Three of these people, not foreseeing how dear their knowledge of the
corruptions of this part of the world will one day cost their happiness
and repose, and that the effect of this commerce will be their ruin, as I
presuppose it is in a very fair way (miserable men to suffer themselves
to be deluded with desire of novelty and to have left the serenity of
their own heaven to come so far to gaze at ours!), were at Rouen at the
time that the late King Charles IX. was there. The king himself talked
to them a good while, and they were made to see our fashions, our pomp,
and the form of a great city. After which, some one asked their opinion,
and would know of them, what of all the things they had seen, they found
most to be admired? To which they made answer, three things, of which I
have forgotten the third, and am troubled at it, but two I yet remember.
They said, that in the first place they thought it very strange that so
many tall men, wearing beards, strong, and well armed, who were about the
king ('tis like they meant the Swiss of the guard), should submit to obey
a child, and that they did not rather choose out one amongst themselves
to command. Secondly (they have a way of speaking in their language to
call men the half of one another), that they had observed that there were
amongst us men full and crammed with all manner of commodities, whilst,
in the meantime, their halves were begging at their doors, lean and
half-starved with hunger and poverty; and they thought it strange that
these necessitous halves were able to suffer so great an inequality and
injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throats, or set
fire to their houses.

I talked to one of them a great while together, but I had so ill an
interpreter, and one who was so perplexed by his own ignorance to
apprehend my meaning, that I could get nothing out of him of any moment:
Asking him what advantage he reaped from the superiority he had amongst
his own people (for he was a captain, and our mariners called him king),
he told me, to march at the head of them to war. Demanding of him
further how many men he had to follow him, he showed me a space of
ground, to signify as many as could march in such a compass, which might
be four or five thousand men; and putting the question to him whether or
no his authority expired with the war, he told me this remained: that
when he went to visit the villages of his dependence, they planed him
paths through the thick of their woods, by which he might pass at his
ease. All this does not sound very ill, and the last was not at all
amiss, for they wear no breeches.




CHAPTER XXXI

THAT A MAN IS SOBERLY TO JUDGE OF THE DIVINE ORDINANCES

The true field and subject of imposture are things unknown, forasmuch as,
in the first place, their very strangeness lends them credit, and
moreover, by not being subjected to our ordinary reasons, they deprive us
of the means to question and dispute them: For which reason, says Plato,
--[In Critias.]--it is much more easy to satisfy the hearers, when
speaking of the nature of the gods than of the nature of men, because the
ignorance of the auditory affords a fair and large career and all manner
of liberty in the handling of abstruse things. Thence it comes to pass,
that nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know; nor any people
so confident, as those who entertain us with fables, such as your
alchemists, judicial astrologers, fortune-tellers, and physicians,

"Id genus omne."

["All that sort of people."--Horace, Sat., i. 2, 2.]

To which I would willingly, if I durst, join a pack of people that take
upon them to interpret and control the designs of God Himself, pretending
to find out the cause of every accident, and to pry into the secrets of
the divine will, there to discover the incomprehensible motive, of His
works; and although the variety, and the continual discordance of events,
throw them from corner to corner, and toss them from east to west, yet do
they still persist in their vain inquisition, and with the same pencil to
paint black and white.

In a nation of the Indies, there is this commendable custom, that when
anything befalls them amiss in any encounter or battle, they publicly ask
pardon of the sun, who is their god, as having committed an unjust
action, always imputing their good or evil fortune to the divine justice,
and to that submitting their own judgment and reason. 'Tis enough for a
Christian to believe that all things come from God, to receive them with
acknowledgment of His divine and inscrutable wisdom, and also thankfully
to accept and receive them, with what face soever they may present
themselves. But I do not approve of what I see in use, that is, to seek
to affirm and support our religion by the prosperity of our enterprises.
Our belief has other foundation enough, without going about to authorise
it by events: for the people being accustomed to such plausible arguments
as these and so proper to their taste, it is to be feared, lest when they
fail of success they should also stagger in their faith: as in the war
wherein we are now engaged upon the account of religion, those who had
the better in the business of Rochelabeille,--[May 1569.]--making great
brags of that success as an infallible approbation of their cause, when
they came afterwards to excuse their misfortunes of Moncontour and
Jarnac, by saying they were fatherly scourges and corrections that they
had not a people wholly at their mercy, they make it manifestly enough
appear, what it is to take two sorts of grist out of the same sack, and
with the same mouth to blow hot and cold. It were better to possess the
vulgar with the solid and real foundations of truth. 'Twas a fine naval
battle that was gained under the command of Don John of Austria a few
months since--[That of Lepanto, October 7, 1571.]--against the Turks;
but it has also pleased God at other times to let us see as great
victories at our own expense. In fine, 'tis a hard matter to reduce
divine things to our balance, without waste and losing a great deal of
the weight. And who would take upon him to give a reason that Arius and
his Pope Leo, the principal heads of the Arian heresy, should die, at
several times, of so like and strange deaths (for being withdrawn from
the disputation by a griping in the bowels, they both of them suddenly
gave up the ghost upon the stool), and would aggravate this divine
vengeance by the circumstances of the place, might as well add the death
of Heliogabalus, who was also slain in a house of office. And, indeed,
Irenaeus was involved in the same fortune. God, being pleased to show
us, that the good have something else to hope for and the wicked
something else to fear, than the fortunes or misfortunes of this world,
manages and applies these according to His own occult will and pleasure,
and deprives us of the means foolishly to make thereof our own profit.
And those people abuse themselves who will pretend to dive into these
mysteries by the strength of human reason. They never give one hit that
they do not receive two for it; of which St. Augustine makes out a great
proof upon his adversaries. 'Tis a conflict that is more decided by
strength of memory than by the force of reason. We are to content
ourselves with the light it pleases the sun to communicate to us, by
virtue of his rays; and who will lift up his eyes to take in a greater,
let him not think it strange, if for the reward of his presumption, he
there lose his sight.

"Quis hominum potest scire consilium Dei?
Aut quis poterit cogitare quid velit Dominus?"

["Who of men can know the counsel of God? or who can think what the
will of the Lord is."--Book of Wisdom, ix. 13.]




CHAPTER XXXII

THAT WE ARE TO AVOID PLEASURES, EVEN AT THE EXPENSE OF LIFE

I had long ago observed most of the opinions of the ancients to concur in
this, that it is high time to die when there is more ill than good in
living, and that to preserve life to our own torment and inconvenience is
contrary to the very rules of nature, as these old laws instruct us.

["Either tranquil life, or happy death. It is well to die when life
is wearisome. It is better to die than to live miserable."
--Stobaeus, Serm. xx.]

But to push this contempt of death so far as to employ it to the removing
our thoughts from the honours, riches, dignities, and other favours and
goods, as we call them, of fortune, as if reason were not sufficient to
persuade us to avoid them, without adding this new injunction, I had
never seen it either commanded or practised, till this passage of Seneca
fell into my hands; who advising Lucilius, a man of great power and
authority about the emperor, to alter his voluptuous and magnificent way
of living, and to retire himself from this worldly vanity and ambition,
to some solitary, quiet, and philosophical life, and the other alleging
some difficulties: "I am of opinion," says he, "either that thou leave
that life of thine, or life itself; I would, indeed, advise thee to the
gentle way, and to untie, rather than to break, the knot thou hast
indiscreetly knit, provided, that if it be not otherwise to be untied,
thou resolutely break it. There is no man so great a coward, that had
not rather once fall than to be always falling." I should have found
this counsel conformable enough to the Stoical roughness: but it appears
the more strange, for being borrowed from Epicurus, who writes the same
thing upon the like occasion to Idomeneus. And I think I have observed
something like it, but with Christian moderation, amongst our own people.

St. Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, that famous enemy of the Arian heresy,
being in Syria, had intelligence thither sent him, that Abra, his only
daughter, whom he left at home under the eye and tuition of her mother,
was sought in marriage by the greatest noblemen of the country, as being
a virgin virtuously brought up, fair, rich, and in the flower of her age;
whereupon he wrote to her (as appears upon record), that she should
remove her affection from all the pleasures and advantages proposed to
her; for that he had in his travels found out a much greater and more
worthy fortune for her, a husband of much greater power and magnificence,
who would present her with robes and jewels of inestimable value; wherein
his design was to dispossess her of the appetite and use of worldly
delights, to join her wholly to God; but the nearest and most certain way
to this, being, as he conceived, the death of his daughter; he never
ceased, by vows, prayers, and orisons, to beg of the Almighty, that He
would please to call her out of this world, and to take her to Himself;
as accordingly it came to pass; for soon after his return, she died, at
which he expressed a singular joy. This seems to outdo the other,
forasmuch as he applies himself to this means at the outset, which they
only take subsidiarily; and, besides, it was towards his only daughter.
But I will not omit the latter end of this story, though it be for my
purpose; St. Hilary's wife, having understood from him how the death of
their daughter was brought about by his desire and design, and how much
happier she was to be removed out of this world than to have stayed in
it, conceived so vivid an apprehension of the eternal and heavenly
beatitude, that she begged of her husband, with the extremest
importunity, to do as much for her; and God, at their joint request,
shortly after calling her to Him, it was a death embraced with singular
and mutual content.




CHAPTER XXXIII

THAT FORTUNE IS OFTENTIMES OBSERVED TO ACT BY THE RULE OF REASON

The inconstancy and various motions of Fortune

[The term Fortune, so often employed by Montaigne, and in passages
where he might have used Providence, was censured by the doctors who
examined his Essays when he was at Rome in 1581. See his Travels,
i. 35 and 76.]

may reasonably make us expect she should present us with all sorts of
faces. Can there be a more express act of justice than this? The Duc de
Valentinois,--[Caesar Borgia.]--having resolved to poison Adrian,
Cardinal of Corneto, with whom Pope Alexander VI., his father and
himself, were to sup in the Vatican, he sent before a bottle of poisoned
wine, and withal, strict order to the butler to keep it very safe.
The Pope being come before his son, and calling for drink, the butler
supposing this wine had not been so strictly recommended to his care,
but only upon the account of its excellency, presented it forthwith to
the Pope, and the duke himself coming in presently after, and being
confident they had not meddled with his bottle, took also his cup; so
that the father died immediately upon the spot--[Other historians assign
the Pope several days of misery prior to death. D.W.]--, and the son,
after having been long tormented with sickness, was reserved to another
and a worse fortune.

Sometimes she seems to play upon us, just in the nick of an affair;
Monsieur d'Estrees, at that time ensign to Monsieur de Vendome, and
Monsieur de Licques, lieutenant in the company of the Duc d'Ascot, being
both pretenders to the Sieur de Fougueselles' sister, though of several
parties (as it oft falls out amongst frontier neighbours), the Sieur de
Licques carried her; but on the same day he was married, and which was
worse, before he went to bed to his wife, the bridegroom having a mind to
break a lance in honour of his new bride, went out to skirmish near St.
Omer, where the Sieur d'Estrees proving the stronger, took him prisoner,
and the more to illustrate his victory, the lady was fain--

"Conjugis ante coacta novi dimittere collum,
Quam veniens una atque altera rursus hyems
Noctibus in longis avidum saturasset amorem,"

["Compelled to abstain from embracing her new spouse in her arms
before two winters pass in succession, during their long nights had
satiated her eager love."--Catullus, lxviii. 81.]

--to request him of courtesy, to deliver up his prisoner to her, as he
accordingly did, the gentlemen of France never denying anything to
ladies.

Does she not seem to be an artist here? Constantine, son of Helena,
founded the empire of Constantinople, and so many ages after,
Constantine, the son of Helen, put an end to it. Sometimes she is
pleased to emulate our miracles we are told, that King Clovis besieging
Angouleme, the walls fell down of themselves by divine favour and Bouchet
has it from some author, that King Robert having sat down before a city,
and being stolen away from the siege to go keep the feast of St. Aignan
at Orleans, as he was in devotion at a certain part of the Mass, the
walls of the beleaguered city, without any manner of violence, fell down
with a sudden ruin. But she did quite contrary in our Milan wars; for,
le Capitaine Rense laying siege for us to the city Arona, and having
carried a mine under a great part of the wall, the mine being sprung, the
wall was lifted from its base, but dropped down again nevertheless, whole
and entire, and so exactly upon its foundation, that the besieged
suffered no inconvenience by that attempt.

Sometimes she plays the physician. Jason of Pheres being given over by
the physicians, by reason of an imposthume in his breast, having a mind
to rid himself of his pain, by death at least, threw himself in a battle
desperately into the thickest of the enemy, where he was so fortunately
wounded quite through the body, that the imposthume broke, and he was
perfectly cured. Did she not also excel the painter Protogenes in his
art? who having finished the picture of a dog quite tired and out of
breath, in all the other parts excellently well to his own liking, but
not being able to express, as he would, the slaver and foam that should
come out of its mouth, vexed and angry at his work, he took his sponge,
which by cleaning his pencils had imbibed several sorts of colours, and
threw it in a rage against the picture, with an intent utterly to deface
it; when fortune guiding the sponge to hit just upon the mouth of the
dog, it there performed what all his art was not able to do. Does she
not sometimes direct our counsels and correct them? Isabel, Queen of
England, having to sail from Zealand into her own kingdom,--[in 1326]--
with an army, in favour of her son against her husband, had been lost,
had she come into the port she intended, being there laid wait for by the
enemy; but fortune, against her will, threw her into another haven, where
she landed in safety. And that man of old who, throwing a stone at a
dog, hit and killed his mother-in-law, had he not reason to pronounce
this verse:

["Fortune has more judgement than we."--Menander]

Icetes had contracted with two soldiers to kill Timoleon at Adrana in
Sicily.--[Plutarch, Life of Timoleon, c. 7.]--They took their time to do
it when he was assisting at a sacrifice, and thrusting into the crowd,
as they were making signs to one another, that now was a fit time to do
their business, in steps a third, who, with a sword takes one of them
full drive over the pate, lays him dead upon the place and runs away,
which the others see, and concluding himself discovered and lost, runs to
the altar and begs for mercy, promising to discover the whole truth,
which as he was doing, and laying open the full conspiracy, behold the
third man, who being apprehended, was, as a murderer, thrust and hauled
by the people through the press, towards Timoleon, and the other most
eminent persons of the assembly, before whom being brought, he cries out
for pardon, pleading that he had justly slain his father's murderer;
which he, also, proving upon the spot, by sufficient witnesses, whom his
good fortune very opportunely supplied him withal, that his father was
really killed in the city of Leontini, by that very man on whom he had
taken his revenge, he was presently awarded ten Attic minae, for having
had the good fortune, by designing to revenge the death of his father,
to preserve the life of the common father of Sicily. Fortune, truly, in
her conduct surpasses all the rules of human prudence.

But to conclude: is there not a direct application of her favour, bounty,
and piety manifestly discovered in this action? Ignatius the father and
Ignatius the son being proscribed by the triumvirs of Rome, resolved upon
this generous act of mutual kindness, to fall by the hands of one
another, and by that means to frustrate and defeat the cruelty of the
tyrants; and accordingly with their swords drawn, ran full drive upon one
another, where fortune so guided the points, that they made two equally
mortal wounds, affording withal so much honour to so brave a friendship,
as to leave them just strength enough to draw out their bloody swords,
that they might have liberty to embrace one another in this dying
condition, with so close and hearty an embrace, that the executioner cut
off both their heads at once, leaving the bodies still fast linked
together in this noble bond, and their wounds joined mouth to mouth,
affectionately sucking in the last blood and remainder of the lives of
each other.




CHAPTER XXXIV

OF ONE DEFECT IN OUR GOVERNMENT

My late father, a man that had no other advantages than experience and
his own natural parts, was nevertheless of a very clear judgment,
formerly told me that he once had thoughts of endeavouring to introduce
this practice; that there might be in every city a certain place assigned
to which such as stood in need of anything might repair, and have their
business entered by an officer appointed for that purpose. As for
example: I want a chapman to buy my pearls; I want one that has pearls to
sell; such a one wants company to go to Paris; such a one seeks a servant
of such a quality; such a one a master; such a one such an artificer;
some inquiring for one thing, some for another, every one according to
what he wants. And doubtless, these mutual advertisements would be of no
contemptible advantage to the public correspondence and intelligence: for
there are evermore conditions that hunt after one another, and for want
of knowing one another's occasions leave men in very great necessity.

I have heard, to the great shame of the age we live in, that in our very
sight two most excellent men for learning died so poor that they had
scarce bread to put in their mouths: Lilius Gregorius Giraldus in Italy
and Sebastianus Castalio in Germany: and I believe there are a thousand
men would have invited them into their families, with very advantageous
conditions, or have relieved them where they were, had they known their
wants. The world is not so generally corrupted, but that I know a man
that would heartily wish the estate his ancestors have left him might be
employed, so long as it shall please fortune to give him leave to enjoy
it, to secure rare and remarkable persons of any kind, whom misfortune
sometimes persecutes to the last degree, from the dangers of necessity;
and at least place them in such a condition that they must be very hard
to please, if they are not contented.

My father in his domestic economy had this rule (which I know how to
commend, but by no means to imitate), namely, that besides the day-book
or memorial of household affairs, where the small accounts, payments, and
disbursements, which do not require a secretary's hand, were entered, and
which a steward always had in custody, he ordered him whom he employed to
write for him, to keep a journal, and in it to set down all the
remarkable occurrences, and daily memorials of the history of his house:
very pleasant to look over, when time begins to wear things out of
memory, and very useful sometimes to put us out of doubt when such a
thing was begun, when ended; what visitors came, and when they went; our
travels, absences, marriages, and deaths; the reception of good or ill
news; the change of principal servants, and the like. An ancient custom,
which I think it would not be amiss for every one to revive in his own
house; and I find I did very foolishly in neglecting it.




CHAPTER XXXV

OF THE CUSTOM OF WEARING CLOTHES

Whatever I shall say upon this subject, I am of necessity to invade some
of the bounds of custom, so careful has she been to shut up all the
avenues. I was disputing with myself in this shivering season, whether
the fashion of going naked in those nations lately discovered is imposed
upon them by the hot temperature of the air, as we say of the Indians and
Moors, or whether it be the original fashion of mankind. Men of
understanding, forasmuch as all things under the sun, as the Holy Writ
declares, are subject to the same laws, were wont in such considerations
as these, where we are to distinguish the natural laws from those which
have been imposed by man's invention, to have recourse to the general
polity of the world, where there can be nothing counterfeit. Now, all
other creatures being sufficiently furnished with all things necessary
for the support of their being--[Montaigne's expression is, "with needle
and thread."--W.C.H.]--it is not to be imagined that we only are brought
into the world in a defective and indigent condition, and in such a state
as cannot subsist without external aid. Therefore it is that I believe,
that as plants, trees, and animals, and all things that have life, are
seen to be by nature sufficiently clothed and covered, to defend them
from the injuries of weather:

"Proptereaque fere res omnes ant corio sunt,
Aut seta, ant conchis, ant callo, ant cortice tectae,"

["And that for this reason nearly all things are clothed with skin,
or hair, or shells, or bark, or some such thing."
--Lucretius, iv. 936.]

so were we: but as those who by artificial light put out that of day, so
we by borrowed forms and fashions have destroyed our own. And 'tis plain
enough to be seen, that 'tis custom only which renders that impossible
that otherwise is nothing so; for of those nations who have no manner of
knowledge of clothing, some are situated under the same temperature that
we are, and some in much colder climates. And besides, our most tender
parts are always exposed to the air, as the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears;
and our country labourers, like our ancestors in former times, go with
their breasts and bellies open. Had we been born with a necessity upon
us of wearing petticoats and breeches, there is no doubt but nature would
have fortified those parts she intended should be exposed to the fury of
the seasons with a thicker skin, as she has done the finger-ends and the
soles of the feet. And why should this seem hard to believe? I observe
much greater distance betwixt my habit and that of one of our country
boors, than betwixt his and that of a man who has no other covering but
his skin. How many men, especially in Turkey, go naked upon the account
of devotion? Some one asked a beggar, whom he saw in his shirt in the
depth of winter, as brisk and frolic as he who goes muffled up to the
ears in furs, how he was able to endure to go so? "Why, sir," he
answered, "you go with your face bare: I am all face." The Italians have
a story of the Duke of Florence's fool, whom his master asking how, being
so thinly clad, he was able to support the cold, when he himself, warmly
wrapped up as he was, was hardly able to do it? "Why," replied the fool,
"use my receipt to put on all your clothes you have at once, and you'll
feel no more cold than I." King Massinissa, to an extreme old age, could
never be prevailed upon to go with his head covered, how cold, stormy, or
rainy soever the weather might be; which also is reported of the Emperor
Severus. Herodotus tells us, that in the battles fought betwixt the
Egyptians and the Persians, it was observed both by himself and by
others, that of those who were left dead upon the field, the heads of the
Egyptians were without comparison harder than those of the Persians, by
reason that the last had gone with their heads always covered from their
infancy, first with biggins, and then with turbans, and the others always
shaved and bare. King Agesilaus continued to a decrepit age to wear
always the same clothes in winter that he did in summer. Caesar, says
Suetonius, marched always at the head of his army, for the most part on
foot, with his head bare, whether it was rain or sunshine, and as much is
said of Hannibal: