The Essays of Montaigne, Complete

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


To shew how much cheaper the Turkish armies support themselves than our
European forces, 'tis said that besides the soldiers drink nothing but
water and eat nothing but rice and salt flesh pulverised (of which every
one may easily carry about with him a month's provision), they know how
to feed upon the blood of their horses as well as the Muscovite and
Tartar, and salt it for their use.

These new-discovered people of the Indies [Mexico and Yucatan D.W.],
when the Spaniards first landed amongst them, had so great an opinion
both of the men and horses, that they looked upon the first as gods and
the other as animals ennobled above their nature; insomuch that after
they were subdued, coming to the men to sue for peace and pardon, and to
bring them gold and provisions, they failed not to offer of the same to
the horses, with the same kind of harangue to them they had made to the
others: interpreting their neighing for a language of truce and
friendship.

In the other Indies, to ride upon an elephant was the first and royal
place of honour; the second to ride in a coach with four horses; the
third to ride upon a camel; and the last and least honour to be carried
or drawn by one horse only. Some one of our late writers tells us that
he has been in countries in those parts where they ride upon oxen with
pads, stirrups, and bridles, and very much at their ease.

Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus, in a battle with the Samnites, seeing
his horse, after three or four charges, had failed of breaking into the
enemy's battalion, took this course, to make them unbridle all their
horses and spur their hardest, so that having nothing to check their
career, they might through weapons and men open the way to his foot, who
by that means gave them a bloody defeat. The same command was given by
Quintus Fulvius Flaccus against the Celtiberians:

["You will do your business with greater advantage of your horses'
strength, if you send them unbridled upon the enemy, as it is
recorded the Roman horse to their great glory have often done; their
bits being taken off, they charged through and again back through
the enemy's ranks with great slaughter, breaking down all their
spears."--Idem, xl. 40.]

The Duke of Muscovy was anciently obliged to pay this reverence to the
Tartars, that when they sent an embassy to him he went out to meet them
on foot, and presented them with a goblet of mares' milk (a beverage of
greatest esteem amongst them), and if, in drinking, a drop fell by chance
upon their horse's mane, he was bound to lick it off with his tongue.
The army that Bajazet had sent into Russia was overwhelmed with so
dreadful a tempest of snow, that to shelter and preserve themselves from
the cold, many killed and embowelled their horses, to creep into their
bellies and enjoy the benefit of that vital heat. Bajazet, after that
furious battle wherein he was overthrown by Tamerlane, was in a hopeful
way of securing his own person by the fleetness of an Arabian mare he had
under him, had he not been constrained to let her drink her fill at the
ford of a river in his way, which rendered her so heavy and indisposed,
that he was afterwards easily overtaken by those that pursued him. They
say, indeed, that to let a horse stale takes him off his mettle, but as
to drinking, I should rather have thought it would refresh him.

Croesus, marching his army through certain waste lands near Sardis, met
with an infinite number of serpents, which the horses devoured with great
appetite, and which Herodotus says was a prodigy of ominous portent to
his affairs.

We call a horse entire, that has his mane and ears so, and no other will
pass muster. The Lacedaemonians, having defeated the Athenians in
Sicily, returning triumphant from the victory into the city of Syracuse,
amongst other insolences, caused all the horses they had taken to be
shorn and led in triumph. Alexander fought with a nation called Dahas,
whose discipline it was to march two and two together armed on one horse,
to the war; and being in fight, one of them alighted, and so they fought
on horseback and on foot, one after another by turns.

I do not think that for graceful riding any nation in the world excels
the French. A good horseman, according to our way of speaking, seems
rather to have respect to the courage of the man than address in riding.
Of all that ever I saw, the most knowing in that art, who had the best
seat and the best method in breaking horses, was Monsieur de Carnavalet,
who served our King Henry II.

I have seen a man ride with both his feet upon the saddle, take off his
saddle, and at his return take it up again and replace it, riding all the
while full speed; having galloped over a cap, make at it very good shots
backwards with his bow; take up anything from the ground, setting one
foot on the ground and the other in the stirrup: with twenty other ape's
tricks, which he got his living by.

There has been seen in my time at Constantinople two men upon one horse,
who, in the height of its speed, would throw themselves off and into the
saddle again by turn; and one who bridled and saddled his horse with
nothing but his teeth; an other who betwixt two horses, one foot upon one
saddle and the other upon another, carrying the other man upon his
shoulders, would ride full career, the other standing bolt upright upon
and making very good shots with his bow; several who would ride full
speed with their heels upward, and their heads upon the saddle betwixt
several scimitars, with the points upwards, fixed in the harness. When I
was a boy, the prince of Sulmona, riding an unbroken horse at Naples,
prone to all sorts of action, held reals--[A small coin of Spain, the
Two Sicilies, &c.]--under his knees and toes, as if they had been nailed
there, to shew the firmness of his seat.




CHAPTER XLIX

OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS

I should willingly pardon our people for admitting no other pattern or
rule of perfection than their own peculiar manners and customs; for 'tis
a common vice, not of the vulgar only, but almost of all men, to walk in
the beaten road their ancestors have trod before them. I am content,
when they see Fabricius or Laelius, that they look upon their countenance
and behaviour as barbarous, seeing they are neither clothed nor fashioned
according to our mode. But I find fault with their singular indiscretion
in suffering themselves to be so blinded and imposed upon by the
authority of the present usage as every month to alter their opinion, if
custom so require, and that they should so vary their judgment in their
own particular concern. When they wore the busk of their doublets up as
high as their breasts, they stiffly maintained that they were in their
proper place; some years after it was slipped down betwixt their thighs,
and then they could laugh at the former fashion as uneasy and
intolerable. The fashion now in use makes them absolutely condemn the
other two with so great resolution and so universal consent, that a man
would think there was a certain kind of madness crept in amongst them,
that infatuates their understandings to this strange degree. Now, seeing
that our change of fashions is so prompt and sudden, that the inventions
of all the tailors in the world cannot furnish out new whim-whams enow to
feed our vanity withal, there will often be a necessity that the despised
forms must again come in vogue, these immediately after fall into the
same contempt; and that the same judgment must, in the space of fifteen
or twenty years, take up half-a-dozen not only divers but contrary
opinions, with an incredible lightness and inconstancy; there is not any
of us so discreet, who suffers not himself to be gulled with this
contradiction, and both in external and internal sight to be insensibly
blinded.

I wish to muster up here some old customs that I have in memory, some of
them the same with ours, the others different, to the end that, bearing
in mind this continual variation of human things, we may have our
judgment more clearly and firmly settled.

The thing in use amongst us of fighting with rapier and cloak was in
practice amongst the Romans also:

"Sinistras sagis involvunt, gladiosque distringunt,"

["They wrapt their cloaks upon the left arm, and drew their
swords."--De Bello Civili, i. 75.]

says Caesar; and he observes a vicious custom of our nation, that
continues yet amongst us, which is to stop passengers we meet upon the
road, to compel them to give an account who they are, and to take it for
an affront and just cause of quarrel if they refuse to do it.

At the Baths, which the ancients made use of every day before they went
to dinner, and as frequently as we wash our hands, they at first only
bathed their arms and legs; but afterwards, and by a custom that has
continued for many ages in most nations of the world, they bathed stark
naked in mixed and perfumed water, looking upon it as a great simplicity
to bathe in mere water. The most delicate and affected perfumed
themselves all over three or four times a day. They often caused their
hair to be pinched off, as the women of France have some time since taken
up a custom to do their foreheads,

"Quod pectus, quod crura tibi, quod brachia veilis,"

["You pluck the hairs out of your breast, your arms, and thighs."
--Martial, ii. 62, i.]

though they had ointments proper for that purpose:

"Psilotro nitet, aut acids latet oblita creta."

["She shines with unguents, or with chalk dissolved in vinegar."
--Idem, vi. 93, 9.]

They delighted to lie soft, and alleged it as a great testimony of
hardiness to lie upon a mattress. They ate lying upon beds, much after
the manner of the Turks in this age:

"Inde thoro pater AEneas sic orsus ab alto."

["Thus Father AEneas, from his high bed of state, spoke."
--AEneid, ii. 2.]

And 'tis said of the younger Cato, that after the battle of Pharsalia,
being entered into a melancholy disposition at the ill posture of the
public affairs, he took his repasts always sitting, assuming a strict and
austere course of life. It was also their custom to kiss the hands of
great persons; the more to honour and caress them. And meeting with
friends, they always kissed in salutation, as do the Venetians:

"Gratatusque darem cum dulcibus oscula verbis."

["And kindest words I would mingle with kisses."
--Ovid, De Pont., iv. 9, 13]

In petitioning or saluting any great man, they used to lay their hands
upon his knees. Pasicles the philosopher, brother of Crates, instead of
laying his hand upon the knee laid it upon the private parts, and being
roughly repulsed by him to whom he made that indecent compliment:
"What," said he, "is not that part your own as well as the other?"
--[Diogenes Laertius, vi. 89.]--They used to eat fruit, as we do, after
dinner. They wiped their fundaments (let the ladies, if they please,
mince it smaller) with a sponge, which is the reason that 'spongia' is a
smutty word in Latin; which sponge was fastened to the end of a stick, as
appears by the story of him who, as he was led along to be thrown to the
wild beasts in the sight of the people, asking leave to do his business,
and having no other way to despatch himself, forced the sponge and stick
down his throat and choked himself.--[Seneca, Ep., 70.] They used to
wipe, after coition, with perfumed wool:

"At tibi nil faciam; sed Iota mentula lana."

They had in the streets of Rome vessels and little tubs for passengers to
urine in:

"Pusi saepe lacum propter se, ac dolia curta.
Somno devincti, credunt extollere vestem."

["The little boys in their sleep often think they are near the
public urinal, and raise their coats to make use of it."
--Lucretius, iv.]

They had collation betwixt meals, and had in summer cellars of snow to
cool their wine; and some there were who made use of snow in winter, not
thinking their wine cool enough, even at that cold season of the year.
The men of quality had their cupbearers and carvers, and their buffoons
to make them sport. They had their meat served up in winter upon chafing
dishes, which were set upon the table, and had portable kitchens (of
which I myself have seen some) wherein all their service was carried
about with them:

"Has vobis epulas habete, lauti
Nos offendimur ambulante caena."

["Do you, if you please, esteem these feasts: we do not like the
ambulatory suppers."--Martial, vii. 48, 4.]

In summer they had a contrivance to bring fresh and clear rills through
their lower rooms, wherein were great store of living fish, which the
guests took out with their own hands to be dressed every man according to
his own liking. Fish has ever had this pre-eminence, and keeps it still,
that the grandees, as to them, all pretend to be cooks; and indeed the
taste is more delicate than that of flesh, at least to my fancy. But in
all sorts of magnificence, debauchery, and voluptuous inventions of
effeminacy and expense, we do, in truth, all we can to parallel them;
for our wills are as corrupt as theirs: but we want ability to equal
them. Our force is no more able to reach them in their vicious, than in
their virtuous, qualities, for both the one and the other proceeded from
a vigour of soul which was without comparison greater in them than in us;
and souls, by how much the weaker they are, by so much have they less
power to do either very well or very ill.

The highest place of honour amongst them was the middle. The name going
before, or following after, either in writing or speaking, had no
signification of grandeur, as is evident by their writings; they will as
soon say Oppius and Caesar, as Caesar and Oppius; and me and thee, as
thee and me. This is the reason that made me formerly take notice in the
life of Flaminius, in our French Plutarch, of one passage, where it seems
as if the author, speaking of the jealousy of honour betwixt the
AEtolians and Romans, about the winning of a battle they had with their
joined forces obtained, made it of some importance, that in the Greek
songs they had put the AEtolians before the Romans: if there be no
amphibology in the words of the French translation.

The ladies, in their baths, made no scruple of admitting men amongst
them, and moreover made use of their serving-men to rub and anoint them:

"Inguina succinctus nigri tibi servus aluta
Stat, quoties calidis nuda foveris aquis."

["A slave--his middle girded with a black apron--stands before you,
when, naked, you take a hot bath."--Martial, vii. 35, i.]

They all powdered themselves with a certain powder, to moderate their
sweats.

The ancient Gauls, says Sidonius Apollinaris, wore their hair long before
and the hinder part of the head shaved, a fashion that begins to revive
in this vicious and effeminate age.

The Romans used to pay the watermen their fare at their first stepping
into the boat, which we never do till after landing:

"Dum aes exigitur, dum mula ligatur,
Tota abit hora."

["Whilst the fare's paying, and the mule is being harnessed, a whole
hour's time is past."--Horace, Sat. i. 5, 13.]

The women used to lie on the side of the bed next the wall: and for that
reason they called Caesar,

"Spondam regis Nicomedis,"

["The bed of King Nicomedes."--Suetonius, Life of Caesar, 49.]

They took breath in their drinking, and watered their wine

"Quis puer ocius
Restinguet ardentis Falerni
Pocula praetereunte lympha?"

["What boy will quickly come and cool the heat of the Falernian
wine with clear water?"--Horace, Od., ii. z, 18.]

And the roguish looks and gestures of our lackeys were also in use
amongst them:

"O Jane, a tergo quern nulls ciconia pinsit,
Nec manus, auriculas imitari est mobilis albas,
Nec lingua, quantum sitiat canis Appula, tantum."

["O Janus, whom no crooked fingers, simulating a stork, peck at
behind your back, whom no quick hands deride behind you, by
imitating the motion of the white ears of the ass, against whom no
mocking tongue is thrust out, as the tongue of the thirsty Apulian
dog."--Persius, i. 58.]

The Argian and Roman ladies mourned in white, as ours did formerly and
should do still, were I to govern in this point. But there are whole
books on this subject.




CHAPTER L

OF DEMOCRITUS AND HERACLITUS

The judgment is an utensil proper for all subjects, and will have an oar
in everything: which is the reason, that in these Essays I take hold of
all occasions where, though it happen to be a subject I do not very well
understand, I try, however, sounding it at a distance, and finding it too
deep for my stature, I keep me on the shore; and this knowledge that a
man can proceed no further, is one effect of its virtue, yes, one of
those of which it is most proud. One while in an idle and frivolous
subject, I try to find out matter whereof to compose a body, and then to
prop and support it; another while, I employ it in a noble subject, one
that has been tossed and tumbled by a thousand hands, wherein a man can
scarce possibly introduce anything of his own, the way being so beaten on
every side that he must of necessity walk in the steps of another: in
such a case, 'tis the work of the judgment to take the way that seems
best, and of a thousand paths, to determine that this or that is the
best. I leave the choice of my arguments to fortune, and take that she
first presents to me; they are all alike to me, I never design to go
through any of them; for I never see all of anything: neither do they who
so largely promise to show it others. Of a hundred members and faces
that everything has, I take one, onewhile to look it over only, another
while to ripple up the skin, and sometimes to pinch it to the bones: I
give a stab, not so wide but as deep as I can, and am for the most part
tempted to take it in hand by some new light I discover in it. Did I
know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to
the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here
one word and there another, patterns cut from several pieces and
scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not
responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without
varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and
uncertainty, and to my own governing method, ignorance.

All motion discovers us: the very same soul of Caesar, that made itself
so conspicuous in marshalling and commanding the battle of Pharsalia, was
also seen as solicitous and busy in the softer affairs of love and
leisure. A man makes a judgment of a horse, not only by seeing him when
he is showing off his paces, but by his very walk, nay, and by seeing him
stand in the stable.

Amongst the functions of the soul, there are some of a lower and meaner
form; he who does not see her in those inferior offices as well as in
those of nobler note, never fully discovers her; and, peradventure, she
is best shown where she moves her simpler pace. The winds of passions
take most hold of her in her highest flights; and the rather by reason
that she wholly applies herself to, and exercises her whole virtue upon,
every particular subject, and never handles more than one thing at a
time, and that not according to it, but according to herself. Things in
respect to themselves have, peradventure, their weight, measures, and
conditions; but when we once take them into us, the soul forms them as
she pleases. Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato, indifferent
to Socrates. Health, conscience, authority, knowledge, riches, beauty,
and their contraries, all strip themselves at their entering into us, and
receive a new robe, and of another fashion, from the soul; and of what
colour, brown, bright, green, dark, and of what quality, sharp, sweet,
deep, or superficial, as best pleases each of them, for they are not
agreed upon any common standard of forms, rules, or proceedings; every
one is a queen in her own dominions. Let us, therefore, no more excuse
ourselves upon the external qualities of things; it belongs to us to give
ourselves an account of them. Our good or ill has no other dependence
but on ourselves. 'Tis there that our offerings and our vows are due,
and not to fortune she has no power over our manners; on the contrary,
they draw and make her follow in their train, and cast her in their own
mould. Why should not I judge of Alexander at table, ranting and
drinking at the prodigious rate he sometimes used to do?

Or, if he played at chess? what string of his soul was not touched by
this idle and childish game? I hate and avoid it, because it is not play
enough, that it is too grave and serious a diversion, and I am ashamed to
lay out as much thought and study upon it as would serve to much better
uses. He did not more pump his brains about his glorious expedition into
the Indies, nor than another in unravelling a passage upon which depends
the safety of mankind. To what a degree does this ridiculous diversion
molest the soul, when all her faculties are summoned together upon this
trivial account! and how fair an opportunity she herein gives every one
to know and to make a right judgment of himself? I do not more
thoroughly sift myself in any other posture than this: what passion are
we exempted from in it? Anger, spite, malice, impatience, and a vehement
desire of getting the better in a concern wherein it were more excusable
to be ambitious of being overcome; for to be eminent, to excel above the
common rate in frivolous things, nowise befits a man of honour. What I
say in this example may be said in all others. Every particle, every
employment of man manifests him equally with any other.

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first,
finding human condition ridiculous and vain, never appeared abroad but
with a jeering and laughing countenance; whereas Heraclitus commiserating
that same condition of ours, appeared always with a sorrowful look, and
tears in his eyes:

"Alter
Ridebat, quoties a limine moverat unum
Protuleratque pedem; flebat contrarius alter."

["The one always, as often as he had stepped one pace from his
threshold, laughed, the other always wept."--Juvenal, Sat., x. 28.]

[Or, as Voltaire: "Life is a comedy to those who think;
a tragedy to those who feel." D.W.]

I am clearly for the first humour; not because it is more pleasant to
laugh than to weep, but because it expresses more contempt and
condemnation than the other, and I think we can never be despised
according to our full desert. Compassion and bewailing seem to imply
some esteem of and value for the thing bemoaned; whereas the things we
laugh at are by that expressed to be of no moment. I do not think that
we are so unhappy as we are vain, or have in us so much malice as folly;
we are not so full of mischief as inanity; nor so miserable as we are
vile and mean. And therefore Diogenes, who passed away his time in
rolling himself in his tub, and made nothing of the great Alexander,
esteeming us no better than flies or bladders puffed up with wind, was a
sharper and more penetrating, and, consequently in my opinion, a juster
judge than Timon, surnamed the Man-hater; for what a man hates he lays to
heart. This last was an enemy to all mankind, who passionately desired
our ruin, and avoided our conversation as dangerous, proceeding from
wicked and depraved natures: the other valued us so little that we could
neither trouble nor infect him by our example; and left us to herd one
with another, not out of fear, but from contempt of our society:
concluding us as incapable of doing good as evil.

Of the same strain was Statilius' answer, when Brutus courted him into
the conspiracy against Caesar; he was satisfied that the enterprise was
just, but he did not think mankind worthy of a wise man's concern';
according to the doctrine of Hegesias, who said, that a wise man ought to
do nothing but for himself, forasmuch as he only was worthy of it: and to
the saying of Theodorus, that it was not reasonable a wise man should
hazard himself for his country, and endanger wisdom for a company of
fools. Our condition is as ridiculous as risible.




CHAPTER LI

OF THE VANITY OF WORDS

A rhetorician of times past said, that to make little things appear great
was his profession. This was a shoemaker, who can make a great shoe for
a little foot.--[A saying of Agesilaus.]--They would in Sparta have
sent such a fellow to be whipped for making profession of a tricky and
deceitful act; and I fancy that Archidamus, who was king of that country,
was a little surprised at the answer of Thucydides, when inquiring of
him, which was the better wrestler, Pericles, or he, he replied, that it
was hard to affirm; for when I have thrown him, said he, he always
persuades the spectators that he had no fall and carries away the prize.
--[Quintilian, ii. 15.]--The women who paint, pounce, and plaster up
their ruins, filling up their wrinkles and deformities, are less to
blame, because it is no great matter whether we see them in their natural
complexions; whereas these make it their business to deceive not our
sight only but our judgments, and to adulterate and corrupt the very
essence of things. The republics that have maintained themselves in a
regular and well-modelled government, such as those of Lacedaemon and
Crete, had orators in no very great esteem. Aristo wisely defined
rhetoric to be "a science to persuade the people;" Socrates and Plato
"an art to flatter and deceive." And those who deny it in the general
description, verify it throughout in their precepts. The Mohammedans
will not suffer their children to be instructed in it, as being useless,
and the Athenians, perceiving of how pernicious consequence the practice
of it was, it being in their city of universal esteem, ordered the
principal part, which is to move the affections, with their exordiums and
perorations, to be taken away. 'Tis an engine invented to manage and
govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble, and that never is made use of,
but like physic to the sick, in a discomposed state. In those where the
vulgar or the ignorant, or both together, have been all-powerful and able
to give the law, as in those of Athens, Rhodes, and Rome, and where the
public affairs have been in a continual tempest of commotion, to such
places have the orators always repaired. And in truth, we shall find few
persons in those republics who have pushed their fortunes to any great
degree of eminence without the assistance of eloquence.