The Essays of Montaigne, Complete

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


The men whose society and familiarity I covet are those they call sincere
and able men; and the image of these makes me disrelish the rest. It is,
if rightly taken, the rarest of our forms, and a form that we chiefly owe
to nature. The end of this commerce is simply privacy, frequentation and
conference, the exercise of souls, without other fruit. In our
discourse, all subjects are alike to me; let there be neither weight, nor
depth, 'tis all one: there is yet grace and pertinency; all there is
tinted with a mature and constant judgment, and mixed with goodness,
freedom, gaiety, and friendship. 'Tis not only in talking of the affairs
of kings and state that our wits discover their force and beauty, but
every whit as much in private conferences. I understand my men even by
their silence and smiles; and better discover them, perhaps, at table
than in the council. Hippomachus said, very well, "that he could know
the good wrestlers by only seeing them walk in the street." If learning
please to step into our talk, it shall not be rejected, not magisterial,
imperious, and importunate, as-it commonly is, but suffragan and docile
itself; we there only seek to pass away our time; when we have a mind to
be instructed and preached to, we will go seek this in its throne; please
let it humble itself to us for the nonce; for, useful and profitable as
it is, I imagine that, at need, we may manage well enough without it, and
do our business without its assistance. A well-descended soul, and
practised in the conversation of men, will of herself render herself
sufficiently agreeable; art is nothing but the counterpart and register
of what such souls produce.

The conversation also of beautiful and honourable women is for me a sweet
commerce:

"Nam nos quoque oculos eruditos habemus."

["For we also have eyes that are versed in the matter."
--Cicero, Paradox, v. 2.]

If the soul has not therein so much to enjoy, as in the first the bodily
senses, which participate more of this, bring it to a proportion next to,
though, in my opinion, not equal to the other. But 'tis a commerce
wherein a man must stand a little upon his guard, especially those, where
the body can do much, as in me. I there scalded myself in my youth, and
suffered all the torments that poets say befall those who precipitate
themselves into love without order and judgment. It is true that that
whipping has made me wiser since:

"Quicumque Argolica de classe Capharea fugit,
Semper ab Euboicis vela retorquet aquis."

["Whoever of the Grecian fleet has escaped the Capharean rocks, ever
takes care to steer from the Euboean sea."--Ovid, Trist., i. i, 83.]

'Tis folly to fix all a man's thoughts upon it, and to engage in it with
a furious and indiscreet affection; but, on the other hand, to engage
there without love and without inclination, like comedians, to play a
common part, without putting anything to it of his own but words, is
indeed to provide for his safety, but, withal, after as cowardly a manner
as he who should abandon his honour, profit, or pleasure for fear of
danger. For it is certain that from such a practice, they who set it on
foot can expect no fruit that can please or satisfy a noble soul. A man
must have, in good earnest, desired that which he, in good earnest,
expects to have a pleasure in enjoying; I say, though fortune should
unjustly favour their dissimulation; which often falls out, because there
is none of the sex, let her be as ugly as the devil, who does not think
herself well worthy to be beloved, and who does not prefer herself before
other women, either for her youth, the colour of her hair, or her
graceful motion (for there are no more women universally ugly, than there
are women universally beautiful, and such of the Brahmin virgins as have
nothing else to recommend them, the people being assembled by the common
crier to that effect, come out into the market-place to expose their
matrimonial parts to public view, to try if these at least are not of
temptation sufficient to get them a husband). Consequently, there is not
one who does not easily suffer herself to be overcome by the first vow
that they make to serve her. Now from this common and ordinary treachery
of the men of the present day, that must fall out which we already
experimentally see, either that they rally together, and separate
themselves by themselves to evade us, or else form their discipline by
the example we give them, play their parts of the farce as we do ours,
and give themselves up to the sport, without passion, care, or love;

"Neque afl'ectui suo, aut alieno, obnoxiae;"

["Neither amenable to their own affections, nor those of others."
--Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 45.]

believing, according to the persuasion of Lysias in Plato, that they may
with more utility and convenience surrender themselves up to us the less
we love them; where it will fall out, as in comedies, that the people
will have as much pleasure or more than the comedians. For my part,
I no more acknowledge a Venus without a Cupid than, a mother without
issue: they are things that mutully lend and owe their essence to one
another. Thus this cheat recoils upon him who is guilty of it; it does
not cost him much, indeed, but he also gets little or nothing by it.
They who have made Venus a goddess have taken notice that her principal
beauty was incorporeal and spiritual; but the Venus whom these people
hunt after is not so much as human, nor indeed brutal; the very beasts
will not accept it so gross and so earthly; we see that imagination and
desire often heat and incite them before the body does; we see in both
the one sex and the other, they have in the herd choice and particular
election in their affections, and that they have amongst themselves a
long commerce of good will. Even those to whom old age denies the
practice of their desire, still tremble, neigh, and twitter for love; we
see them, before the act, full of hope and ardour, and when the body has
played its game, yet please themselves with the sweet remembrance of the
past delight; some that swell with pride after they have performed, and
others who, tired and sated, still by vociferation express a triumphing
joy. He who has nothing to do but only to discharge his body of a
natural necessity, need not trouble others with so curious preparations:
it is not meat for a gross, coarse appetite.

As one who does not desire that men should think me better than I am,
I will here say this as to the errors of my youth. Not only from the
danger of impairing my health (and yet I could not be so careful but that
I had two light mischances), but moreover upon the account of contempt,
I have seldom given myself up to common and mercenary embraces: I would
heighten the pleasure by the difficulty, by desire, and a certain kind of
glory, and was of Tiberius's mind, who in his amours was as much taken
with modesty and birth as any other quality, and of the courtesan Flora's
humour, who never lent herself to less than a dictator, a consul, or a
censor, and took pleasure in the dignity of her lovers. Doubtless pearls
and gold tissue, titles and train, add something to it.

As to the rest, I had a great esteem for wit, provided the person was not
exceptionable; for, to confess the truth, if the one or the other of
these two attractions must of necessity be wanting, I should rather have
quitted that of the understanding, that has its use in better things;
but in the subject of love, a subject principally relating to the senses
of seeing and touching, something may be done without the graces of the
mind: without the graces of the body, nothing. Beauty is the true
prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that ours, though
naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but
when youthful and beardless, a sort of confused image of theirs. 'Tis
said that such as serve the Grand Signior upon the account of beauty, who
are an infinite number, are, at the latest, dismissed at two-and-twenty
years of age. Reason, prudence, and the offices of friendship are better
found amongst men, and therefore it is that they govern the affairs of
the world.

These two engagements are fortuitous, and depending upon others; the one
is troublesome by its rarity, the other withers with age, so that they
could never have been sufficient for the business of my life. That of
books, which is the third, is much more certain, and much more our own.
It yields all other advantages to the two first, but has the constancy
and facility of its service for its own share. It goes side by side with
me in my whole course, and everywhere is assisting me: it comforts me in
old age and solitude; it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness,
and delivers me at all hours from company that I dislike: it blunts the
point of griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire
possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, 'tis
but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them and drive the other
out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny at seeing that I have only recourse
to them for want of other more real, natural, and lively commodities;
they always receive me with the same kindness. He may well go a foot,
they say, who leads his horse in his hand; and our James, King of Naples
and Sicily, who, handsome, young and healthful, caused himself to be
carried about on a barrow, extended upon a pitiful mattress in a poor
robe of grey cloth, and a cap of the same, yet attended withal by a royal
train, litters, led horses of all sorts, gentlemen and officers, did yet
herein represent a tender and unsteady authority: "The sick man has not
to complain who has his cure in his sleeve." In the experience and
practice of this maxim, which is a very true one, consists all the
benefit I reap from books. As a matter of fact, I make no more use of
them, as it were, than those who know them not. I enjoy them as misers
do their money, in knowing that I may enjoy them when I please: my mind
is satisfied with this right of possession. I never travel without
books, either in peace or war; and yet sometimes I pass over several
days, and sometimes months, without looking on them. I will read
by-and-by, say I to myself, or to-morrow, or when I please; and in the
interim, time steals away without any inconvenience. For it is not to be
imagined to what degree I please myself and rest content in this
consideration, that I have them by me to divert myself with them when I
am so disposed, and to call to mind what a refreshment they are to my
life. 'Tis the best viaticum I have yet found out for this human
journey, and I very much pity those men of understanding who are
unprovided of it. I the rather accept of any other sort of diversion,
how light soever, because this can never fail me.

When at home, I a little more frequent my library, whence I overlook at
once all the concerns of my family. 'Tis situated at the entrance into
my house, and I thence see under me my garden, court, and base-court, and
almost all parts of the building. There I turn over now one book, and
then another, on various subjects, without method or design. One while
I meditate, another I record and dictate, as I walk to and fro, such
whimsies as these I present to you here. 'Tis in the third storey of a
tower, of which the ground-room is my chapel, the second storey a chamber
with a withdrawing-room and closet, where I often lie, to be more
retired; and above is a great wardrobe. This formerly was the most
useless part of the house. I there pass away both most of the days of my
life and most of the hours of those days. In the night I am never there.
There is by the side of it a cabinet handsome enough, with a fireplace
very commodiously contrived, and plenty of light; and were I not more
afraid of the trouble than the expense--the trouble that frights me from
all business--I could very easily adjoin on either side, and on the same
floor, a gallery of an hundred paces long and twelve broad, having found
walls already raised for some other design to the requisite height.
Every place of retirement requires a walk: my thoughts sleep if I sit
still: my fancy does not go by itself, as when my legs move it: and all
those who study without a book are in the same condition. The figure of
my study is round, and there is no more open wall than what is taken up
by my table and my chair, so that the remaining parts of the circle
present me a view of all my books at once, ranged upon five rows of
shelves round about me. It has three noble and free prospects, and is
sixteen paces in diameter. I am not so continually there in winter; for
my house is built upon an eminence, as its name imports, and no part of
it is so much exposed to the wind and weather as this, which pleases me
the better, as being of more difficult access and a little remote, as
well upon the account of exercise, as also being there more retired from
the crowd. 'Tis there that I am in my kingdom, and there I endeavour to
make myself an absolute monarch, and to sequester this one corner from
all society, conjugal, filial, and civil; elsewhere I have but verbal
authority only, and of a confused essence. That man, in my opinion, is
very miserable, who has not at home where to be by himself, where to
entertain himself alone, or to conceal himself from others. Ambition
sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping them always in show, like
the statue of a public, square:

"Magna servitus est magna fortuna."

["A great fortune is a great slavery."
--Seneca, De Consol. ad. Polyb., c. 26.]

They cannot so much as be private in the watercloset. I have thought
nothing so severe in the austerity of life that our monks affect, as what
I have observed in some of their communities; namely, by rule, to have a
perpetual society of place, and numerous persons present in every action
whatever; and think it much more supportable to be always alone than
never to be so.

If any one shall tell me that it is to undervalue the Muses to make use
of them only for sport and to pass away the time, I shall tell him, that
he does not know so well as I the value of the sport, the pleasure, and
the pastime; I can hardly forbear to add that all other end is
ridiculous. I live from day to day, and, with reverence be it spoken, I
only live for myself; there all my designs terminate. I studied, when
young, for ostentation; since, to make myself a little wiser; and now for
my diversion, but never for any profit. A vain and prodigal humour I had
after this sort of furniture, not only for the supplying my own need,
but, moreover, for ornament and outward show, I have since quite cured
myself of.

Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose them;
but every good has its ill; 'tis a pleasure that is not pure and clean,
no more than others: it has its inconveniences, and great ones too. The
soul indeed is exercised therein; but the body, the care of which I must
withal never neglect, remains in the meantime without action, and grows
heavy and sombre. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to
be avoided in this my declining age.

These have been my three favourite and particular occupations; I speak
not of those I owe to the world by civil obligation.




CHAPTER IV.

OF DIVERSION

I was once employed in consoling a lady truly afflicted. Most of their
mournings are artificial and ceremonious:

"Uberibus semper lacrymis, semperque paratis,
In statione subatque expectantibus illam,
Quo jubeat manare modo."

["A woman has ever a fountain of tears ready to gush up whenever
she requires to make use of them."--Juvenal, vi. 272.]

A man goes the wrong way to work when he opposes this passion; for
opposition does but irritate and make them more obstinate in sorrow; the
evil is exasperated by discussion. We see, in common discourse, that
what I have indifferently let fall from me, if any one takes it up to
controvert it, I justify it with the best arguments I have; and much more
a thing wherein I had a real interest. And besides, in so doing you
enter roughly upon your operation; whereas the first addresses of a
physician to his patient should be gracious, gay, and pleasing; never did
any ill-looking, morose physician do anything to purpose. On the
contrary, then, a man should, at the first approaches, favour their grief
and express some approbation of their sorrow. By this intelligence you
obtain credit to proceed further, and by a facile and insensible
gradation fall into discourses more solid and proper for their cure.
I, whose aim it was principally to gull the company who had their eyes
fixed upon me, took it into my head only to palliate the disease. And
indeed I have found by experience that I have an unlucky hand in
persuading. My arguments are either too sharp and dry, or pressed too
roughly, or not home enough. After I had some time applied myself to her
grief, I did not attempt to cure her by strong and lively reasons, either
because I had them not at hand, or because I thought to do my business
better another way; neither did I make choice of any of those methods of
consolation which philosophy prescribes: that what we complain of is no
evil, according to Cleanthes; that it is a light evil, according to the
Peripatetics; that to bemoan one's self is an action neither commendable
nor just, according to Chrysippus; nor this of Epicurus, more suitable to
my way, of shifting the thoughts from afflicting things to those that are
pleasing; nor making a bundle of all these together, to make use of upon
occasion, according to Cicero; but, gently bending my discourse, and by
little and little digressing, sometimes to subjects nearer, and sometimes
more remote from the purpose, according as she was more intent on what I
said, I imperceptibly led her from that sorrowful thought, and kept her
calm and in good-humour whilst I continued there. I herein made use of
diversion. They who succeeded me in the same service did not, for all
that, find any amendment in her, for I had not gone to the root.

I, peradventure, may elsewhere have glanced upon some sort of public
diversions; and the practice of military ones, which Pericles made use of
in the Peloponnesian war, and a thousand others in other places, to
withdraw the adverse forces from their own countries, is too frequent in
history. It was an ingenious evasion whereby Monseigneur d'Hempricourt
saved both himself and others in the city of Liege, into which the Duke
of Burgundy, who kept it besieged, had made him enter to execute the
articles of their promised surrender; the people, being assembled by
night to consider of it, began to mutiny against the agreement, and
several of them resolved to fall upon the commissioners, whom they had in
their power; he, feeling the gusts of this first popular storm, who were
coming to rush into his lodgings, suddenly sent out to them two of the
inhabitants of the city (of whom he had some with him) with new and
milder terms to be proposed in their council, which he had then and there
contrived for his need: These two diverted the first tempest, carrying
back the enraged rabble to the town-hall to hear and consider of what
they had to say. The deliberation was short; a second storm arose as
violent as the other, whereupon he despatched four new mediators of the
same quality to meet them, protesting that he had now better conditions
to present them with, and such as would give them absolute satisfaction,
by which means the tumult was once more appeased, and the people again
turned back to the conclave. In fine, by this dispensation of
amusements, one after another, diverting their fury and dissipating it in
frivolous consultations, he laid it at last asleep till the day appeared,
which was his principal end.

This other story that follows is also of the same category. Atalanta, a
virgin of excelling beauty and of wonderful disposition of body, to
disengage herself from the crowd of a thousand suitors who sought her in
marriage, made this proposition, that she would accept of him for her
husband who should equal her in running, upon condition that they who
failed should lose their lives. There were enough who thought the prize
very well worth the hazard, and who suffered the cruel penalty of the
contract. Hippomenes, about to make trial after the rest, made his
address to the goddess of love, imploring her assistance; and she,
granting his request, gave him three golden apples, and instructed him
how to use them. The race beginning, as Hippomenes perceived his
mistress to press hard up to him; he, as it were by chance, let fall one
of these apples; the maid, taken with the beauty of it, failed not to
step out of her way to pick it up:

"Obstupuit Virgo, nitidique cupidine pomi
Declinat cursus, aurumque volubile tollit."

["The virgin, astonished and attracted by the glittering apple,
stops her career, and seizes the rolling gold."
--Ovid, Metam., x. 666.]

He did the same, when he saw his time, by the second and the third, till
by so diverting her, and making her lose so much ground, he won the race.
When physicians cannot stop a catarrh, they divert and turn it into some
other less dangerous part. And I find also that this is the most
ordinary practice for the diseases of the mind:

"Abducendus etiam nonnunquam animus est ad alia studia,
sollicitudines, curas, negotia: loci denique mutatione,
tanquam aegroti non convalescentes, saepe curandus est."

["The mind is sometimes to be diverted to other studies, thoughts,
cares, business: in fine, by change of place, as where sick persons
do not become convalescent."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 35.]

'Tis to little effect directly to jostle a man's infirmities; we neither
make him sustain nor repel the attack; we only make him decline and evade
it.

This other lesson is too high and too difficult: 'tis for men of the
first form of knowledge purely to insist upon the thing, to consider and
judge it; it appertains to one sole Socrates to meet death with an
ordinary countenance, to grow acquainted with it, and to sport with it;
he seeks no consolation out of the thing itself; dying appears to him a
natural and indifferent accident; 'tis there that he fixes his sight and
resolution, without looking elsewhere. The disciples of Hegesias, who
starved themselves to death, animated thereunto by his fine lectures, and
in such numbers that King Ptolemy ordered he should be forbidden to
entertain his followers with such homicidal doctrines, did not consider
death in itself, neither did they judge of it; it was not there they
fixed their thoughts; they ran towards and aimed at a new being.

The poor wretches whom we see brought upon the scaffold, full of ardent
devotion, and therein, as much as in them lies, employing all their
senses, their ears in hearing the instructions given them, their eyes and
hands lifted up towards heaven, their voices in loud prayers, with a
vehement and continual emotion, do doubtless things very commendable and
proper for such a necessity: we ought to commend them for their devotion,
but not properly for their constancy; they shun the encounter, they
divert their thoughts from the consideration of death, as children are
amused with some toy or other when the surgeon is going to give them a
prick with his lancet. I have seen some, who, casting their eyes upon
the dreadful instruments of death round about, have fainted, and
furiously turned their thoughts another way; such as are to pass a
formidable precipice are advised either to shut their eyes or to look
another way.

Subrius Flavius, being by Nero's command to be put to death, and by the
hand of Niger, both of them great captains, when they lead him to the
place appointed for his execution, seeing the grave that Niger had caused
to be hollowed to put him into ill-made: "Neither is this," said he,
turning to the soldiers who guarded him, "according to military
discipline." And to Niger, who exhorted him to keep his head firm: "Do
but thou strike as firmly," said he. And he very well foresaw what would
follow when he said so; for Niger's arm so trembled that he had several
blows at his head before he could cut it off. This man seems to have had
his thoughts rightly fixed upon the subject.

He who dies in a battle, with his sword in his hand, does not then think
of death; he feels or considers it not; the ardour of the fight diverts
his thought another way. A worthy man of my acquaintance, falling as he
was fighting a duel, and feeling himself nailed to the earth by nine or
ten thrusts of his enemy, every one present called to him to think of his
conscience; but he has since told me, that though he very well heard what
they said, it nothing moved him, and that he never thought of anything
but how to disengage and revenge himself. He afterwards killed his man
in that very duel. He who brought to L. Silanus the sentence of death,
did him a very great kindness, in that, having received his answer, that
he was well prepared to die, but not by base hands, he ran upon him with
his soldiers to force him, and as he, unarmed as he was, obstinately
defended himself with his fists and feet, he made him lose his life in
the contest, by that means dissipating and diverting in a sudden and
furious rage the painful apprehension of the lingering death to which he
was designed.