The Essays of Montaigne, Complete

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


[A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and
assassinated there, 4th October 1572.]

a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men who
presented themselves the one for the other. I remember (and I hardly
remember anything else) that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of
him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding both
our knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a very
bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. Let us have some form of
decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter" more
freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselves
perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to
appear again after a hundred years.

The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the
report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams. To
accommodate the examples that Holy Writ gives us of such things, most
certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events,
seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another
sort-of wit than ours. It, peradventure, only appertains to that sole
all-potent testimony to tell us. "This is, and that is, and not that
other." God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason;
but not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his own
narration (and he must of necessity be astonished if he be not out of his
wits), whether he employ it about other men's affairs or against himself.

I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding
those ancient reproaches:

"Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;
--Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur."

["Men are most apt to believe what they least understand: and from
the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more
easily credited." The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]

I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon
pain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading! Thank God, I am not
to be cuffed into belief. Let them be angry with those who accuse their
opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and
condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with
them. He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffing
discovers his reason to be very weak. For a verbal and scholastic
altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;

"Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;"

["They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them
state the probabilities, but not affirm.)"
--Cicero, Acad., n. 27.]

but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much the
advantage. To kill men, a clear and strong light is required, and our
life is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural and
fantastic accidents.

As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worst
sort of homicides: yet even in this, 'tis said, that men are not always
to rely upon the personal confessions of these people; for they have
sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who
have afterwards been found living and well. In these other extravagant
accusations, I should be apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, what
recommendation soever he may have, be believed as to human things; but of
what is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought then
only to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation. The
privilege it has pleased Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses,
ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap. I have my ears
battered with a thousand such tales as these: "Three persons saw him such
a day in the east three, the next day in the west: at such an hour, in
such a place, and in such habit"; assuredly I should not believe it
myself. How much more natural and likely do I find it that two men
should lie than that one man in twelve hours' time should fly with the
wind from east to west? How much more natural that our understanding
should be carried from its place by the volubility of our disordered
minds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon a
broomstaff, flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney? Let
not us seek illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetually
agitated with illusions domestic and our own. Methinks one is pardonable
in disbelieving a miracle, at least, at all events where one can elude
its verification as such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St.
Augustine's opinion, that, "'tis better to lean towards doubt than
assurance, in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe."

'Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a
sovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me
the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place,
ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman,
a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that
profession. I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what
insensible mark upon the miserable creature: I examined and talked with
her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and
soundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to
be made captive by prepossession. In the end, and in all conscience, I
should rather have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock;

"Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;"

["The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice."
("The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.")
--Livy, viii, 18.]

justice has its corrections proper for such maladies. As to the
oppositions and arguments that worthy men have made to me, both there,
and often in other places, I have met with none that have convinced me,
and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions.
It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon
experience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any
end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot. After all,
'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause
a man to be roasted alive.

We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, that
being more profoundly, asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself
to be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and what
he fancied himself to be, he really proved. If sorcerers dream so
materially; if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with
effects, still I cannot believe that therefore our will should be
accountable to justice; which I say as one who am neither judge nor privy
councillor, and who think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a
man of the common sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the public
reason, both in its words and acts. He who should record my idle talk as
being to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his
parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in
what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had then
in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought. All I say is by way of
discourse, and nothing by way of advice:

"Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;"

["Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what
I do not know."--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]

I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so I
told a great man, who complained of the tartness and contentiousness of
my exhortations. Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I
propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear
your judgment, not to compel it. God has your hearts in His hands, and
will furnish you with the means of choice. I am not so presumptuous even
as to desire that my opinions should bias you--in a thing of so great
importance: my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevated
conclusions. Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a
great many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I
had one. What, if the truest are not always the most commodious to man,
being of so wild a composition?

Whether it be to the purpose or not, tis no great matter: 'tis a common
proverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness who
has never lain with a lame mistress. Fortune, or some particular
incident, long ago put this saying into the mouths of the people; and the
same is said of men as well as of women; for the queen of the Amazons
answered the Scythian who courted her to love, "Lame men perform best."
In this feminine republic, to evade the dominion of the males, they
lamed them in their infancy--arms, legs, and other members that gave them
advantage over them, and only made use of them in that wherein we, in
these parts of the world, make use of them. I should have been apt to
think; that the shuffling pace of the lame mistress added some new
pleasure to the work, and some extraordinary titillation to those who
were at the sport; but I have lately learnt that ancient philosophy has
itself determined it, which says that the legs and thighs of lame women,
not receiving, by reason of their imperfection, their due aliment, it
falls out that the genital parts above are fuller and better supplied and
much more vigorous; or else that this defect, hindering exercise, they
who are troubled with it less dissipate their strength, and come more
entire to the sports of Venus; which also is the reason why the Greeks
decried the women-weavers as being more hot than other women by reason of
their sedentary trade, which they carry on without any great exercise of
the body. What is it we may not reason of at this rate? I might also
say of these, that the jaggling about whilst so sitting at work, rouses
and provokes their desire, as the swinging and jolting of coaches does
that of our ladies.

Do not these examples serve to make good what I said at first: that our
reasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent of
jurisdiction that they judge and exercise themselves even on inanity
itself and non-existency? Besides the flexibility of our invention to
forge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facile
to receive impressions of falsity by very frivolous appearances; for, by
the sole authority of the ancient and common use of this proverb, I have
formerly made myself believe that I have had more pleasure in a woman by
reason she was not straight, and accordingly reckoned that deformity
amongst her graces.

Torquato Tasso, in the comparison he makes betwixt France and Italy,
says that he has observed that our legs are generally smaller than those
of the Italian gentlemen, and attributes the cause of it to our being
continually on horseback; which is the very same cause from which
Suetonius draws a quite opposite conclusion; for he says, on the
contrary, that Germanicus had made his legs bigger by the continuation of
the same exercise.

Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe of
Theramenes, fit for all feet. It is double and diverse, and the matters
are double and diverse too. "Give me a drachm of silver," said a Cynic
philosopher to Antigonus. "That is not a present befitting a king,"
replied he. "Give me then a talent," said the other. "That is not a
present befitting a Cynic."

"Seu plures calor ille vias et caeca relaxat
Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas
Seu durat magis, et venas astringit hiantes;
Ne tenues pluviae, rapidive potentia colic
Acrior, aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat."

["Whether the heat opens more passages and secret pores through
which the sap may be derived into the new-born herbs; or whether it
rather hardens and binds the gaping veins that the small showers and
keen influence of the violent sun or penetrating cold of Boreas may
not hurt them."--Virg., Georg., i. 89.]

"Ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio."

["Every medal has its reverse."--Italian Proverb.]

This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old that Carneades had outdone
the labours of Hercules, in having eradicated consent from men, that is
to say, opinion and the courage of judging. This so vigorous fancy of
Carneades sprang, in my opinion, anciently from the impudence of those
who made profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit.
AEsop was set to sale with two other slaves; the buyer asked the first of
these what he could do; he, to enhance his own value, promised mountains
and marvels, saying he could do this and that, and I know not what; the
second said as much of himself or more: when it came to AEsop's turn, and
that he was also asked what he could do; "Nothing," said he, "for these
two have taken up all before me; they know everything." So has it
happened in the school of philosophy: the pride of those who attributed
the capacity of all things to the human mind created in others, out of
despite and emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing: the
one maintain the same extreme in ignorance that the others do in
knowledge; to make it undeniably manifest that man is immoderate
throughout, and can never stop but of necessity and the want of ability
to proceed further.




CHAPTER XII

OF PHYSIOGNOMY

Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and trust; and
'tis not amiss; we could not choose worse than by ourselves in so weak an
age. That image of Socrates' discourses, which his friends have
transmitted to us, we approve upon no other account than a reverence to
public sanction: 'tis not according to our own knowledge; they are not
after our way; if anything of the kind should spring up now, few men
would value them. We discern no graces that are not pointed and puffed
out and inflated by art; such as glide on in their own purity and
simplicity easily escape so gross a sight as ours; they have a delicate
and concealed beauty, such as requires a clear and purified sight to
discover its secret light. Is not simplicity, as we take it,
cousin-german to folly and a quality of reproach? Socrates makes his
soul move a natural and common motion: a peasant said this; a woman said
that; he has never anybody in his mouth but carters, joiners, cobblers,
and masons; his are inductions and similitudes drawn from the most common
and known actions of men; every one understands him. We should never
have recognised the nobility and splendour of his admirable conceptions
under so mean a form; we, who think all things low and flat that are not
elevated, by learned doctrine, and who discern no riches but in pomp and
show. This world of ours is only formed for ostentation: men are only
puffed up with wind, and are bandied to and fro like tennis-balls. He
proposed to himself no vain and idle fancies; his design was to furnish
us with precepts and things that more really and fitly serve to the use
of life;

"Servare modum, finemque tenere,
Naturamque sequi."

["To keep a just mean, to observe a just limit,
and to follow Nature."--Lucan, ii. 381.]

He was also always one and the same, and raised himself, not by starts
but by complexion, to the highest pitch of vigour; or, to say better,
mounted not at all, but rather brought down, reduced, and subjected all
asperities and difficulties to his original and natural condition; for in
Cato 'tis most manifest that 'tis a procedure extended far beyond the
common ways of men: in the brave exploits of his life, and in his death,
we find him always mounted upon the great horse; whereas the other ever
creeps upon the ground, and with a gentle and ordinary pace, treats of
the most useful matters, and bears himself, both at his death and in the
rudest difficulties that could present themselves, in the ordinary way of
human life.

It has fallen out well that the man most worthy to be known and to be
presented to the world for example should be he of whom we have the most
certain knowledge; he has been pried into by the most clear-sighted men
that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are admirable both in
fidelity and fulness. 'Tis a great thing that he was able so to order
the pure imaginations of a child, that, without altering or wresting
them, he thereby produced the most beautiful effects of our soul: he
presents it neither elevated nor rich; he only represents it sound, but
assuredly with a brisk and full health. By these common and natural
springs, by these ordinary and popular fancies, without being moved or
put out, he set up not only the most regular, but the most high and
vigorous beliefs, actions, and manners that ever were. 'Tis he who
brought again from heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, to
restore her to man with whom her most just and greatest business lies.
See him plead before his judges; observe by what reasons he rouses his
courage to the hazards of war; with what arguments he fortifies his
patience against calumny, tyranny, death, and the perverseness of his
wife: you will find nothing in all this borrowed from arts and sciences:
the simplest may there discover their own means and strength; 'tis not
possible more to retire or to creep more low. He has done human nature a
great kindness in showing it how much it can do of itself.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of
our own. Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: of
pleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his
greediness is incapable of moderation. And I find that in curiosity of
knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and
more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full
of its matter:

"Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus."

["We carry intemperance into the study of literature, as well as
into everything else."--Seneca, Ep., 106.]

And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for having
restrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning.

Tis a good, if duly considered, which has in it, as the other goods of
men have, a great deal of vanity and weakness, proper and natural to
itself, and that costs very dear. Its acquisition is far more hazardous
than that of all other meat or drink; for, as to other things, what we
have bought we carry home in some vessel, and there have full leisure to
examine our purchase, how much we shall eat or drink of it, and when: but
sciences we can, at the very first, stow into no other vessel than the
soul; we swallow them in buying, and return from the market, either
already infected or amended: there are some that only burden and
overcharge the stomach, instead of nourishing; and, moreover, some that,
under colour of curing, poison us. I have been pleased, in places where
I have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity,
poverty, and penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to
blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to
deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the
opinion of knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of
poverty, to add unto it that of the mind. We need little doctrine to
live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way
how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which
exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it
does not rather burden and cumber us than do us good:

"Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:"

["Little learning is needed to form a sound mind."
--Seneca, Ep., 106.]

'tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument.
Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself natural
arguments against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time of
necessity: 'tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with as
much firmness as a philosopher. Should I have died less cheerfully
before I had read Cicero's Tusculan Quastiones? I believe not; and when
I find myself at the best, I perceive that my tongue is enriched indeed,
but my courage little or nothing elevated by them; that is just as nature
framed it at first, and defends itself against the conflict only after a
natural and ordinary way. Books have not so much served me for
instruction as exercise. What if knowledge, trying to arm us with new
defences against natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in our
fancies their weight and greatness, than her reasons and subtleties to
secure us from them? They are subtleties, indeed, with which she often
alarms us to little purpose. Do but observe how many slight and
frivolous, and, if nearly examined, incorporeal arguments, the closest
and wisest authors scatter about one good one: they are but verbal quirks
and fallacies to amuse and gull us: but forasmuch as it may be with some
profit, I will sift them no further; many of that sort are here and there
dispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation.
Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is
only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or
that good which is only fine:

"Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant,"

["Which more delight in the tasting than in being drunk."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 5.]

everything that pleases does not nourish:

"Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur."

["Where the question is not about the wit, but about the soul."
--Seneca, Ep., 75.]

To see the trouble that Seneca gives himself to fortify himself against
death; to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, and
bustle so long upon this perch, would have lessened his reputation with
me, had he not very bravely held himself at the last. His so ardent and
frequent agitations discover that he was in himself impetuous and
passionate,

"Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius . . .
non est alius ingenio, alius ammo color;"

["A great courage speaks more calmly and more securely. There is
not one complexion for the wit and another for the mind."
--Seneca, Ep. 114, 115]

he must be convinced at his own expense; and he in some sort discovers
that he was hard pressed by his enemy. Plutarch's way, by how much it is
more disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much more
manly and persuasive: and I am apt to believe that his soul had more
assured and more regular motions. The one more sharp, pricks and makes
us start, and more touches the soul; the other more constantly solid,
forms, establishes, and supports us, and more touches the understanding.
That ravishes the judgment, this wins it. I have likewise seen other
writings, yet more reverenced than these, that in the representation of
the conflict they maintain against the temptations of the flesh, paint
them, so sharp, so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who are of
the common herd, are as much to wonder at the strangeness and unknown
force of their temptation, as at the resisting it.

To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science? Let us
look down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of the
earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle
nor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extracts
effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
inquisitively study in the schools: how many do I ordinarily see who
slight poverty? how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm or
regret? He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his
father or his son. The very names by which they call diseases sweeten
and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than
a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as
they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great
and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never
keep their beds but to die:

"Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem
scientiam versa est."

["That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and
subtle science."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]

I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestine
troubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had the
enemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on the
other,