The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 15

M >> Michel de Montaigne >> The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 15


"Me tabula sacer
Votiva paries, indicat uvida
Suspendisse potenti
Vestimenta maris deo:"

["The holy wall, by my votive table, shows that I have hanged up my
wet clothes in honour of the powerful god of the sea."
--Horace, Od., i. 5, 13.]

'tis now time to speak out. But as I might, per adventure, say to
another, "Thou talkest idly, my friend; the love of thy time has little
commerce with faith and integrity;"

"Haec si tu postules
Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:"

["If you seek to make these things certain by reason, you will do no
more than if you should seek to be mad in your senses."
--Terence, Eun., act i., sc. i, v. 16.]

on the contrary, also, if it were for me to begin again, certainly it
should be by the same method and the same progress, how fruitless soever
it might be to me; folly and insufficiency are commendable in an
incommendable action: the farther I go from their humour in this, I
approach so much nearer to my own. As to the rest, in this traffic, I
did not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it,
but did not forget myself. I retained the little sense and discretion
that nature has given me, entire for their service and my own: a little
emotion, but no dotage. My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even to
debauch and licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice,
and cruelty, never. I would not purchase the pleasure of this vice at
any price, but content myself with its proper and simple cost:

"Nullum intra se vitium est."

["Nothing is a vice in itself."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]

I almost equally hate a stupid and slothful laziness, as I do a toilsome
and painful employment; this pinches, the other lays me asleep. I like
wounds as well as bruises, and cuts as well as dry blows. I found in
this commerce, when I was the most able for it, a just moderation betwixt
these extremes. Love is a sprightly, lively, and gay agitation; I was
neither troubled nor afflicted with it, but heated, and moreover,
disordered; a man must stop there; it hurts nobody but fools. A young
man asked the philosopher Panetius if it were becoming a wise man to be
in love? "Let the wise man look to that," answered he, "but let not thou
and I, who are not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent an
affair, that enslaves us to others, and renders us contemptible to
ourselves." He said true that we are not to intrust a thing so
precipitous in itself to a soul that has not wherewithal to withstand its
assaults and disprove practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudence
and love cannot live together. 'Tis a vain employment, 'tis true,
unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but carried on after this manner,
I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul and to
rouse up a heavy body; and, as an experienced physician, I would
prescribe it to a man of my form and condition, as soon as any other
recipe whatever, to rouse and keep him in vigour till well advanced in
years, and to defer the approaches of age. Whilst we are but in the
suburbs, and that the pulse yet beats:

"Dum nova canities, dum prima et recta senectus,
Dum superest lachesi quod torqueat, et pedibus me
Porto meis, nullo dextram subeunte bacillo,"

["Whilst the white hair is new, whilst old age is still straight
shouldered, whilst there still remains something for Lachesis to
spin, whilst I walk on my own legs, and need no staff to lean upon."
--Juvenal, iii. 26.]

we have need to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation
as this. Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the
good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking
of an amorous object:

"Leaning," said he, "my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, as
we were reading together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a sudden
sting in my shoulder like the biting of an insect, which I still felt
above five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart." So
that merely the accidental touch, and of a shoulder, heated and altered a
soul cooled and enerved by age, and the strictest liver of all mankind.
And, pray, why not? Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem,
any other thing. Philosophy does not contend against natural pleasures,
provided they be moderate, and only preaches moderation, not a total
abstinence; the power of its resistance is employed against those that
are adulterate and strange. Philosophy says that the appetites of the
body ought not to be augmented by the mind, and ingeniously warns us not
to stir up hunger by saturity; not to stuff, instead of merely filling,
the belly; to avoid all enjoyments that may bring us to want; and all
meats and drinks that bring thirst and hunger: as, in the service of
love, she prescribes us to take such an object as may simply satisfy the
body's need, and does not stir the soul, which ought only barely to
follow and assist the body, without mixing in the affair. But have I not
reason to hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are
somewhat over strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that in
a body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, 'tis excusable to warm and
support it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore the
appetite and cheerfulness it has lost of itself.

May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison,
that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously
break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should
carry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure as
we do towards that of pain! Pain was (for example) vehement even to
perfection in the souls of the saints by penitence: the body had there
naturally a sham by the right of union, and yet might have but little
part in the cause; and yet are they not contented that it should barely
follow and assist the afflicted soul: they have afflicted itself with
grievous and special torments, to the end that by emulation of one
another the soul and body might plunge man into misery by so much more
salutiferous as it is more severe. In like manner, is it not injustice,
in bodily pleasures, to subdue and keep under the soul, and say that it
must therein be dragged along as to some enforced and servile obligation
and necessity? 'Tis rather her part to hatch and cherish them, there to
present herself, and to invite them, the authority of ruling belonging to
her; as it is also her part, in my opinion, in pleasures that are proper
to her, to inspire and infuse into the body all the sentiment it is
capable of, and to study how to make them sweet and useful to it. For it
is good reason, as they say, that the body should not pursue its
appetites to the prejudice of the mind; but why is it not also the reason
that the mind should not pursue hers to the prejudice of the body?

I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition,
quarrels, lawsuits do for others who, like me, have no particular
vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me
vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure
my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and
dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon
sound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and
esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and
redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome
thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill
posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again,
in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up
the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of
life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin. But I
very well understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weakness
and long experience our taste is become more delicate and nice; we ask
most when we bring least, and are harder to choose when we least deserve
to be accepted: and knowing ourselves for what we are, we are less
confident and more distrustful; nothing can assure us of being beloved,
considering our condition and theirs. I am out of countenance to see
myself in company with those young wanton creatures:

"Cujus in indomito constantior inguine nervus,
Quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret."

["In whose unbridled reins the vigour is more inherent than in the
young tree on the hills."--Horace, Epod., xii. 19.]

To what end should we go insinuate our misery amid their gay and
sprightly humour?

"Possint ut juvenes visere fervidi.
Multo non sine risu,
Dilapsam in cineres facem."

["As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning
torch worn to ashes."--Horace, Od., iv. 13, 21.]

They have strength and reason on their side; let us give way; we have
nothing to do there: and these blossoms of springing beauty suffer not
themselves to be handled by such benumbed hands nor dealt with by mere
material means, for, as the old philosopher answered one who jeered him
because he could not gain the favour of a young girl he made love to:
"Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese." It is a commerce
that requires relation and correspondence: the other pleasures we receive
may be acknowledged by recompenses of another nature, but this is not to
be paid but with the same kind of coin. In earnest, in this sport, the
pleasure I give more tickles my imagination than that they give me; now,
he has nothing of generosity in him who can receive pleasure where he
confers none--it must needs be a mean soul that will owe all, and can be
content to maintain relations with persons to whom he is a continual
charge; there is no beauty, grace, nor privacy so exquisite that a
gentleman ought to desire at this rate. If they can only be kind to us
out of pity, I had much rather die than live upon charity. I would have
right to ask, in the style wherein I heard them beg in Italy: "Fate ben
per voi,"--["Do good for yourself."]--or after the manner that Cyrus
exhorted his soldiers, "Who loves himself let him follow me."--"Consort
yourself," some one will say to me, "with women of your own condition,
whom like fortune will render more easy to your desire." O ridiculous
and insipid composition!

"Nolo
Barbam vellere mortuo leoni."

["I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion."--Martial]

Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, that
he never made love to any but old women. For my part, I take more
pleasure in but seeing the just and sweet mixture of two young beauties,
or only in meditating on it in my fancy, than myself in acting second in
a pitiful and imperfect conjunction;

[Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second
with a deformed creature."]

I leave that fantastic appetite to the Emperor Galba, who was only for
old curried flesh: and to this poor wretch:

"O ego Di faciant talem to cernere possim,
Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis,
Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis!"

[Ovid, who (Ex. Ponto, i. 4, 49) writes to his wife, "O would the
gods arrange that such I might see thee, and bring dear kisses to
thy changed locks, and embrace thy withered body with my arms"]

Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon,
a young boy of Chios, thinking by fine dressing to acquire the beauty
that nature had denied him, came to the philosopher Arcesilaus and asked
him if it was possible for a wise man to be in love--"Yes," replied he,
"provided it be not with a farded and adulterated beauty like thine."

[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36. The question was whether a wise man
could love him. Cotton has "Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios."]

Ugliness of a confessed antiquity is to me less old and less ugly than
another that is polished and plastered up. Shall I speak it, without the
danger of having my throat cut? love, in my opinion, is not properly and
naturally in its season, but in the age next to childhood,

"Quem si puellarum insereres choro,
Mille sagaces falleret hospites,
Discrimen obscurum, solutis
Crinibus ambiguoque vultu:"

["Whom if thou shouldst place in a company of girls, it would
require a thousand experts to distinguish him, with his loose locks
and ambiguous countenance."--Horace, Od., ii. 5, 21.]

nor beauty neither; for whereas Homer extends it so far as to the budding
of the beard, Plato himself has remarked this as rare: and the reason why
the sophist Bion so pleasantly called the first appearing hairs of
adolescence 'Aristogitons' and 'Harmodiuses'--[Plutarch, On Love, c.34.]--
is sufficiently known. I find it in virility already in some sort a
little out of date, though not so much as in old age;

"Importunus enim transvolat aridas
Quercus."

["For it uncivilly passes over withered oaks."
--Horace, Od., iv. 13, 9.]

and Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, like a woman, very far extends the
advantage of women, ordaining that it is time, at thirty years old, to
convert the title of fair into that of good. The shorter authority we
give to love over our lives, 'tis so much the better for us. Do but
observe his port; 'tis a beardless boy. Who knows not how, in his school
they proceed contrary to all order; study, exercise, and usage are their
ways for insufficiency there novices rule:

"Amor ordinem nescit."

["Love ignores rules." (Or:) "Love knows no rule."
--St. Jerome, Letter to Chyomatius.]

Doubtless his conduct is much more graceful when mixed with inadvertency
and trouble; miscarriages and ill successes give him point and grace;
provided it be sharp and eager, 'tis no great matter whether it be
prudent or no: do but observe how he goes reeling, tripping, and playing:
you put him in the stocks when you guide him by art and wisdom; and he is
restrained of his divine liberty when put into those hairy and callous
clutches.

As to the rest, I often hear the women set out this intelligence as
entirely spiritual, and disdain to put the interest the senses there have
into consideration; everything there serves; but I can say that I have
often seen that we have excused the weakness of their understandings in
favour of their outward beauty, but have never yet seen that in favour of
mind, how mature and full soever, any of them would hold out a hand to a
body that was never so little in decadence. Why does not some one of
them take it into her head to make that noble Socratical bargain between
body and soul, purchasing a philosophical and spiritual intelligence and
generation at the price of her thighs, which is the highest price she can
get for them? Plato ordains in his Laws that he who has performed any
signal and advantageous exploit in war may not be refused during the
whole expedition, his age or ugliness notwithstanding, a kiss or any
other amorous favour from any woman whatever. What he thinks to be so
just in recommendation of military valour, why may it not be the same in
recommendation of any other good quality? and why does not some woman
take a fancy to possess over her companions the glory of this chaste
love? I may well say chaste;

"Nam si quando ad praelia ventum est,
Ut quondam in stipulis magnus sine viribus ignis,
Incassum furit:"

["For when they sometimes engage in love's battle,
his sterile ardour lights up but as the flame of a straw."
--Virgil, Georg., iii. 98.]

the vices that are stifled in the thought are not the worst.

To conclude this notable commentary, which has escaped from me in a
torrent of babble, a torrent sometimes impetuous and hurtful,

"Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum
Procurrit casto virginis a gremio,
Quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatuat,
Dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur,
Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu
Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor."

["As when an apple, sent by a lover secretly to his mistress, falls
from the chaste virgin's bosom, where she had quite forgotten it;
when, starting at her mother's coming in, it is shaken out and rolls
over the floor before her eyes, a conscious blush covers her face."
--Catullus, lxv. 19.]

I say that males and females are cast in the same mould, and that,
education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Plato
indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all
studies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in his
Commonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinction
betwixt their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sex
than to excuse the other; 'tis according to the saying,

"Le fourgon se moque de la paele."
["The Pot and the Kettle."]




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A gallant man does not give over his pursuit for being refused
A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted
Appetite is more sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes
Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age
Certain other things that people hide only to show them
Chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act
Dearness is a good sauce to meat
Each amongst you has made somebody cuckold
Eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination
Evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge
Feminine polity has a mysterious procedure
Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it
First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time
Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese.
Give the ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture
Guess at our meaning under general and doubtful terms
Hate all sorts of obligation and restraint
Have ever had a great respect for her I loved
Have no other title left me to these things but by the ears
Heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault
Husbands hate their wives only because they themselves do wrong
I am apt to dream that I dream
I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought
I had much rather die than live upon charity.
I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence
If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me
If they can only be kind to us out of pity
In everything else a man may keep some decorum
In those days, the tailor took measure of it
Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both
Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation
Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden
It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in
Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience
Judgment of duty principally lies in the will
Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs
"Let a man take which course he will," said he; "he will repent."
Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think
Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty
Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage
Love them the less for our own faults
Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty
Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance
Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love
Men make them (the rules) without their (women's) help
Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known
Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer)
Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice
Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire
No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active
O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime
O, the furious advantage of opportunity!
Observed the laws of marriage, than I either promised or expect
One may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare
Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune
Plato says, that the gods made man for their sport
Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing)
Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride
Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture
Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will
Rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so
Represented her a little too passionate for a married Venus
Revenge more wounds our children than it heals us
Sex: To put fools and wise men, beasts and us, on a level
Sharps and sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the wise
Sins that make the least noise are the worst
Sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul
Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe
The best authors too much humble and discourage me
The impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor
The privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age
Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools
There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude
These sleepy, sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous
They better conquer us by flying
They buy a cat in a sack
They err as much who too much forbear Venus
They must become insensible and invisible to satisfy us
They who would fight custom with grammar are triflers
Those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be fear
Those within (marriage) despair of getting out
Tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces
To what friend dare you intrust your griefs
Twas a happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband
Unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours
Very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous
Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality
We ask most when we bring least
We say a good marriage because no one says to the contrary.
When jealousy seizes these poor souls
When their eyes give the lie to their tongue
Who escapes being talked of at the same rate
Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation
Would in this affair have a man a little play the servant