The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 8

M >> Michel de Montaigne >> The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 8


And I do further believe that the liberty every one has taken to disperse
the sacred writ into so many idioms carries with it a great deal more of
danger than utility. The Jews, Mohammedans, and almost all other
peoples, have reverentially espoused the language wherein their mysteries
were first conceived, and have expressly, and not without colour of
reason, forbidden the alteration of them into any other. Are we assured
that in Biscay and in Brittany there are enough competent judges of this
affair to establish this translation into their own language? The
universal Church has not a more difficult and solemn judgment to make.
In preaching and speaking the interpretation is vague, free, mutable, and
of a piece by itself; so 'tis not the same thing.

One of our Greek historians age justly censures the he lived in, because
the secrets of the Christian religion were dispersed into the hands of
every mechanic, to expound and argue upon, according to his own fancy,
and that we ought to be much ashamed, we who by God's especial favour
enjoy the pure mysteries of piety, to suffer them to be profaned by the
ignorant rabble; considering that the Gentiles expressly forbad Socrates,
Plato, and the other sages to inquire into or so much as mention the
things committed to the priests of Delphi; and he says, moreover, that
the factions of princes upon theological subjects are armed not with zeal
but fury; that zeal springs from the divine wisdom and justice, and
governs itself with prudence and moderation, but degenerates into hatred
and envy, producing tares and nettles instead of corn and wine when
conducted by human passions. And it was truly said by another, who,
advising the Emperor Theodosius, told him that disputes did not so much
rock the schisms of the Church asleep, as it roused and animated
heresies; that, therefore, all contentions and dialectic disputations
were to be avoided, and men absolutely to acquiesce in the prescriptions
and formulas of faith established by the ancients. And the Emperor
Andronicus having overheard some great men at high words in his palace
with Lapodius about a point of ours of great importance, gave them so
severe a check as to threaten to cause them to be thrown into the river
if they did not desist. The very women and children nowadays take upon
them to lecture the oldest and most experienced men about the
ecclesiastical laws; whereas the first of those of Plato forbids them to
inquire so much as into the civil laws, which were to stand instead of
divine ordinances; and, allowing the old men to confer amongst themselves
or with the magistrate about those things, he adds, provided it be not in
the presence of young or profane persons.

A bishop has left in writing that at the other end of the world there is
an isle, by the ancients called Dioscorides, abundantly fertile in all
sorts of trees and fruits, and of an exceedingly healthful air; the
inhabitants of which are Christians, having churches and altars, only
adorned with crosses without any other images, great observers of fasts
and feasts, exact payers of their tithes to the priests, and so chaste,
that none of them is permitted to have to do with more than one woman in
his life--[What Osorius says is that these people only had one wife at a
time.]--as to the rest, so content with their condition, that environed
with the sea they know nothing of navigation, and so simple that they
understand not one syllable of the religion they profess and wherein they
are so devout: a thing incredible to such as do not know that the Pagans,
who are so zealous idolaters, know nothing more of their gods than their
bare names and their statues. The ancient beginning of 'Menalippus', a
tragedy of Euripides, ran thus:

"O Jupiter! for that name alone
Of what thou art to me is known."

I have also known in my time some men's writings found fault with for
being purely human and philosophical, without any mixture of theology;
and yet, with some show of reason, it might, on the contrary, be said
that the divine doctrine, as queen and regent of the rest, better keeps
her state apart, that she ought to be sovereign throughout, not
subsidiary and suffragan, and that, peradventure, grammatical,
rhetorical, logical examples may elsewhere be more suitably chosen, as
also the material for the stage, games, and public entertainments, than
from so sacred a matter; that divine reasons are considered with greater
veneration and attention by themselves, and in their own proper style,
than when mixed with and adapted to human discourse; that it is a fault
much more often observed that the divines write too humanly, than that
the humanists write not theologically enough. Philosophy, says St.
Chrysostom, has long been banished the holy schools, as an handmaid
altogether useless and thought unworthy to look, so much as in passing
by the door, into the sanctuary of the holy treasures of the celestial
doctrine; that the human way of speaking is of a much lower form and
ought not to adopt for herself the dignity and majesty of divine
eloquence. Let who will 'verbis indisciplinatis' talk of fortune,
destiny, accident, good and evil hap, and other suchlike phrases,
according to his own humour; I for my part propose fancies merely human
and merely my own, and that simply as human fancies, and separately
considered, not as determined by any decree from heaven, incapable of
doubt or dispute; matter of opinion, not matter of faith; things which I
discourse of according to my own notions, not as I believe, according to
God; after a laical, not clerical, and yet always after a very religious
manner, as children prepare their exercises, not to instruct but to be
instructed.

And might it not be said, that an edict enjoining all people but such as
are public professors of divinity, to be very reserved in writing of
religion, would carry with it a very good colour of utility and justice
--and to me, amongst the rest peradventure, to hold my prating? I have
been told that even those who are not of our Church nevertheless amongst
themselves expressly forbid the name of God to be used in common
discourse, nor so much even by way of interjection, exclamation,
assertion of a truth, or comparison; and I think them in the right: upon
what occasion soever we call upon God to accompany and assist us, it
ought always to be done with the greatest reverence and devotion.

There is, as I remember, a passage in Xenophon where he tells us that we
ought so much the more seldom to call upon God, by how much it is hard to
compose our souls to such a degree of calmness, patience, and devotion as
it ought to be in at such a time; otherwise our prayers are not only vain
and fruitless, but vicious: "forgive us," we say, "our trespasses, as we
forgive them that trespass against us"; what do we mean by this petition
but that we present to God a soul free from all rancour and revenge? And
yet we make nothing of invoking God's assistance in our vices, and
inviting Him into our unjust designs:

"Quae, nisi seductis, nequeas committere divis"

["Which you can only impart to the gods, when you have gained them
over."--Persius, ii. 4.]

the covetous man prays for the conservation of his vain and superfluous
riches; the ambitious for victory and the good conduct of his fortune;
the thief calls Him to his assistance, to deliver him from the dangers
and difficulties that obstruct his wicked designs, or returns Him thanks
for the facility he has met with in cutting a man's throat; at the door
of the house men are going to storm or break into by force of a petard,
they fall to prayers for success, their intentions and hopes of cruelty,
avarice, and lust.

"Hoc igitur, quo to Jovis aurem impellere tentas,
Dic agedum Staio: 'proh Jupiter! O bone, clamet,
Jupiter!' At sese non clamet Jupiter ipse."

["This therefore, with which you seek to draw the ear of Jupiter,
say to Staius. 'O Jupiter! O good Jupiter!' let him cry. Think
you Jupiter himself would not cry out upon it?"--Persius, ii. 21.]

Marguerite, Queen of Navarre,--[In the Heptameron.]--tells of a young
prince, who, though she does not name him, is easily enough by his great
qualities to be known, who going upon an amorous assignation to lie with
an advocate's wife of Paris, his way thither being through a church, he
never passed that holy place going to or returning from his pious
exercise, but he always kneeled down to pray. Wherein he would employ
the divine favour, his soul being full of such virtuous meditations,
I leave others to judge, which, nevertheless, she instances for a
testimony of singular devotion. But this is not the only proof we have
that women are not very fit to treat of theological affairs.

A true prayer and religious reconciling of ourselves to Almighty God
cannot enter into an impure soul, subject at the very time to the
dominion of Satan. He who calls God to his assistance whilst in a course
of vice, does as if a cut-purse should call a magistrate to help him, or
like those who introduce the name of God to the attestation of a lie.

"Tacito mala vota susurro
Concipimus."

["We whisper our guilty prayers."---Lucan, v. 104.]

There are few men who durst publish to the world the prayers they make to
Almighty God:

"Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque, humilesque susurros
Tollere de templis, et aperto vivere voto"

["'Tis not convenient for every one to bring the prayers he mutters
out of the temple, and to give his wishes to the public ear.
--"Persius, ii. 6.]

and this is the reason why the Pythagoreans would have them always public
and heard by every one, to the end they might not prefer indecent or
unjust petitions as this man:

"Clare quum dixit, Apollo!
Labra movet, metuens audiri: Pulcra Laverna,
Da mihi fallere, da justum sanctumque videri;
Noctem peccatis, et fraudibus objice nubem."

["When he has clearly said Apollo! he moves his lips, fearful to be
heard; he murmurs: O fair Laverna, grant me the talent to deceive;
grant me to appear holy and just; shroud my sins with night, and
cast a cloud over my frauds."--Horace, Ep., i. 16, 59.--(Laverna
was the goddess of thieves.)]

The gods severely punished the wicked prayers of OEdipus in granting
them: he had prayed that his children might amongst themselves determine
the succession to his throne by arms, and was so miserable as to see
himself taken at his word. We are not to pray that all things may go as
we would have them, but as most concurrent with prudence.

We seem, in truth, to make use of our prayers as of a kind of jargon, and
as those do who employ holy words about sorceries and magical operations;
and as if we reckoned the benefit we are to reap from them as depending
upon the contexture, sound, and jingle of words, or upon the grave
composing of the countenance. For having the soul contaminated with
concupiscence, not touched with repentance, or comforted by any late
reconciliation with God, we go to present Him such words as the memory
suggests to the tongue, and hope from thence to obtain the remission of
our sins. There is nothing so easy, so sweet, and so favourable, as the
divine law: it calls and invites us to her, guilty and abominable as we
are; extends her arms and receives us into her bosom, foul and polluted
as we at present are, and are for the future to be. But then, in return,
we are to look upon her with a respectful eye; we are to receive this
pardon with all gratitude and submission, and for that instant at least,
wherein we address ourselves to her, to have the soul sensible of the
ills we have committed, and at enmity with those passions that seduced us
to offend her; neither the gods nor good men (says Plato) will accept the
present of a wicked man:

"Immunis aram si terigit manus,
Non sumptuosa blandior hostia
Mollivit aversos Penates
Farre pio et saliente mica."

["If a pure hand has touched the altar, the pious offering of a
small cake and a few grains of salt will appease the offended gods
more effectually than costly sacrifices."
--Horace, Od., iii. 23, 17.]




CHAPTER LVII

OF AGE

I cannot allow of the way in which we settle for ourselves the duration
of our life. I see that the sages contract it very much in comparison of
the common opinion: "what," said the younger Cato to those who would stay
his hand from killing himself, "am I now of an age to be reproached that
I go out of the world too soon?" And yet he was but eight-and-forty
years old. He thought that to be a mature and advanced age, considering
how few arrive unto it. And such as, soothing their thoughts with I know
not what course of nature, promise to themselves some years beyond it,
could they be privileged from the infinite number of accidents to which
we are by a natural subjection exposed, they might have some reason so to
do. What am idle conceit is it to expect to die of a decay of strength,
which is the effect of extremest age, and to propose to ourselves no
shorter lease of life than that, considering it is a kind of death of all
others the most rare and very seldom seen? We call that only a natural
death; as if it were contrary to nature to see a man break his neck with
a fall, be drowned in shipwreck, be snatched away with a pleurisy or the
plague, and as if our ordinary condition did not expose us to these
inconveniences. Let us no longer flatter ourselves with these fine
words; we ought rather, peradventure, to call that natural which is
general, common, and universal.

To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and,
therefore, so much less natural than the others; 'tis the last and
extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for.
It is, indeed, the bourn beyond which we are not to pass, and which the
law of nature has set as a limit, not to be exceeded; but it is, withal,
a privilege she is rarely seen to give us to last till then. 'Tis a
lease she only signs by particular favour, and it may be to one only in
the space of two or three ages, and then with a pass to boot, to carry
him through all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way
of this long career. And therefore my opinion is, that when once forty
years we should consider it as an age to which very few arrive. For
seeing that men do not usually proceed so far, it is a sign that we are
pretty well advanced; and since we have exceeded the ordinary bounds,
which is the just measure of life, we ought not to expect to go much
further; having escaped so many precipices of death, whereinto we have
seen so many other men fall, we should acknowledge that so extraordinary
a fortune as that which has hitherto rescued us from those eminent
perils, and kept us alive beyond the ordinary term of living, is not like
to continue long.

'Tis a fault in our very laws to maintain this error: these say that a
man is not capable of managing his own estate till he be five-and-twenty
years old, whereas he will have much ado to manage his life so long.
Augustus cut off five years from the ancient Roman standard, and declared
that thirty years old was sufficient for a judge. Servius Tullius
superseded the knights of above seven-and-forty years of age from the
fatigues of war; Augustus dismissed them at forty-five; though methinks
it seems a little unreasonable that men should be sent to the fireside
till five-and-fifty or sixty years of age. I should be of opinion that
our vocation and employment should be as far as possible extended for the
public good: I find the fault on the other side, that they do not employ
us early enough. This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at
nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to
determine a dispute about a gutter.

For my part, I believe our souls are adult at twenty as much as they are
ever like to be, and as capable then as ever. A soul that has not by
that time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after
come to proof. The natural qualities and virtues produce what they have
of vigorous and fine, within that term or never,

"Si l'espine rion picque quand nai,
A pene que picque jamai,"

["If the thorn does not prick at its birth,
'twill hardly ever prick at all."]

as they say in Dauphin.

Of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort
soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more were
performed before the age of thirty than after; and this ofttimes in the
very lives of the same men. May I not confidently instance in those of
Hannibal and his great rival Scipio? The better half of their lives they
lived upon the glory they had acquired in their youth; great men after,
'tis true, in comparison of others; but by no means in comparison of
themselves. As to my own particular, I do certainly believe that since
that age, both my understanding and my constitution have rather decayed
than improved, and retired rather than advanced. 'Tis possible, that
with those who make the best use of their time, knowledge and experience
may increase with their years; but vivacity, promptitude, steadiness, and
other pieces of us, of much greater importance, and much more essentially
our own, languish and decay:

"Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi
Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,
Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque, mensque."

["When once the body is shaken by the violence of time,
blood and vigour ebbing away, the judgment halts,
the tongue and the mind dote."--Lucretius, iii. 452.]

Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind; and I have
seen enough who have got a weakness in their brains before either in
their legs or stomach; and by how much the more it is a disease of no
great pain to the sufferer, and of obscure symptoms, so much greater is
the danger. For this reason it is that I complain of our laws, not that
they keep us too long to our work, but that they set us to work too late.
For the frailty of life considered, and to how many ordinary and natural
rocks it is exposed, one ought not to give up so large a portion of it to
childhood, idleness, and apprenticeship.

[Which Cotton thus renders: "Birth though noble, ought not to share
so large a vacancy, and so tedious a course of education." Florio
(1613) makes the passage read as-follows: "Methinks that,
considering the weakness of our life, and seeing the infinite number
of ordinary rocks and natural dangers it is subject unto, we should
not, so soon as we come into the world, allot so large a share
thereof unto unprofitable wantonness in youth, ill-breeding
idleness, and slow-learning prentisage."]




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Advise to choose weapons of the shortest sort
An ignorance that knowledge creates and begets
Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it
Can neither keep nor enjoy anything with a good grace
Change of fashions
Chess: this idle and childish game
Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato
Death of old age the most rare and very seldom seen
Diogenes, esteeming us no better than flies or bladders
Do not to pray that all things may go as we would have them
Excel above the common rate in frivolous things
Expresses more contempt and condemnation than the other
Fancy that others cannot believe otherwise than as he does
Gradations above and below pleasure
Greatest apprehensions, from things unseen, concealed
He did not think mankind worthy of a wise man's concern
Home anxieties and a mind enslaved by wearing complaints
How infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is
I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback
Led by the ears by this charming harmony of words
Little knacks and frivolous subtleties
Men approve of things for their being rare and new
Must of necessity walk in the steps of another
Natural death the most rare and very seldom seen
Not to instruct but to be instructed.
Present Him such words as the memory suggests to the tongue
Psalms of King David: promiscuous, indiscreet
Rhetoric: an art to flatter and deceive
Rhetoric: to govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble
Sitting betwixt two stools
Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind
Stupidity and facility natural to the common people
The Bible: the wicked and ignorant grow worse by it.
The faintness that surprises in the exercises of Venus
Thucydides: which was the better wrestler
To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular
To make little things appear great was his profession
To smell, though well, is to stink
Valour will cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear
Viscid melting kisses of youthful ardour in my wanton age
We can never be despised according to our full desert
When we have got it, we want something else
Women who paint, pounce, and plaster up their ruins