The Complete Essays (108 page)

It is to go far beyond having no fear of death actually to want to taste it, to savour it.

[C] The account of what happened to Cleanthes the philosopher is a close parallel. His gums were swollen and rotting; the doctors advised extreme abstinence. After two days of fasting he made such a good recovery that they pronounced him cured and allowed him to return to his usual way of life. He on the other hand already savouring a kind of sweetness in his failing powers, determined not to retreat and crossed that boundary towards which he had so firmly advanced.
²⁵

[A] Tullius Marcellinus, a Roman youth, wishing to forestall his fatal hour so as to rid himself of an illness which was battering him more than he was prepared to put up with even though his doctors promised him a
certain, but not a quick, cure, called his friends together to consider the matter. ‘Some,’ says Seneca, ‘gave him the advice which they would have cowardly chosen for themselves; others, out of flattery, the advice which they thought would be most pleasing to him; but a Stoic said the following: “Do not toil over it, Marcellinus, as if you were considering anything important: it is no great thing to be alive: your servants and the animals are; the great thing is to die honourably, wisely and with constancy. Think how long you have been doing the same things – eating, drinking and sleeping: drinking, sleeping and eating. We are for ever going round in that circle; not only bad and intolerable mishaps but merely being sated with living gives us a desire for death.” ’

Marcellinus – he went on – did not need anyone to advise him: he wanted someone who could help him. His servants were frightened of getting mixed up with it; but that Stoic philosopher made them understand that a man’s domestic servants fall under suspicion only when there is reason to doubt that their master’s death was deliberate; therefore they would set as bad an example by hindering him as by murdering him, since

Invitum qui servat idem facit occidenti
.
[To save a man against his will is the same as murdering him.]
²⁶

He then suggested to Marcellinus that, just as when we have finished our dinners we leave what is left on the tables for those who have waited on us, so too, having finished his life, it would not be inappropriate to distribute something among those who were to help him. Now Marcellinus was of a frank and generous mind; he caused a certain sum to be shared among his servants and comforted them. For the rest, he needed neither blade nor bloodshed: he undertook not to run away from this life but to take leave of it; not to escape from this life but to assay death. And to give himself leisure to haggle with it, he gave up all food; three days later he had himself sprinkled with warm water; he failed away gradually, not, judging from what he said, without a feeling of pleasure. Indeed those who have experienced such failings away of the mind brought on by weakness say that they felt no pain but rather indeed a certain kind of pleasure, like dropping off to sleep and resting.
²⁷

There you have deaths which have been carefully prepared for and digested. But so that Cato alone should furnish a complete model of virtue it seems that his good Destiny gave him some trouble in the arm with which he dealt himself the blow, in order to afford him leisure to confront Death and to fall about its neck, strengthening his courage in that peril not weakening it. And if it had been up to me to portray him in his most exalted posture, it would have shown him all covered with blood and tearing out his entrails, rather than sword in hand as did the sculptors of his time. For that second murder was more ecstatic than the first.
²⁸

14. How our mind tangles itself up

[Stoic philosophers were in a quandary about
adiaphora,
(that is) things which are ‘indifferent’ – neither good nor bad in themselves. How can the wise man possibly choose between them? Montaigne is led to conclude this short chapter with a lesson about human pride and the weakness of reason.]

[A] It is a pleasant thought to imagine a mind exactly poised between two parallel desires, for it would indubitably never reach a decision, since making a choice implies that there is an inequality of value; if anyone were to place us between a bottle and a ham when we had an equal appetite for drink and for food there would certainly be no remedy but to die of thirst and of hunger!
¹

In order to provide against this difficulty the Stoics, when you ask them how our souls manage to choose between two things which are indifferent and how we come to take one coin rather than another from a large number of crowns when they are all alike and there is no reason which can sway our preference, reply that this motion in our souls is extraordinary and not subject to rules, coming into us from some outside impulse, incidental and fortuitous.

It seems to me that we could say that nothing ever presents itself to us in which there is not some difference, however slight: either to sight or to touch there is always an additional something which attracts us even though we may not perceive it.

Similarly if anyone would postulate a cord, equally strong throughout its length, it is impossible, quite impossible, that it should break. For where would you want it to start to fray? And it is not in nature for it all to break at once.

Then if anyone were to follow that up with those geometrical propositions which demonstrate by convincing demonstrations that the container is greater than the thing contained and that the centre is as great as the
circumference, and which can find two lines which ever approach each other but can never meet,
²
and then with the philosopher’s stone and the squaring of the circle, where reason and practice are so opposed, he would perhaps draw from them arguments to support the bold saying of Pliny:
‘Solum certum nihil esse certi, et homine nihil miserius aut superbius.’
[There is nothing certain except that nothing is certain, and nothing more wretched than Man nor more arrogant.]
³

15. That difficulty increases desire

[The opening words of this chapter are a Pyrrhonist saying inscribed in Montaigne’s library. Montaigne sees the principle of contrariness working in all things, in virtue as in vice, in politics as in God’s Church. We are shown also that, in a matter of the greatest importance, Montaigne lived in accordance with his principles. The area around his estates at Montaigne was fiercely fought over and often controlled by his opponents, but he never fortified his manor-house nor hid his spoons.]

[A] ‘No reason but has its contrary,’ says the wisest of the Schools of Philosophy.
¹

I have just been chewing over that other fine saying which one of the Ancient philosophers cites as a reason for holding life in contempt: ‘No good can bring us pleasure except one which we have prepared ourselves to lose’;
²
[C]
‘In aequo est dolor amissae rei et timor amittendae;’
[Sorrow for something lost is equal to the fear of losing it;]
³
he wanted to show by that that the fruition of life can never be truly pleasing if we go in fear of losing it.
⁴

But we could, on the contrary, say that we clasp that good in an embrace which is all the fonder and all the tighter in that we see it as less surely ours, and fear that it may be taken from us. For we know from evidence that the presence of cold helps fire burn brighter and that our wills are sharpened by flat opposition:

[B]
Si nunquam Danaen habuisset ahenea turris,
Non esset Danae de Jove facta parens
.

[Danae would never have had a child by Juppiter had she never been shut up in a tower of bronze.]
⁵

[A] We see also that by nature there is nothing so contrary to our tastes than that satiety which comes from ease of access; and nothing which sharpens them more than rareness and difficulty:
‘Omnium rerum voluptas ipso quo debet fugare periculo crescit.’
[In all things pleasure is increased by the very danger which ought to make us flee from them.]
⁶

Galla, nega: satiatur amor, nisi gaudia torquent
.
[Say ‘No’ to him, Galla: Love is soon sated unless joys meet torments.]
⁷

To keep love in trim Lycurgus ordained that married couples in Sparta should only have intercourse with each other by stealth, and that it should be as much a disgrace for them to be discovered lying together as lying with others.
⁸
The difficulty of arranging trysts, the danger of being surprised, the embarrassment on the morning after,

et languor, et silentium,
Et latere petitus imo spiritus

[and listlessness and no word spoken and the sigh coming from the depth of our bosom]
⁹

– that is what gives smack to the sauce. [C] How many pleasant and very stimulating verbal frolics arise from the chaste and modest vocabulary we use when talking of sexual intercourse. [A] Pleasure itself seeks stimulation from pain. [A1] It tastes far more sweet when it hurts and takes your skin off. [A] Flora, the courtesan, said that she had never lain with Pompey without making him bear the marks of her teeth:
¹⁰

Quod petiere premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem
Corporis, et dentes inlidunt sæpe labellis:
Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant lædere idipsum,
Quodcunque est, rabies unde illæ germina surgunt
.

[The object of their desire they tightly hug, hurting each other’s body; they keep sinking their teeth into each other’s lips; some hidden goads prick them on to give pain to the very thing, whatever it is, from which spring the seeds of their ecstasy.]
¹¹

So it is with everything: it is difficulty which makes us prize things.

[B] The people of the Marches of Ancona more readily go to Saint James of Compostela to make their vows: those of Galicia, to Our Lady of Loreto. At Liège they sing the praises of the baths at Lucca: in Tuscany, of those of Spa-by-Liège. You hardly ever see a Roman in the fencing school of Rome: it is full of Frenchmen! Great Cato tired of his wife – just like the rest of us – while she was his: when she belonged to another he yearned for her.
¹²
[C] I had an old stallion which I put out to stud: there was no holding it back when it scented the mares. The ease of it all soon sated it where its own mares were concerned; but with other mares, as soon as one passes by its paddock it returns to its incessant neighings and its frenzied passions just as before.

[A] Our appetite scorns and passes over what it holds in its hand, so as to run after what it does not have:

Transvolat in medio posita, ed fugientia captat
.
[He leaps over what lies fixed in his path, to chase after whatever runs away.]
¹³

To forbid us something is to make us want it:

[B]
Nisi tu servare puellam
Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea!

[Unless you start looking after that girl of yours better, I shall soon stop wanting her!]
¹⁴

[A] To hand it over to us completely is to breed contempt for it in us. To Want and Plenty befall identical misfortunes.
¹⁵

Tibi quod superest, mihi quod defit, dolet
.

[You have too much of it, and that pains you: what pains me is that I do not have enough.]
¹⁶

We are equally troubled by desiring something and by possessing it. [A1] Coldness in mistresses is most painful, but in very truth compliance and availability are even more so; that is because the yearning which is born in us from the high opinion in which we hold the object of our love sharpens our love, and the choler similarly makes it hot: but satiety engenders a feeling of insipidness; our passion then is blunted, hesitant, weary and half-asleep:

[B]
Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem
.

[If any mistress wants to go on reigning over her lover, then let her scorn him.]
¹⁷

Contemnite, amantes,
Sic hodie veniet si qua negavit heri
.

[Scorn your mistress, young lovers: then she will come back today for what she denied you yesterday.]
¹⁸

[C] Why did Poppaea hit on the idea of hiding the beauties of her face behind a mask if not to make them more precious to her lovers?
¹⁹

[A1] Why do women now cover up those beauties – right down below their heels – which every woman wants to display and every man wants to see? Why do they clothe with so many obstacles, layer upon layer, those parts which are the principal seat of our desires – and of theirs? And what use are those defence-works with which our women have started to arm their thighs, if not to entrap our desires and to attract us by keeping us at a distance?

Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri;
[She flees into the willow trees – but wants you to see her first;]
[B]
Interdum tunica duxit operta moram
.
[Sometimes she delays me by letting her dress get in the way.]
²⁰

[A1] What is the purpose of that artful maidenly modesty, that poised coldness, that severe countenance, that professed ignorance of things which they know better than we do who are teaching them to them, if not to increase our desire to vanquish, overcome and bend to our passion all those conventional obstacles? For there is not only pleasure in making that sweet
gentleness and that girlish modesty go mad with sensual desire but glory as well in reducing a proud and imperious gravity to the mercy of our ardour.

There is glory, they say, in triumphing over coldness, modesty, chastity and moderation, and those who counsel ladies against such qualities betray both the ladies and themselves. We need to believe that their minds are quivering with fear; that the sound of our words offends the purity of their ears; that they hate us for it and yield to our insolence with an enforced fortitude.

Beauty, however powerful it may be, has no way of making itself savoured without such preliminaries. See how in Italy – where there are more beautiful women on sale, and finer ones too
²¹
– Beauty still has to seek extraneous means and other artifices to make herself attractive: and yet, in truth, being public and buyable she remains weak and languishing: [A] just as in virtue, even out of two similar actions, we hold the one to be more beautiful and more highly prized in which there are more difficulties and hazards to be faced.

It is an act of God’s Providence to allow his Holy Church to be, as we can see she now is, shaken by so many disturbances and tempests, in order by this opposition to awaken the souls of the pious and to bring them back from the idleness and torpor in which so long a period of calm had immersed them. If we weigh the loss we have suffered by the numbers of those who have been led into error against the gain which accrues to us from our having been brought back into fighting trim, with our zeal and our strength restored to new life for the battle, I am not sure whether the benefit does not outweigh the loss.

We thought we were tying our marriage-knots more tightly by removing all means of undoing them;
²²
but the tighter we pulled the knot of constraint the looser and slacker became the knot of our will and affection. In Rome, on the contrary, what made marriages honoured and secure for so long a period was freedom to break them at will. Men loved their wives more because they could lose them; and during a period when anyone was quite free to divorce, more than five hundred years went by before a single one did so:

Quod licet, ingratum est; quod non licet, acrius urit
.
[What is allowed has no charm: what is not allowed, we burn to do.]
²³

There is an opinion of an Ancient philosopher which we could add on this subject: punishments sharpen our vices rather than blunt them;
²⁴
[B] they do not engender a concern to do good (which is the result of reason and self-discipline) but only a concern not to be found out doing wrong:

Latius excisæ pestis contagia serpunt
.
[The contagious sore is cut out; the infection spreads imperceptibly wider.]
²⁵

[A] I do not know whether that opinion is true, but this I do know from experience: no polity has ever been reformed by such means. To bring order and rule to our morals we must depend on some other method.

[C] The Greek histories mention some neighbours of the Scythians, the Argippaei, who do not even have sticks or clubs for weapons; not only does no one ever set out to attack them but because of their virtuous holy lives, any man who seeks refuge with them is quite safe: no one would dare to come and lay hands on him. Recourse is had to them to settle any disputes which arise among men elsewhere.
²⁶

[B] And there is a nation where the gardens and fields which they want to protect are bounded by cotton-thread: it proves more secure and reliable than our hedges and ditches.
²⁷
[C]
‘Furem signata sollicitant… Aperta effractarius præterit.’
[Locked houses invite the thief: the burglar passes them by when they are wide open.]
²⁸

Perhaps it is ease of access, among other things, which serves to protect my dwelling from the violence of our civil wars. Defences attract offensives; defiance, attacks. I have weakened any designs which the soldiers may have on it by removing from such an exploit all the dangers and occasions for military glory which usually provide them with a pretext and an excuse. At times when justice is dead, anything done courageously is always done honourably: I make the taking of my house something cowardly and
treacherous. It is closed to no one who knocks. My entire protection consists of an old-fashioned courteous porter who serves not so much to protect my door as to welcome anyone to it with becoming grace. I have no guard, no watch, save that which the heavenly bodies provide for me. A gentleman is wrong to give the appearance of being defended unless his defences are complete. Whoever is exposed on the flank is exposed overall. Our fathers had no thought of building defensive manor-houses. The means of storming and surprising our houses – I mean even without cannons and armies – increase every day, exceeding our means of safeguarding them. Good minds are working that way all the time; invading a house touches all men: protecting it, only the rich.