The Complete Essays (129 page)

[A] But as for his morals and his sense of right and wrong, he far surpassed in that all those who have ever engaged in the affairs of state. For in that quality (which we must consider to be the principal one, [C] which alone truly reveals what we are and which, all by itself, outweighs for me all the other qualities put together) [A] he yields to no philosopher whatsoever, not even to Socrates himself. [B] In Epaminondas integrity is the dominant quality proper to him, constant, equable, incorruptible. Against his standard, the sense of right and wrong in Alexander seems subordinate, hesitant, spasmodic, weak and subject to chance.

[C] In Antiquity’s judgement anyone who studied all the other Captains in the smallest detail would find in each of them one special quality which rendered him illustrious; but in Epaminondas alone there is virtue ever abundant, an unchanging competence which never leaves anything to be desired in any of a man’s duties in this life, whether in political or private occupations, in peace or in war, or, when it comes to dying, in greatness and glory. I know of no man’s form or fortune that I can regard with such honour and love. It is true that I find his stubbornly persisting in poverty as portrayed by his best friends somewhat over-scrupulous. That action alone, sublime and most admirable though it be, is rather too grim, I feel, for me even to wish that I could desire to imitate it.

Only one man could make me hesitate in his case: Scipio Aemilianus – if we could provide him with as proud and illustrious an end and with as deep and universal a knowledge of the arts and the sciences.
¹¹
What a grievous loss to me it is that Time has robbed our eyes of precisely the foremost parallel lives, the lives of the noblest pair in Plutarch, those of these two great men who were, respectively, by common consent, the greatest of the Greeks and the greatest of the Romans. What a subject! And what a craftsman!

For a man who was no saint but (as they say) a gentlemanly kind of fellow, with the manners of a good public figure and citizen who was
moderately distinguished, the most richly varied life that I know to have been lived (as we say) among the living, a life crammed with splendid and desirable qualities is (all things considered and to my liking) that of Alcibiades.

But to return to Epaminondas, [A] I would like to cite a few of his opinions so as to provide an example of his excellent goodness.

[B] He swore that the greatest satisfaction he ever had in his life was to have given pleasure to his father and mother by his victory at Leuctra. It is greatly to his favour that he should prefer their pleasure in such a glorious battle to his own full and rightful pleasure in it.

[A] He did not think it was permissible to kill any man without understanding why, not even to restore freedom to one’s country. That explains why he was so cold towards the campaign to deliver Thebes led by his companion Pelopidas. He also held that in battle a man should spare anyone he loves on the opposing side and fly from encounters with him. [C] His humane treatment of his enemies as well made him suspect to the Boeotians: he had by some miracle forced the Spartans to open to him at Morea (near Corinth) a pass which they had taken up arms to defend; he was content to strike straight through their middle without hounding them to death. For that he was relieved of his post as Captain-General – very honourably so, seeing that it was for such a cause, and also because the Boeotians were soon shamed by the necessity of having to reinstate him and to admit how much their glory and their safety were due to him, since whenever he led his forces victory followed him like a shadow.
¹²

The prosperity of his country died as it had been born: with him.

37. On the resemblance of children to their
fathers

[This is the final chapter of Book II and so, until 1588, the final chapter of the whole work, which ended therefore with two dominant notions: that the
Essays
are a portrait of Montaigne’s character, opinions and bearing destined for his immediate descendants and friends; that the most marked characteristic of Nature is diversity and discordance
.

  
Montaigne was convinced that he had inherited from his forefathers not only an antipathy to medicine but also the stone (that is, to the suicide pains of colic paroxysms). He explains how he fortified his inherited antipathy to the art of medicine with often contrived arguments, so giving us insights into his mind and incidentally providing a lively picture of life in watering-places. Spa-waters, being natural, might cure the stone and can probably do no harm. But how experimental medicine is ever supposed to be led to a cure for melancholy is another matter…

  
A major source of Montaigne’s scepticism here about professional arts and sciences is Henry Cornelius Agrippa’s book
On the Vanity of all Sciences and on the Excellence of the Word of God.
]

[A] All the various pieces of this faggot are being bundled together on the understanding that I am only to set my hand to it in my own home and when I am oppressed by too lax an idleness. So it was assembled at intervals and at different periods, since I sometimes have occasion to be away from home for months on end. Moreover I never correct my first thoughts by second ones – [C] well, except perhaps for the odd word, but to vary it, not to remove it. [A] I want to show my humours as they develop, revealing each element as it is born. I could wish that I had begun earlier, especially tracing the progress of changes in me.

One of the valets I used for dictation stole several pages of mine which were to his liking and thought he had acquired great plunder. It consoles me that he will no more gain anything by it than I shall lose.

Since I began I have aged by some seven or eight years – not without some fresh gain, for those years have generously introduced me to colic paroxysms. Long commerce and acquaintance with the years rarely proceed without some such benefit! I could wish that, of all those gifts which the years store up for those who haunt them, they could have chosen a present
more acceptable to me, for they could not have given me anything that since childhood I have held in greater horror. Of all the misfortunes of old age, that was precisely the very one I most dreaded. I often thought to myself that I was travelling too far and that on such a long road I was eventually bound to be embroiled in some nasty encounter; I realized, and much proclaimed, that it was time for me to go. Following the surgeon’s rule when he cuts off a limb, [C] I declared that life should be amputated at the point where it is alive and healthy; he who repays not his debt to Nature in good time usually finds she exacts interest with a vengeance.

[A] But my declarations were in vain. I was so far from being ready to go then that even now, after about eighteen months in this distasteful state, I have already learnt how to get used to it. I have made a compact with this colical style of life; I can find sources of hope and consolation in it. So many men have grown so besotted with their wretched existence that no circumstances are too harsh, provided that they can cling on. [C] Just listen to Maecenas:

Debilem facito manu,
Debilem pede, coxa,
Lubricos quate dentes:
Vita dum superest bene est
.

[Lop off a hand; lop off a foot and a thigh; pull out all my teeth: I am all right though: I am still alive.]
¹

And it was with the philanthropy of a lunatic that Tamberlane cloaked his arbitrary cruelty against lepers when he put to death all those that came to his knowledge – ‘In order,’ he said, ‘to free them from so painful a life.’ Any of them would rather have been thrice a leper than to cease to be.
²
When Antisthenes the Stoic was extremely ill he cried out, ‘Who will make me free from these ills?’ Diogenes, who had come to see him, gave him a knife: ‘If you so desire, this soon will,’ he said. There came the reply: ‘I never said
from this life
: I said,
from these ills.’

[A] Sufferings which touch the soul alone afflict me much less than they do most men; that is partly from judgement (for the majority think many things to be dreadful and to be avoided even at the cost of their life
which are almost indifferent to me); it is also partly because of my stolid complexion which is insensitive to anything which does not come straight at me; I believe that complexion to be one of the best of my natural characteristics. But bodily sufferings – which are very real – I feel most acutely. And yet, formerly, when I used to foresee them through eyes made weak, fastidious and flabby by the enjoyment of that long and blessed health and ease which God had lent me for the greater part of my life, I thought of them as so unbearable that in truth my fear of them exceeded the suffering they now cause me: that fact further increases my belief that most of the faculties of our soul, [C] as we employ them, [A] disturb our life’s repose rather than serve it.

I am wrestling with the worst of all illnesses, the most unpredictable, the most painful, the most fatal and the most incurable. I have already assayed five or six very long and painful attacks. Yet either I am flattering myself or else, even in this state, a man can still find things bearable if his soul has cast off the weight of the fear of dying and the weight of all the warning threats, inferences and complications which Medicine stuffs into our heads. Even real pain is not so shrill, harsh and stabbing that a man of settled temperament must go mad with despair. I draw at least one advantage from my colic paroxysms: whatever I had failed to do to make myself familiar with death and reconciled to it that illness will do for me: for the more closely it presses upon me and importunes me the less reason I shall have to be afraid to die. I had already succeeded in holding on to life only for what life has to offer: my illness will abrogate even that compact; and may God grant that at the end, if the harsh pain finally overcomes my strength, it may not drive me to the other extreme (no less wrong) of loving and yearning to die.

Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes
.
[Neither be afraid of your last day nor desire it.]
³

Both emotions are to be feared, though one has its remedy nearer at hand.

Moreover I have always considered that precept to be sheer affectation which so rigorously and punctiliously ordains that, when we are enduring pain, we must put on a good countenance and remain proud and calm. Why should Philosophy (whose concerns are with deeds and with inner
motions) waste her time over external appearances?
⁴
[C] Let her leave such worries to actors in farces and to masters of rhetoric, who make such a fuss about our gesticulations. Let Philosophy have enough courage to concede that pain may act cowardly so long as the cowardice remains a matter of words, being neither heartfelt nor visceral. Let her classify such plaints (even if they do come from our will) with those sighs, sobs, tremblings and drainings of colour which Nature has placed beyond our control. So long as our minds know no terror and our words no despair, let Philosophy be contented. What does it matter if our arms flay about as long as our thoughts do not? Philosophy put us through our training not for others but for ourselves, so that we may
be
thus, not seem thus.

[A] Let her limit herself to controlling our intellect, which she has undertaken to instruct. Against the onslaught of colic paroxysms let her enable us to have souls capable of knowing themselves and following their accustomed courses, souls fighting pain and sustaining it, not shamelessly grovelling at her feet, souls stirred and aroused for battle, not cast down and subdued, [C] able to communicate and to some extent able to converse.

[A] In such extreme misfortunes it is cruelty to require of us too studied a comportment. If we play our role well, it matters little if we put a bad face on things! If the body finds relief in lamentations, let it; if it wants to toss about, let it writhe and contort as much as it likes; if the body believes that some of the pain can be driven off as vapour by forcing out our cries – or if doing so distracts us from the anguish, as some doctors say it helps pregnant women in their deliveries – just let it shout out. [C] Do not order the sound to come but allow it to do so. Epicurus does not merely allow his wise man to yell out in torment, he counsels him to:
‘Pugiles etiam, quum feriunt in jactandis coestibus, ingemiscunt, quia profundenda
voce omne corpus intenditur, venitque plaga vehementior.’
[Even the wrestlers grunt when lashing out with their boxing-gloves, because uttering such sounds makes the whole body tense, driving the blow home with greater vehemence.]
⁵
[A] We have pangs enough from the pain without the pangs caused by clinging to superfluous rules.

It is usual to see men thrown into turmoil by the [C] attacks and [A] assaults of this illness; it is for them that I have said all this; for in my own case I have up till now put on a slightly better countenance: not that I take any trouble to maintain a decent appearance, for I do not think much of such an achievement and, in this respect, concede whatever my illness demands: but either the pain in my case is not so excessive or else I can show more steadfastness than most. I moan and groan when the stabbing pains hurt most acutely but I do not [C] lose control like this fellow:

Ejulatu, questu, gemitu, fremitibus
Resonando multum flebiles voces refert
.

[Re-echoing with his tearful voice, wailing, groaning, lamenting, sighing.]
⁶

At the darkest moment of the paroxysm I explore myself and have always found that I am still capable of talking, thinking and replying as sensibly as at any other time but not as imperturbably, since the pain disturbs me and distracts me. When those around me start to spare me, thinking that I am at my lowest ebb, I often assay my strength and broach a subject as completely removed as possible from my condition. I can bring off anything with a sudden effort. But do not ask it to last…

If only I were like that dreamer in Cicero who dreamed he had a woman in his arms and had the faculty of ejaculating his gallstone in the bedclothes!
⁷
My own gallstones monstrously unlecher me!

[A] In the intervals between these extremes of anguish, [C] when my urinary ducts are sick but without the stabbing pains, [A] I return at once to my accustomed form, since my soul knows no call to arms without bodily feeling – I definitely owe that to the care I once took to prepare myself by reason for such misfortunes:

[B]
laborum
Nulla mihi nova nunc facies inopinaque surgit;
Omnia præcepi atque animo mecum ante peregi
.

[No toils present themselves new or unforeseen: I have seen them coming and been through them already in my mind.]
⁸

[A] But I have been assayed rather too roughly for an apprentice; the blow was indeed sudden and rough, for I fell all at once from a most gentle and happy mode of life into the most painful and distressing one imaginable: for, leaving aside the fact that the stone is an illness itself to be dreaded, its onset was in my case unusually difficult and harsh. Attacks recur so frequently that nowadays I hardly ever feel perfectly well. Yet if only I can add duration to the state in which I now maintain my spirits, I shall be in very much better circumstances than hundreds of others who have no fever nor illness except the ones which they inflict on themselves by defect of reason.

There is a certain kind of wily humility which is born of presumption. This for instance: we admit there are many things we do not understand; we confess frankly enough that within the works of Nature there are some qualities and attributes which we find incomprehensible, the means or the causes of which cannot be discovered by capacities such as ours. With so frank and scrupulous an admission we hope to make people believe what we say about the ones we do claim to understand. Yet there is no need to go picking over strange problems or miracles; it seems to me that among the things which we see quite regularly there are ones so strange and incomprehensible that they surpass all that is problematic in miracles.