The Complete Essays (16 page)

11. On prognostications

[Christianity has banished most forms of prognostication. Those that remain are the sport of subtle credulous minds who could find hidden meanings anywhere. Socrates’
daemon,
which made him near-infallible, was in fact a natural impulse found to some extent in all of us. So the ecstasies of Socrates were at most ‘natural’ ones.]

[A] Where oracles are concerned it is certain that they had begun to lose their credit well before the coming of Jesus Christ, since we can see Cicero striving to find the cause of their decline. [C] These are his words:
‘Cur isto modo jam oracula Delphis non eduntur non modo nostra ætate sed jamdiu, ut modo nihil possit esse contempsius?’
[Why are oracles no longer uttered thus at Delphi, so that not only in our own time but long before nothing could be held in greater contempt?]

[A] But there were other prognostications, derived from the dissection of sacrificial animals – [C] Plato held that the internal organs of those animals were partly created for that purpose – [A] or from chickens scratching about, from the flight of birds – [C]
‘aves quasdam rerum augurandarum causa natas esse putamus’
[We think that some birds are born in order to provide auguries] – [A] from lightning and from swirling currents in rivers – [C]
‘multa cernunt aruspices, multa augures provident, nnlta oraculis declarantur, multa vaticinationibus, multa somniis, multa portentis’
[the soothsayers divine many things; the augurs foresee many; many are revealed by oracles, many by predictions, many by dreams and many by portents]; [A] and there were other similar ones on which the Ancient World grounded most of their undertakings, both public and private:
¹
it was our religion which abolished them all.
²
There remain among us it is true some means of divination by the heavens, by spirits,
by bodily features, by dreams and so on: that is a remarkable example of the mad curiosity of our nature which wastes time trying to seize hold of the future as though it were not enough to have to deal with the present:

[B]
cur hanc tibi rector Olympi
Sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam,
Noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades.
Sit subitum quodcunque paras, sit cæca futuri
Mens hominum fati, liceat sperare timenti!

[O Ruler of Olympus, why did it please thee to add more care to worried mortals by letting them learn of future slaughters by means of cruel omens! Whatever thou hast in store, do it unexpectedly; let the minds of men be blind to their future fate: let him who fears, still cling to hope!]
³

[C]
‘Ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit. Miserum est nihil proficientem angi;’
[It is not even useful to know what is to happen. It is wretched to suffer to no avail;]
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[A] nevertheless divination now has far less authority.

That is why the case of Francisco, Marquis of Saluzzo, struck me as so remarkable. He was the Lieutenant of King Francis’ transalpine forces; he found endless favours at our French Court and was beholden to the King for his very marquisate, which had been forfeited by his own brother. There was no occasion for what he did: his own feelings ran counter to it; yet (as it was asserted) he let himself become terrified by the specious prognostications which were deliberately circulated everywhere in favour of the Emperor Charles V and to our own disadvantage – especially in Italy, where these insane prophecies gained such a footing that vast sums of money changed hands in the banks from the assumption of our overthrow. Having expressed grief to his friends over the ills which he saw inevitably in store for the Crown of France and for his French friends, he foresook all and changed sides. No matter what the stars portended, it proved greatly to his harm!
⁵

In this he acted like a man torn by conflicting emotions. For both the towns and the armies were under his control; the enemy forces led by
Antonio de Leyva were only a few yards away; we suspected nothing: so he could have done us far more harm. Despite his treachery we lost not one single man nor any town except Fossano (and even that only after a long struggle).

Prudens futuri temporis exitum
Caliginosa nocte premit Deus
,
    Ridetque si mortalis ultra
             Fas trepidat…

                 Ille potens sui
Lætusque deget, cui licet in diem
    Dixisse, vixi, cras vel atra
        
Nube polum pater occupato
Vel sole puro…

Lætus in præsens animus, quod ultra est,
Oderit curare
.

[Wisely does God hide what is to come under the darkness of night, laughing if a mortal projects his anxiety further than is proper…

That man will be happy and master of himself who every day declares, ‘I have lived. Tomorrow let Father Jove fill the heavens with dark clouds or with purest light’… Let your mind rejoice in the present: let it loathe to trouble about what lies in the future.]
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[C] The following quotation contradicts that, but those who believe it are wrong:
‘Ista sic reciprocantur, ut et, si divinatio sit, dii sint: et si dii sint, sit divinatio.’
[If there is divination there are gods, and conversely, if there are gods there is divination.]
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Pacuvius was much more wise:

Nam istis qui linguam avium intelligunt,
Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt, quam ex suo,
Magis audiendum quam auscultandum censeo
.

[As for those who understand the language of the birds and who know the livers of animals better than their own, I believe it is better just to listen to them rather than pay attention to them.]

The birth of that famous Tuscan art of divination was on this wise: a ploughman ploughed his furrow deeply, from which arose Tages the demi-god; he had the face of a child but the wisdom of an old man. Everybody came running up; his words and wisdom were collected and kept for centuries; they contained the principles and practices of that art… A birth in conformity with its development…
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[B] I would rather order my affairs by casting dice, by lots, than by such fanciful nonsense.
⁹
[C] And truly all States have always attributed considerable authority to them. Plato, freely drawing up his constitution as he pleased, left many important decisions to lots, including the marriages of the good citizens; he attached such importance to these fortuitous matches that he decreed that the offspring of them be kept and brought up in the Republic, whilst those born to the wicked should be driven out; nevertheless if one of these banished children should happen to promise well as he grew up, he could be recalled; and if one of those who were kept turned out hopelessly in his youth, he was exiled.
¹⁰

[B] I know people who study their almanacs, annotate them and cite their authority as events take place. But almanacs say so much that they are bound to tell both truth and falsehood. [C]
‘Quis est enim qui totum diem jaculans non aliquando conlineet?’
[For who can shoot all day without striking the target occasionally?]
¹¹
[B] I do not think any the better of them for seeing them happen to prove true on occasions; there would be more certainty in them if they had some right rule which made them always wrong. [C] Besides, nobody keeps a record of their erroneous prophecies since they are infinite and everyday; right predictions are prized precisely because they are rare, unbelievable and marvellous.

That explains the reply made by Diagoras, surnamed the Atheist, when he was in Samothrace: he was shown many vows and votive portraits from those who have survived shipwreck and was then asked, ‘You, there, who think that the gods are indifferent to human affairs, what have you to say about so many men saved by their grace?’ – ‘It is like this,’ he replied; ‘there are no portraits here of those who stayed and drowned – and they are more numerous!’ Cicero says that among the many philosophers who
believed there were gods only Xenophanes of Colophon made an assay at uprooting all forms of divination.
¹²
It is less surprising, therefore, that we have occasionally [B] seen
¹³
some of our leading minds dwelling (often to their prejudice) on such empty nonsense.

[C] I would certainly like to have seen with my own eyes these two marvels: the book of the abbot Joachim of Calabria who predicted all the future popes with their names and styles; and that of the Emperor Leo who predicted all the Emperors and patriarchs of Greece
¹⁴
… But with my own eyes I
have
verified the following: that when men are stunned by their fate in our civil disturbances, they have resorted to almost any superstition, including seeking in the heavens for ancient portents and causes for their ills. In this they have been so strangely successful in my days that they have convinced me that (since this way of passing time is for acute yet idle minds) those who have been inducted into the subtle art of unwrapping portents and unknotting them would be able to find anything they wish in any piece of writing whatsoever: but their game is particularly favoured by the obscure, ambiguous, fantastical jargon of these prophecies, the authors of which never supply any clear meaning themselves so that posterity can give them any meaning it chooses.

[B] The daemon of Socrates was [C] perhaps [B] a certain thrust of the will which presented itself to him without waiting for rational argument.
¹⁵
It is likely that in a soul like his (well purified and prepared by the continual exercise of wisdom and virtue) such inclinations, albeit [C] bold and undigested, were nevertheless important and worthy to be followed. Everyone can sense in himself some ghost of such agitations, of a prompt, vehement, fortuitous opinion. It is open to me to allow them some authority, to me who allow little enough to human wisdom. And I have had some – equally weak in reason yet violent in persuasion or dissuasion but which were more common in the case of
Socrates
¹⁶
– [B] by which I have allowed myself to be carried away so usefully and so successfully, that they could have been judged to contain something of divine inspiration.
¹⁷

12. On constancy

[Constancy is a Stoic virtue, but even Stoics have to confess that a Sage can be startled. Like Rabelais before him, Montaigne considers the limits of Stoic doctrine – basing himself partly on his own experience in the Wars of Religion.]

[A] Resolution and constancy do not lay down as a law that we may not protect ourselves, as far as it lies in our power to do so, from the ills and misfortunes which threaten us, nor consequently that we should not fear that they may surprise us. On the contrary, all honourable means of protecting oneself from evils are not only licit: they are laudable. The role played by constancy consists chiefly in patiently bearing
¹
misfortunes for which there is no remedy. Likewise there are no evasive movements of the body and no defensive actions with any weapons in our hands which we judge wrong if they serve to protect us from the blows raining down on us.

[C] Many highly warlike nations included flight as one of their main tactical resources: when they turned their backs that was more risky to the enemy than when they showed their faces. The Turks still retain this to some extent.

In Plato Socrates mocked Laches for defining fortitude as ‘standing firm in line in the face of the enemy’. ‘What,’ he said, ‘would it be cowardice to defeat them by giving ground?’ And he cited Homer who praised Aeneas for knowing when to flee. And once Laches had corrected himself and allowed that the Scythians did use that method as do cavalrymen in general, he then went on to cite the example of those foot-soldiers of Sparta, a nation trained above all to stand their ground: during the battle of Plataea they found that they could not penetrate the Persian phalanx and so decided to disengage and fall back in order that it should be thought that they were in full flight; that would lead to the breaking up of the Persians’ dense formation which would fall apart as it pursued them. By which means they obtained the victory.
²

While on the subject of the Scythians, it is said that after Darius had set out to subjugate them, he sent many reproaches to their king when he saw him always withdrawing and avoiding battle. To this Indathyrsez (for that was the king’s name) replied that he was not afraid of him nor of any man alive, but that this was the practice of his people, since they possessed no arable lands, no towns and no houses to defend for fear that an enemy might make use of them: but if Darius really was yearning to sink his teeth into a battle, then let him try to get near to their ancient burial grounds: he would find somebody to talk to there!
³

[A] Nevertheless once a man’s post is the target of cannon-fire (as the chances of war often require it to be) it is unbecoming for him to waver before the threatening cannon-balls, all the more so since we hold that they have such speed and such impetus that you cannot take evasive action. There are many cases of soldiers at least providing their comrades with a good laugh by shielding behind their arms or ducking their heads.

Yet in the expedition which the Emperor Charles V led against us in Provence, when the Marquis de Guast went to reconnoitre the city of Arles and suddenly appeared from behind a windmill under cover of which he had made his advance, he was spotted by the Seigneur de Bonneval and the Lord Seneschal d’Agenois who were strolling along the top of the amphitheatre. They pointed him out to the Seigneur de Villier, Master of the Ordnance, who aimed a culverin so accurately that if the Marquis had not seen the match applied to the fuse and jumped aside it was thought he would have been struck in the body.
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Similarly a few years before, when Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Duke of Urbino and the father of our Queen Mother, was laying siege to Mondolfo (a fortress in Italy in the territory they call the Vicariate) he saw the fire applied to a cannon which was pointing right at him and ducked; luckily for him, for otherwise the shot, which only grazed the top of his head, would have certainly struck him in the chest.
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To tell the truth I do not believe that such movements arise from reflexion: for in so sudden a matter how can you judge whether the aim is high or low? It is far easier to believe that fortune looked favourably on their fear but that another time they might have jumped into the path of the shot not out of it.

[B] Personally I cannot stop myself from trembling if the shattering
sound of a harquebus suddenly strikes my ear in a place where I could not have expected it; I have seen that happen to more valorous men than I am. [C] Not even the Stoics claim that their sage can resist visual stimuli or ideas when they first come upon him; they concede that it is, rather, part of man’s natural condition that he should react to a loud noise in the heavens or to the collapse of a building by growing tense and even pale. So too for all other emotions, provided that his thoughts remain sound and secure, that the seat of his reason suffer no impediment or change of any sort, and that he in no wise give his assent to his fright or pain. As for anyone who is not a sage, the first part applies to him but not the second. For in his case the impress of the emotions does not remain on the surface but penetrates through to the seat of his reason, infecting and corrupting it: he judges by his emotions and acts in conformity with them.

The state of the Stoic sage is fully and elegantly seen in the following:

    Mens immota manet, lachrimae volvuntur inanes
.
[His mind remains unmoved: empty tears do flow.]

The Aristotelian sage is not exempt from the emotions: he moderates them.
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