The Complete Essays (41 page)

In those alliances which only get hold of us by one end, we need simply to provide against such flaws as specifically affect that end. It cannot matter to me what the religion of my doctor or my lawyer is: that consideration has nothing in common with the friendly services which they owe to me. And in such commerce as arises at home with my servants I act the same way: I make few inquiries about the chastity of my footman: I want to know if he is hard-working; I am less concerned by a mule-driver who gambles than by one who is an idiot, or by a cook who swears than by one who is incompetent. It is not my concern to tell the world how to behave (plenty of others do that) but how I behave in it:

Mihi sic usus est; tibi, ut opus est facto, face
.

[This is what I do: do what serves you.]
³²

For the intimate companionship of my table I choose the agreeable not the wise; in my bed, beauty comes before virtue; in social conversation, ability – even without integrity. And so on.

[A] Just as that philosopher
³³
playing with his children and riding astride a hobby-horse told the man who surprised him at it not to make comments before he had children of his own, judging that the emotions which would then arise in his soul would make him a good judge of such behaviour: so too I could wish that I were speaking to people who had assayed what I am talking about; but realizing how far removed from common practice is such a friendship – and how rare it is – I do not expect to find one good judge of it. For the very writings which Antiquity have left us on this subject seem weak to me compared to what I feel. In this case the very precepts of philosophy are surpassed by the results:

Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico
.

[Whilst I am in my right mind, there is nothing I will compare with a delightful friend.]
³⁴

In Antiquity Menander pronounced a man to be happy if he had merely encountered the shadow of a friend.
³⁵
He was certainly right to say so, especially if he had actually tasted friendship. For in truth if I compare all the rest of my life – although by the grace of God I have lived it sweetly and easily, exempt (save for the death of such a friend) from grievous affliction in full tranquillity
³⁶
of mind, contenting myself with the natural endowments which I was born with and not going about looking for others – if I compare it, I say, to those four years which it was vouchsafed to me to enjoy in the sweet companionship and fellowship of a man like that, it is but smoke and ashes, a night dark and dreary.

Since that day when I lost him,

quern semper acerbum,
Semper honoratum (sic, Dii, voluistis) habebo
,

[which I shall ever hold bitter to me, though always honour (since the gods ordained it so),]
³⁷

I merely drag wearily on. The very pleasures which are proffered me do not console me: they redouble my sorrow at his loss. In everything we were halves: I feel I am stealing his share from him:

Nec fas esse ulla me voluptate hic frui
Decrevi, tantisper dum ille abest meus particeps
.

[Nor is it right for me to enjoy pleasures, I decided, while he who shared things with me is absent from me.]
³⁸

I was already so used and accustomed to being, in everything, one of two, that I now feel I am no more than a half:

[B]
Illam meæ si partem animæ tulit
Maturior vis, quid moror altera,
Nec charus æque, nec superstes
Integer? Ille dies utramque
Duxit ruinant
.

[Since an untimely blow has borne away a part of my soul, why do I still linger on less dear, only partly surviving? That day was the downfall of us both.]
³⁹

[A] There is no deed nor thought in which I do not miss him – as he would have missed me; for just as he infinitely surpassed me in ability and virtue so did he do so in the offices of friendship:

Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
Tam chari capitis?…
  O misero frater adempte mihi!
Omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra
,
  
Quæ tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor.
Tu mea, tu moriens fregisti commoda, frater;
  
Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta anima,
Cujus ego interitu tota de mente fugavi
  
Hœc studia atque omnes delicias animi.
Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem?
  
Nunquam ego te, vita frater amabilior,
Aspiciam posthac? At certe semper amabo
.

[What shame or limit should there be to grief for one so dear?…How wretched I am, having lost such a brother With you died all our joys, which your sweet love fostered when you were alive. You, brother, have destroyed my happiness by your death: all my soul is buried with you. Because of your loss I have chased all thoughts from my mind and all pleasures from my soul… Shall I never speak to you, never hear you talking of what you have done? Shall I never see you again, my brother, dearer than life itself? But certainly I shall love you always.]
⁴⁰

Let us hear a while this [C] sixteen-year-old [A] boy.
⁴¹

Having discovered that this work of his has since been published to an evil end by those who seek to disturb and change the state of our national polity without worrying whether they will make it better, and that they have set it among works of their own kidney, I have gone back on my decision to place it here. And so that the author’s reputation should not be harmed among those who cannot know his opinions or his actions, I tell them that this subject was treated by him in his childhood purely as an
exercise; it is a commonplace theme, pawed over in hundreds and hundreds of books. I have no doubt that he believed what he wrote, for he was too conscientious to tell untruths even in a light-hearted work. And I know, moreover, that if he had had the choice he would rather have been born in Venice than in Sarlat. Rightly so. But he had another maxim supremely imprinted upon his soul: to obey, and most scrupulously submit to, the laws under which he was born. There never was a better citizen, one more devoted to his country’s peace or more opposed to the disturbances and novelties of his time. He would have used his abilities to snuff them out, not to provide materials to stir them up. The mould of his mind was cast on the model of centuries different from ours.

So instead of that serious work I will substitute another one, more gallant and more playful, which he wrote in the same season of his life.
⁴²

29. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de La Boëtie

[This chapter was designed to introduce sonnets by Montaigne’s especial friend La Boëtie, the subject of the previous chapter, and did indeed do so in all editions published during Montaigne’s lifetime. All the previous allusions which lead us to expect them here are kept, not least the promise to print them in compensation for his decision to omit the text of
De la Servitude volontaire.
In the Bordeaux copy Montaigne simply struck them all out – leaving his own text as ‘grotesques’ surrounding an absent masterpiece. No attempt is made to conceal the omission: the gaps are like blank columns in a censored newspaper. Montaigne had just defended his friend, and himself, from suspicion of seditious republicanism. His respect for the magistrature would have led him to consent to the excision (if pressure was in fact put on him) but not to change his loyalty or his judgement. His action can be compared to his refusing (III, 10) to concede ‘to the magistrature itself the right to condemn a book (his own
Essais
) for having classed a heretic (Beza) among the best poets of this century’
.

     Montaigne had published some
Sonnets
of La Boëtie in 1572 (Fédéric Morel, Paris) and dedicated them to the Count de Foix. The sonnets which were printed here do not figure in them. This chapter is dedicated to Diane, wife of the Count of Grammont and Guiche (a good friend of his) and subsequently mistress of the protestant Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV). She was surnamed Corisande d’Andoins from a character in
Amadis de Gaule,
a vast many-volumed novel in which she delighted.]

[A]
To Madame de Grammont, Countess of Guiche

Madame, I am offering you nothing of mine, either because it is yours already or else because I deem none of it worthy of you. But I have wanted these verses, wherever they may be read, to be headed by your name because it would honour them to have the great Corisande d’Andoins to guide them on their way. This gift seemed appropriate to you, inasmuch as there are few ladies in France who are better judges of poetry or who can more rightly take advantage of it. And since not one of them can sing poetry more vividly or more animatedly than you can with that tuneful voice so full and fair with which Nature has endowed you among a million other graces, these verses deserve that you, madame, should encourage them: for you will share my opinion that none have come out of
Gascony which are better contrived or more refined, or which bear witness of deriving from a richer hand. You must not feel jealous because you have merely received the remainder of what I have already had printed, dedicated to your good kinsman, Monsieur de Foix, for these have something more indescribably lively and overflowing, having been written in his verdant youth in the heat of a fair and noble passion which I will one day, Madame, whisper in your ear. The others were written later for his wife when he was courting her; somehow they already have the cooler savour of marriage. Personally I am one who holds that poetry is never more gay than when treating a subject unruly and wanton.

[C] These verses can be found elsewhere.
¹

30. On moderation

[Moderation is a Classical virtue. This chapter is a vital step in Montaigne’s thought, especially in the light of his later comments marked by [C]. It continues his reflections on love and marriage, moving from banter to seriousness. It examines why it is that the clergy and the doctors (whose duty is to cure souls and bodies) seek their remedies through pain and bitter medicines. Both remedies are often immoderate, in some ways akin to the ghastly sacrifices of the Incas, which also show how little most men value the gifts of Nature, including the gift of life and the natural pleasures.]

[A] It is as though our very touch bore infection: things which in themselves are good and beautiful are corrupted by our handling of them. We can seize hold even of Virtue in such a way that our action makes her vicious if we clasp her in too harsh and too violent an embrace. Those who say that Virtue knows no excess (since she is no longer Virtue if there is excess within her) are merely playing with words.

Insani sapiens nomen ferat, æquus iniqui,
Ultra quam satis est virtutem si petal ipsam

[The name of ‘insane’ is borne by the Sage and the name of ‘unjust’ is borne by the Just, if in their strivings after Virtue herself they go beyond what is sufficient.]
¹

That is a subtle observation on the part of philosophy: you can both love virtue too much and [B] behave with excess [A] in an action which itself is just. The [B] Voice [A] of God adapts itself fittingly to that bias: ‘Be not more wise than it behoveth, but be ye soberly wise.’
²

[C] I have seen one of our great noblemen harm the reputation of his
religion by showing himself religious beyond any example of men of his rank.
³

I like natures which are temperate and moderate. Even when an immoderate zeal for the good does not offend me it still stuns me and makes it difficult for me to give it a Christian name. Neither Pausanias’ mother (who made the first accusation against her son and who brought the first stone to wall him up for his death) nor Posthumius (the Dictator who had his own son put to death because he had been carried away by youthful ardour and had fought – successfully – slightly ahead of his unit) seem ‘just’ to me: they seem odd.
⁴
I neither like to advise nor to imitate a virtue so savage and so costly: the archer who shoots beyond his target misses it just as much as the one who falls short; my eyes trouble me as much when I suddenly come up into a strong light as when I plunge into darkness.

Callicles says in Plato
⁵
that, at its extremes, philosophy is harmful; he advises us not to go more deeply into it than the limits of what is profitable: taken in moderation philosophy is pleasant and useful, but it can eventually lead to a man’s becoming vicious and savage, contemptuous of religion and of the accepted laws, an enemy of social intercourse, an enemy of our human pleasures, useless at governing cities, at helping others or even at helping himself – a man whose ears you could box with impunity. What he says is true, for in its excesses philosophy enslaves our native freedom and with untimely subtleties makes us stray from that beautiful and easy path that Nature has traced for us.

[A] The affection which we bear towards our wives is entirely legitimate: yet Theology nevertheless puts reins on it and restrains it. Among the reasons which Saint Thomas Aquinas
⁶
cites in condemnation of marriages between relatives who are within the forbidden affinities I think I once read the following: There is a risk that the love felt for such a wife might be immoderate; for if the marital affection between them is full and entire (as it ought to be) and then you add on to it the further affection proper among kinsfolk, there is no doubt that such an over-measure would ravish such a husband beyond the limits of reason.
⁷

Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as [C] Theology and [A] philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction. [C] Only mere beginners criticize their freedom to do so: they are like the kind of women whose organs are as accessible as you wish for copulation but who are too bashful to show them to the doctor. [A] On behalf of these sciences I therefore want to teach husbands the following
⁸
– [C] if, that is, there are any who are still too eager: [A] even those very pleasures which they enjoy when lying with their wives are reproved if not kept within moderation; you can fall into licence and excess in this as in matters unlawful.
⁹
[C] All those shameless caresses which our first ardour suggests to us in our sex-play are not only unbecoming to our wives but harmful to them when practised on them. At least let them learn shamelessness from some other hand! They are always wide enough awake when we need them. Where this is concerned what I have taught taught has been natural and uncomplicated.

[A] Marriage is a bond both religious and devout: that is why the pleasure we derive from it must be serious, restrained and intermingled with some gravity; its sensuousness should be somewhat wise and dutiful. Its chief end is procreation, so there are those who doubt whether it is right to seek intercourse when we have no hope of conception, as when the woman is pregnant or too old.
¹⁰
[C] For Plato that constitutes a kind of of homicide. [B] There are whole peoples, [C] including the Mahometans, [B] who abominate intercourse with women who are pregnant, and others still during monthly periods. Zenobia admitted her husband for a single discharge; once that was over she let him run wild throughout her pregnancy, giving him permission to begin again only once it was over. There was a fine and noble-hearted marriage for you!
¹¹

[C] It was from some yearning sex-starved poet that Plato borrowed his story about Jupiter’s making such heated advances to his wife one day that he could not wait for her to lie on the bed but tumbled her on the floor, forgetting the great and important decisions which he had just
reached with the other gods in his celestial Court and boasting that he had enjoyed it as much as when, hidden from her parents, he had first taken her maidenhead.
¹²

[A] The kings of Persia did invite their wives as guests to their festivities, but once the wine had seriously inflamed them so that they had to let their lust gallop free, they packed them off to their quarters so as not to make them accomplices of their immoderate appetites, sending instead for other women whom they were not bound to respect.
¹³

[B] It is not every pleasure or favour that is well lodged in people of every sort. Epaminondas had a dissolute boy put in prison: Pelopidas, for his own purposes, begged for his freedom; Epaminondas refused but granted it to one of his whores who also begged for it, saying that it was a favour due to I mistress but not to a captain. [C] Sophocles, when I Praetor with Pericles, happened to see a handsome youth go by: ‘What a handsome boy,’ said he to Pericles. ‘That’, said Pericles, ‘would be all right coming from anyone but a Praetor, who must not only have pure hands but pure eyes.’
¹⁴

[A] When the wife of the Emperor Aelius Verus complained of his permitting himself [C] affairs with [A] other women,
¹⁵
he replied that he acted thus for reasons of conscience, marriage being a term of honour and dignity not of wanton and lascivious lust. [C] And our old Church authors make honourable mention of a wife who rejected her husband since she had no wish to be a partner to his lascivious and immoderate embraces.
¹⁶

[A] In short there is no pleasure, however proper, which does not become a matter of reproach when excessive and intemperate.

But, seriously though, is not Man a wretched creature? Because of his natural attributes he is hardly able to taste one single pleasure pure and entire: yet he has to go and curtail even that by arguments; he is not wretched enough until he has increased his wretchedness by art and assiduity.

[B]
Fortunae miseras auximus arte vias
.

[The wretched paths of Fortune we make worse by art.]
¹⁷

[C] Human wisdom is stupidly clever when used to diminish the number and sweetness of such pleasures as do belong to us, just as she employs her arts with diligence and fitness when she brings comb and cosmetics to our ills and makes us feel them less. If I had founded a school of philosophy I would have taken another route – a more natural one, that is to say a true, convenient and inviolate one; and I might have made myself strong enough to know when to stop.

[A] Consider the fact that those physicians of our souls and bodies, as though plotting together, can find no other way to cure us and no other remedy for our illnesses of soul and body than by torment, pain and tribulation. Vigils, fasting, hair-shirts and banishments to distant solitary places, endless imprisonments, scourges and other sufferings have been brought in to that end: but only on condition that the suffering is real and should cause bitter pain, [B] and that there should not befall what happened to a man called called Gallio who was banished to the island of Lesbos: Rome was told that he was enjoying himself there and that what had been inflicted as a punishment was turning into a pleasure, at which he was ordered back to wife and home and commanded to stay put, so as to adapt the punishment to his real feelings.
¹⁸
[A] For if a man’s health and happiness were made keener by fasting, or if he found fish more tasty than meat, it would cease to be a salutary prescription: just as drugs prescribed by the other kind of doctor have no affect on anyone who swallowed them with pleasure and enjoyment. The bitter taste and the hardship are attributes which make them work. A constitution which could regularly stand rhubarb would spoil its efficacity: to cure our stomachs it must be something which hurts it: and here the usual axiom that ‘contraries cure contraries’ breaks down;
¹⁹
for in this case illness cures illness.

[B] This notion is somewhat like that other very ancient one which was universally embraced by all religions and which leads us to think that we can please Heaven and Nature by our murders and our massacres.

[C] Even in our fathers’ time Amurath, when he conquered the
Isthmus, sacrificed six hundred Greek youths for the soul of his father, so that their blood might serve as a propitiation, expiating the sins of that dead man.
²⁰
[B] And in those new lands discovered in our own time, lands pure and virgin compared with ours, the practice is accepted virtually everywhere: all their idols are slaked with human blood, not without various examples of dreadful cruelty. Men are burned alive; when half-roasted they are withdrawn from the fire so that their hearts and entrails can be plucked out; others, even women, are flayed alive: their skin, all bloody, serves as a cloak to mask others; and there are no less examples of constancy and determination. For those wretches who are to be immolated, old men, women and children, beg for alms a few days beforehand as offertories at their sacrifice, and present themselves to the slaughter singing and dancing with the congregation. The ambassadors from the King of Mexico, to make Fernando Cortez realize the greatness of their master, first told him that he had thirty vassal-lords, each one of whom could muster a hundred thousand fighting men, and that he dwelt in the strongest fairest city under Heaven; they then added that he had fifty thousand men sacrificed to the gods every year. It is truly said that he cultivated war with some great neighbouring peoples not merely to train the youth of his country but chiefly to furnish prisoners of war for his sacrifices. In another place there was a town where they welcomed Cortez by sacrificing fifty men at the same time. And I will relate one more account: when Cortez had conquered some of these peoples they sent messengers to find out about him and to seek his friendship. They offered him three sorts of gifts in this wise: ‘Lord, here are five slaves; if thou art a fierce god who feedest on flesh and blood, eat them and we shall bring thee more. If thou art a kindly god, here are feathers and incense; if thou art human, accept these birds and these fruits.’
²¹