The Complete Essays (82 page)
Read The Complete Essays Online
Authors: Michel de Montaigne
Tags: #Essays, #Philosophy, #Literary Collections, #History & Surveys, #General
[A]
Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent
.
[These passionate commotions and these great battles are calmed down with a handful of dust.]
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[C] Send out a detachment made up of a couple of bees: they will be strong and brave enough to topple the Monster of war. We still recall how the Portuguese were investing the town of Tamly in their territory of Xiatime when the inhabitants, who had hives in plenty, carried a great many of them to their walls and smoked the bees out so vigorously that their enemies were unable to sustain their stinging attacks and were all put to rout. They owed the freedom of their town and their victory to such novel reinforcements – and with so happy an outcome that not one bee was reported missing.
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[A] The souls of Emperors and of cobblers are cast in the same mould. We consider the importance of the actions of Princes and their weight and then persuade ourselves that they are produced by causes equally weighty, equally important. In that we deceive ourselves. They are tossed to and fro by the same principles as we are. The reasons that make us take issue with a neighbour lead Princes to start a war; the same reason which makes us flog a lackey makes kings lay waste a province. [B] They can do more but can wish as lightly. [A1] The same desires trouble a fleshworm and an elephant.
[A] As for faithfulness, there is no animal in the world whose treachery can compete with Man’s. Our history books tell of certain dogs which vigorously reacted to the murders of their masters. King Pyrrhus once came across a dog guarding the body of its dead master; when he was told the dog had done this duty for three days, he ordered the corpse to be buried and took the dog away with him. Later, when he was making a general review of his troops the dog recognized the murderers of its master and ran at them barking loudly and angrily. This was the first piece of evidence leading to its master’s murder being avenged; justice was soon done in the courts. The dog of Hesiod the Wise did the same, leading to the sons of Ganistor (a man from Naupactus) being convicted of the murder of its master.
Another dog was guarding a temple in Athens when it spotted a thief sacrilegiously making off with the finest jewels. It began barking at him as loud as it could, but the temple sextons never woke up; so the dog started to trail the thief and, when day broke, hung behind a little without losing him from sight. When the thief offered it food, it refused to take anything from him, whilst accepting it from others who passed by, treating them all to a good wagging of its tail. When the thief stopped to sleep, so did the dog, in the same place. News of this dog reached the sextons of that church; they set out to find it; by making enquiries about the colour of its coat, they eventually caught up with it at Cromyon. The thief was there too; they brought him back to Athens, where he was punished. In recognition of its good sense of duty, the judges awarded the dog a fixed measure of wheat out of public funds to pay for its keep and ordered the priests to look after it. This happened in Plutarch’s own time and he himself asserts that the account was very thoroughly vouched for.
As for gratitude – and it seems to me that we could well bring this word back into repute – one example will suffice. Apion relates it as something he had seen himself. He tells how, one day, the people of Rome were given the pleasure of watching several strange animals fight – mainly, in
fact, unusually big lions; one of these drew the eyes of the entire audience by its wild bearing, the strength and size of its limbs and its proud and terrifying roar. Amongst the slaves presented to the populace to fight with these beasts was Androdus, a slave from Dacia, belonging to a Roman lord of consular rank. This lion, seeing him from afar, first pulled up short, as though struck with wonder; it then came gently towards him; its manner was soft and peaceful, as if it expected to recognize an acquaintance. Then, having made certain of what it was looking for, it began to wag its tail as dogs do when fondly greeting their masters; it kissed and licked the hands and thighs of that poor wretch, who was beside himself, ecstatic with fear. The gracious behaviour of the lion brought Androdus back to himself so that he fixed his gaze on it, staring at it and then recognizing it. It was a rare pleasure to see the happy greetings and blandishments they lavished on each other. The populace raised shouts of joy; the Emperor sent for the slave to learn how this strange event had come about. He gave him an account, novel and wonderful: ‘My Master’, he said, ‘was a proconsul in Africa; he treated me so cruelly and so harshly, flogging me every day, that I was forced to steal myself from him and run away. I found the quickest way to hide myself safely from a person having such great Provincial authority was to make for that country’s uninhabited sandy deserts, fully resolved, if there was no means of keeping myself in food, to kill myself. The midday sun was so fierce and the heat so intolerable that when I stumbled on a hidden cave, difficult of access, I plunged into it. Soon afterwards this lion came in, its paw all wounded and bloody; it was groaning and whining with pain. I was very frightened when it arrived but, when it saw me hiding in a corner of its lair, it came gently up to me and showed me its wounded paw, as though asking for help. I removed a great splinter of wood; when I had made it a little more used to me, I squeezed out the filthy pus that had collected in the wound, wiped it and made it as clean as I could. The lion, aware that things were better and that the pain had been relieved, began to rest, falling asleep with its paw in my hands. After that we lived together in that cave for three whole years; we ate the same food since the lion brought me choice morsels of the animals it had killed in the hunt; I had no fire but I fed myself by cooking the meat in the heat of the sun. In the end I grew disgusted with this savage, brutish life and so, when the lion had gone out one day on its usual quest for food, I slipped away. Three days later I was surprised by soldiers who brought me from Africa to Rome and handed me over to my master. He promptly condemned me to die by being exposed to the beasts in the arena. I realize now that the lion was also captured soon afterwards and that it wanted to repay me for my kindness in curing its wound.’
That is the account which Androdus told to the Emperor and which he also spread from mouth to mouth. Androdus was given his freedom by general acclaim and relieved of his sentence; by order of the people he was made a gift of the lion.
Ever since, says Apion, we can see Androdus leading the lion about on a short leash, going from tavern to tavern in Rome collecting money, while the lion lets itself be strewn with flowers. All who meet them say: ‘There goes the Lion, host to the Man: there goes the Man, doctor to the Lion.’
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[B] We often shed tears at the loss of animals which we love: they do the same when they lose us:
Post, bellator equus, positis insignibus, Aethon
It lachrymans, guttisque humectat grandibus ora
.
[Then comes Aethon, the war-horse, stripped of its insignia, weeping and drenching its face in mighty tears.]
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Some peoples hold their wives in common while in others each man has a wife of his own; can we not see the same among the beasts? Do they not have marriages better kept than our own?
[A] As touching the confederations and alliances which animals make to league themselves together for mutual succour, oxen, pigs and other animals can be seen rushing in to help when one of their number is being attacked and rallying round in its defence. If a scar-fish swallows a fisherman’s hook, its fellows swarm around and bite through the line; if one of them happens to get caught in a wicker trap, the others dangle their tails down into it from outside while it holds on grimly with its teeth. In this way they drag it right out. When a barbel-fish is hooked, the others stiffen the spine which projects from their backs; it is notched like a saw; they rub it against the line and saw it through.
As for the special duties we render to each other in the service of life, there are several similar examples amongst the animals. The whale, it is said, never travels without a tiny fish like a sea-gudgeon swimming ahead of it (for this reason it is called a ‘guide-fish’). The whale follows it everywhere, allowing itself to be directed and steered as easily as a rudder turns a boat. Everything else – beast or ship – which falls into the swirling chaos of that creature’s mouth is straightway lost and swallowed up: yet
that little fish can retire there and sleep in its mouth in complete safety. While it is asleep, the whale never budges, but as soon as it swims out, the whale constantly follows it; if it should chance to lose its guide-fish it flounders about all over the place, often dashing itself to pieces against the rocks like a rudderless ship. Plutarch testifies to having seen this happen on the island of Anticyra.
There is a similar companionship between the tiny wren and the crocodile: the wren stands guard over that big creature; when the crocodile’s enemy, the ichneumon, closes in for a fight, this little bird is afraid that its companion may be caught napping, so it pecks it awake and sings to warn it of danger. The wren lives on the leftovers of that monstrous crocodile, which welcomes it into its jaws and lets it pick at the meat stuck between its teeth. If it wants to shut its mouth it warns the wren to fly out by gradually closing its jaws a little, without squashing it or harming it in any way.
The shellfish called a nacre lives in similar company with the pinnothere, a kind of small crab which serves it as tout and doorkeeper; squatting by the orifice which the nacre always keeps half-open, it waits until some little fish worth catching swims into it. The crab then slips into the nacre, pinching its living flesh to make it close its shell. Having imprisoned the fish they both set about eating it.
Three parts of Mathematics are particularly well known to tunny-fish: the way they live shows that.
First, Astrology; it is they who teach it to men: wherever they may be when surprised by the winter solstice, there they remain until the following equinox (which explains why even Aristotle readily allows them a knowledge of that science).
Next Geometry and Arithmetic: tunny-fish always form up in the shape of a cube, equally square on all sides. Drawing themselves up into a solid battalion, a corps enclosed and protected all round by six faces of equal size, they swim about in this order, square before, square behind – so that if you count one line of them you have the count of the whole school, since the same figure applies to their depth, breadth and length.
As for greatness of spirit, it would be hard to express it more clearly than that great dog did which was sent to King Alexander from India. It was first presented with a stag, next with a boar, then with a bear: it did not deign to come out and fight them, but as soon as it saw a lion it leaped to its feet, clearly showing that it thought such an animal was indeed worthy of the privilege of fighting against it.
[B] Touching repentance and the acknowledging of error, they tell of
an elephant which killed its master in a fit of anger; its grief was so intense that it refused to eat and starved itself to death.
[A] As for clemency, they tell of a tiger – the most inhuman of all beasts – which was given a goat to eat. It fasted for two days before being even tempted to harm it; by the third day, it considered the goat as a familiar guest, so, rather than attack it, it broke out of its cage and sought food elsewhere.
As for rights bred of familiarity and friendly converse, it is quite normal to train cats, dogs and hares to live tamely together.
But surpassing all human imagination is what experience has taught travellers by sea – especially those in the sea of Sicily – about the halcyons. Has Nature ever honoured any creature as she has honoured these kingfishers in their procreation, lying-in and birth? The poets feign that one single island, Delos, was a floating land before being anchored so that Latona might give birth upon it. But God himself has wished the entire sea to be settled, smooth and calm, free from wave and wind and rain, on those halcyon days when these creatures produce their young. (This befalls, precisely, about the shortest day of the year, the solstice: this privilege of theirs gives us seven days and nights at the very heart of the winter, when, without danger, we can sail the seas.) Each female knows no male but its own; it helps it all its life and never forsakes it. If the male is weak or crippled the female carries it everywhere on her back, serving it till death.
But no ingenuity has ever fathomed the miraculous artifice by which the halcyons build their nest for their young nor divined its fabric. Plutarch saw several of them and handled them. He thinks they may be composed of the bones of certain fish, joined, bound and interwoven together, some lengthwise, some crosswise; bent and rounded struts are then added, eventually forming a coracle ready to float upon the water. The female halcyon then brings them where they can be lapped around by the waves of the sea. The salt water gently beats upon them, showing her where ill-fitting joints need daubing and where she needs to strengthen the sections where her construction is coming loose or pulling apart at the beating of the sea. On the other hand this battering by the waves binds all the good joints up tight and knits them so close that they can only with difficulty be smashed, broken or even damaged by blows with stone or iron. Most wonderful of all are the shape and proportions of the concave hold, for it is shaped and proportioned to admit only one creature snugly: the one who made it. To everything else it is closed, barred and impenetrable. Nothing can get in, not even sea water.
