THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE LlBKAi;> 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAfJi 
 
 TX)S ANr.pr

 
 THE WORKS OF 
 
 MICHEL de MONTAIGNE 
 
 With Notes, Life and Letters 
 
 Complete in Ten Volumes
 
 EMERSON EDITION 
 
 Ten Hundred and Fifty Copies 
 have been printed 
 
 Number 
 
 418
 
 ESSAYS OF 
 
 MONTAIGNE 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 CHARLES COTTON 
 
 REVISED BY 
 
 WILLIAM CAREW HAZLETT 
 
 VOLUME TWO 
 
 New York 
 
 EDWIN C. HILL 
 
 MCMX
 
 Copyright 1910 bt 
 EDWIN C. HILL
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 PQ 
 
 tsWb 
 
 mo 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Various Events from the same Counsel 11 
 
 Of Pedantry 33 
 
 Of the Institution of Children 60 
 
 It is Folly to Refer Truth and Error to our 
 
 own Capacity 142 
 
 Of Friendship 150 
 
 Of Moderation 178 
 
 Of Cannibals 189 
 
 That it is Meet to Intervene Discreetly in 
 
 Judging the Divine Ordinances 218 
 
 To Avoid Pleasures at the Expense of Life. ... 223 
 Fortune is Oftentimes met with in the Train 
 
 of Reason 226 
 
 On a Defect in our Government 233 
 
 Of the Custom of Clothing Oneself 235 
 
 Of Cato the Younger 243 
 
 How we Cry and Laugh for the same Thing. . 251 
 
 Volume II 
 
 1005733
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Confidant. From Painting by 
 
 Pio Ricci Frontispiece 
 
 The Muses Teaching Cupid to 
 "Walk. From Painting by Aug- 
 uste-Barthelemy-Glaize Page 114 
 
 The Tomb op Achilles. From Paint- 
 ing by Georges Moreau De Tours ' ' 160 
 
 Venus and Bellona. From Painting 
 
 by Paul Schobelt " 254 
 
 Volume II
 
 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 VAEIOUS EVENTS FROM THE SAME 
 COUNSEL. 
 
 JACQUES AMIOT, grand almoner of France, 
 one day related to me this story, much to the 
 honor of a prince of ours (and ours he was 
 upon several very good accounts, though 
 originally of foreign extraction), that in the 
 time of our first commotions, at the siege of 
 Rouen, this prince, having heen advertised 
 by the queen-mother of a conspiracy against 
 his life, and in her letters particular notice 
 being given him of the person who was to 
 execute the business (who was a gentleman 
 of Anjou or of Maine, and who to this effect 
 ordinarily frequented this prince's house), 
 discovered not a syllable of this intelligence 
 to any one whatever; but going the next day 
 to the Mont Sainte Catherine, from which 
 our battery played against the town (for it 
 was during the time of the siege), and having 
 in company with him the said lord almoner, 
 11
 
 12 MONTAIGNE 
 
 and another bishop, he saw this gentleman, 
 who had been denoted to him, and presently 
 sent for him; to whom, being come before 
 him, seeing him already pale and trembling 
 with the conscience of his guilt, he thus said, 
 "Monsieur such a one, you guess what I 
 have to say to you; your countenance dis- 
 covers it; 'tis in vain to disguise your prac- 
 tice, for I am so well informed of your busi- 
 ness, that it will but make worse for you, to 
 go about to conceal or deny it : you know very 
 well such and such passages" (which were 
 the most secret circumstances of his con- 
 spiracy), "and therefore be sure, as you 
 tender your own life, to confess to me the 
 whole truth of the design." The poor man 
 seeing himself thus trapped and convicted 
 (for the whole business had been discovered 
 to the queen by one of the accomplices), was 
 in such a taking, he knew not what to do; 
 but, folding his hands, to beg and sue for 
 mercy, he threw himself at his prince's feet, 
 who taking him up, proceeded to say, "Come, 
 sir; tell me, have I at any time done you of- 
 fence? or have I, through private hatred or 
 malice, offended any kinsman or friend of
 
 MONTAIGNE 13 
 
 yours? It is not above three weeks that I 
 have known you; what inducement, then, 
 could move you to attempt my death f" To 
 which the gentleman with a trembling voice 
 replied, "That it was no particular grudge 
 he had to his person, but the general interest 
 and concern of his party, and that he had 
 been put upon it by some who had per- 
 suaded him it would be a meritorious act, 
 by any means, to extirpate so great and so 
 powerful an enemy of their religion." 
 "Well," said the prince, "I will now let you 
 see, how much more charitable the religion 
 is that I maintain, than that which you pro- 
 fess: yours has counselled you to kill me, 
 without hearing me speak, and without ever 
 having given you any cause of offence; and 
 mine commands me to forgive you, convict 
 as you are, by your own confession, of a de- 
 sign to kill me without reason. Get you gone ; 
 let me see you no more ; and, if you are wise, 
 choose henceforward honester men for your 
 counsellors in your designs." 
 
 The Emperor Augustus, being in Gaul, had 
 certain information of a conspiracy L. Cinna 
 was contriving against him; he therefore re-
 
 14 MONTAIGNE 
 
 solved to make him an example; and, to that 
 end, sent to summon his friends to meet the 
 next morning in counsel. But the night be- 
 tween he passed in great unquietness of mind, 
 considering that he was about to put to death 
 a young man, of an illustrious family, and 
 nephew to the great Pompey, and this made 
 him break out into several passionate com- 
 plainings. "What then," said he, "is it pos- 
 sible that I am to live in perpetual anxiety 
 and alarm, and suffer my would-be assassin, 
 meantime, to walk abroad at liberty? Shall 
 he go unpunished, after having conspired 
 against my life, a life that I have hitherto 
 defended in so many civil wars, in so many 
 battles by land and by sea? And after hav- 
 ing settled the universal peace of the whole 
 world, shall this man be pardoned, who has 
 conspired not only to murder, but to sacrifice 
 me?" for the conspiracy was to kill him at 
 sacrifice. After which, remaining for some 
 time silent, he began again, in louder tones, 
 and exclaimed against himself, saying: 
 "Why livest thou, if it be for the good of so 
 many that thou shouldst die? must there be 
 no end of thy revenges and cruelties? Is thy
 
 MONTAIGNE 15 
 
 life of so great value, that so many mischiefs 
 must be done to preserve it?" His wife 
 Li via, seeing him in this perplexity: "Will 
 you take a woman 's counsel T ' ' said she. ' ' Do 
 as the physicians do, who, when the ordinary 
 recipes will do no good, make trial of the 
 contrary. By severity you have hitherto pre- 
 vailed nothing; Lepidus has followed Sal- 
 vidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio, Murena; 
 Egnatius, Caepio. Begin now, and try how 
 sweetness and clemency will succeed. China 
 is convict; forgive him, he will never hence- 
 forth have the heart to hurt thee, and it will 
 be an act to thy glory.' ' Augustus was well 
 pleased that he had met with an advocate of 
 his own humor; wherefore, having thanked 
 his wife, and, in the morning, countermanded 
 his friends he had before summoned to coun- 
 cil, he commanded Cinna all alone to be 
 brought to him; who being accordingly come, 
 and a chair by his appointment set him, hav- 
 ing ordered all the rest out of the room, he 
 spake to him after this manner: "In the 
 first place, Cinna, I demand of thee patient 
 audience; do not interrupt me in what I am 
 about to say, and I will afterwards give thee
 
 16 MONTAIGNE 
 
 time and leisure to answer. Thou knowest, 
 China, that having taken thee prisoner in the 
 enemy's camp, and thou an enemy, not only 
 so become, but born so, I gave thee thy life, 
 restored to thee all thy goods, and, finally, 
 put thee in so good a posture, by my bounty, 
 of living well and at thy ease, that the vic- 
 torious envied the conquered. The sacerdotal 
 office which thou mad est suit to me for, I con- 
 ferred upon thee, after having denied it to 
 others, whose fathers have ever borne arms 
 in my service. After so many obligations, 
 thou hast undertaken to kill me. ' ' At which 
 Cinna crying out that he was very far from 
 entertaining any so wicked a thought: 
 "Thou dost not keep thy promise, Cinna,' ' 
 continued Augustus, "that thou wouldst not 
 interrupt me. Yes, thou hast undertaken to 
 murder me in such a place, on such a day, in 
 such and such company, and in such a man- 
 ner." At which words, seeing Cinna as- 
 tounded and silent, not upon the account of 
 his promise so to be, but interdict with the 
 weight of his conscience: "Why," pro- 
 ceeded Augustus, "to what end wouldst thou 
 do it? Is it to be emperor? Believe me, the
 
 MONTAIGNE 17 
 
 Republic is in very ill condition, if I am the 
 only man betwixt thee and the empire. Thon 
 art not able so much as to defend thy own 
 house, and but t'other day was baffled in a 
 suit, by the opposed interest of a mere 
 manumitted slave. What, hast thou neither 
 means nor power in any other thing, but only 
 to undertake Caesar? I quit the throne, if 
 there be no other than I to obstruct thy hopes. 
 Canst thou believe that Paulus, that Fabius, 
 that the Cossii and the Servilii, and so many 
 noble Romans, not only so in title, but who 
 by their virtue honor their nobility, would 
 suffer or endure thee?" After this, and a 
 great deal more that he said to him (for he 
 was two long hours in speaking), "Now go, 
 Cinna, go thy way: I give thee that life as 
 traitor and parricide, which I before gave 
 thee in the quality of an enemy. Let friend- 
 ship from this time forward begin betwixt us, 
 and let us show whether I have given, or thou 
 hast received thy life with the better faith;" 
 and so departed from him. Some time after, 
 he preferred him to the consular dignity, 
 complaining that he had not the confidence to 
 demand it; had him ever after for his very
 
 18 MONTAIGNE 
 
 great friend, and was, at last, made by him 
 sole heir to all his estate. Now, from the time 
 of this accident which befell Augustus in the 
 fortieth year of his age, he never had any 
 conspiracy or attempt against him, and so 
 reaped the due reward of this his so gener- 
 ous clemency. But it did not so happen with 
 our prince, his moderation and mercy not so 
 securing him, but that he afterwards fell into 
 the toils of the like treason, so vain and 
 futile a thing is human prudence; through- 
 out all our projects, counsels and precau- 
 tions, Fortune will still be mistress of events. 
 We repute physicians fortunate when they 
 hit upon a lucky cure, as if there was no other 
 art but theirs that could not stand upon its 
 own legs, and whose foundations are too 
 weak to support itself upon its own basis; 
 as if no other art stood in need of Fortune's 
 hand to help it. For my part, I think of 
 physic as much good or ill as any one would 
 have me: for, thanks be to God, we have no 
 traffic together. I am of a quite contrary 
 humor to other men, for I always despise 
 it; but when I am sick, instead of recanting, 
 or entering into composition with it, I begin,
 
 MONTAIGNE 19 
 
 moreover, to hate and fear it, telling them 
 who importune me to take physic, that at all 
 events they must give me time to recover my 
 strength and health, that I may be the bet- 
 ter able to support and encounter the violence 
 and danger of their potions. I let nature 
 work, supposing her to be sufficiently armed 
 with teeth and claws to defend herself from 
 the assaults of infirmity, and to uphold that 
 contexture, the dissolution of which she flies 
 and abhors. I am afraid, lest, instead of as- 
 sisting her when close grappled and strug- 
 gling with disease, I should assist her ad- 
 versary, and burden her still more with work 
 to do. 
 
 Now, I say, that not in physic only, but in 
 other more certain arts, fortune has a very 
 great part. The poetic raptures, the flights 
 of fancy, that ravish and transport the author 
 out of himself, why should we not attribute 
 them to his good fortune, since he himself 
 confesses that they exceed his sufficiency and 
 force, and acknowledges them to proceed 
 from something else than himself, and that 
 he has them no more in his power than the 
 orators say they have those extraordinary
 
 20 MONTAIGNE 
 
 motions and agitations that sometimes pnsh 
 them beyond their design. It is the same in 
 painting, where touches shall sometimes slip 
 from the hand of the painter, so surpassing 
 both his conception and his art, as to beget 
 his own admiration and astonishment. But 
 Fortune does yet more evidently manifest the 
 share she has in all things of this kind, by 
 the graces and elegances we find in them, not 
 only beyond the intention, but even without 
 the knowledge of the workman: a competent 
 reader often discovers in other men's writ- 
 ings other perfections than the author him- 
 self either intended or perceived, a richer 
 sense and more quaint expression. 
 
 As to military enterprises, every one sees 
 how great a hand Fortune has in them. Even 
 in our counsels and deliberations there must, 
 certainly, be something of chance and good- 
 luck mixed with human prudence; for all that 
 our wisdom can do alone is no great matter; 
 the more piercing, quick, and apprehensive 
 it is, the weaker it finds itself, and is by so 
 much more apt to mistrust itself. I am of 
 Sylla's opinion:
 
 MONTAIGNE 21 
 
 "Who freed his great deeds from envy by 
 ever attributing them to his good fortune, 
 and finally by surnaming himself Faustus, 
 the Lucky;" 
 
 and when I closely examine the most glorious 
 exploits of war, I perceive, methinks, that 
 those who carry them on make use of coun- 
 sel and debate only for custom's sake, and 
 leave the best part of the enterprise to For- 
 tune, and relying upon her aid, transgress, at 
 every turn, the bounds of military conduct 
 and the rules of war. There happen, some- 
 times, fortuitous alacrities and strange furies 
 in their deliberations, that for the most part 
 prompt them to follow the worst grounded 
 counsels, and swell their courage beyond the 
 limits of reason. Whence it happened that 
 several of the great captains of old, to justify 
 those rash resolutions, have been fain to tell 
 their soldiers that they were invited to such 
 attempts by some inspiration, some sign and 
 prognostic. 
 
 Wherefore, in this doubt and uncertainty, 
 that the shortsightedness of human wisdom 
 to see and choose the best (by reason of the 
 difficulties that the various accidents and
 
 22 MONTAIGNE 
 
 circumstances of things bring along with 
 them) perplexes ns withal, the surest way, 
 in my opinion, did no other consideration in- 
 vite ns to it, is to pitch upon that wherein is 
 the greatest appearance of honesty and jus- 
 tice; and not, being certain of the shortest, 
 to keep the straightest and most direct way; 
 as in the two examples I have just given, 
 there is no question but it was more noble 
 and generous in him who had received the 
 offence, to pardon it, than to do otherwise. 
 If the former miscarried in it, he is not, 
 nevertheless, to be blamed for his good inten- 
 tion; neither does any one know if he had 
 proceeded otherwise, whether by that means 
 he had avoided the end his destiny had ap- 
 pointed for him; and he had, moreover, lost 
 the glory of so humane an act. 
 
 You will read in history, of many who have 
 been in such apprehension, that the most part 
 have taken the course to meet and anticipate 
 conspiracies against them by punishment and 
 revenge; but I find very few who have reaped 
 any advantage by this proceeding; witness 
 so many Eoman emperors. Whoever finds 
 himself in this danger, ought not to expect
 
 MONTAIGNE 23 
 
 much either from his vigilance or power; for 
 how hard a thing is it for a man to secure 
 himself from an enemy, who lies concealed 
 under the countenance of the most assiduous 
 friend we have, and to discover and know the 
 wills and inward thoughts of those who are 
 in our personal service. 'Tis to much pur- 
 pose to have a guard of foreigners about one, 
 and to be always fenced about with a pale 
 of armed men; whosoever despises his own 
 life, is always master of that of another man. 
 And moreover, this continual suspicion, that 
 makes a prince jealous of all the world, must 
 of necessity be a strange torment to him. 
 Therefore it was, that Dion, being advertised 
 that Callippus watched all opportunities to 
 take away his life, had never the heart to in- 
 quire more particularly into it, saying, that 
 he had rather die than live in that misery, 
 that he must continually stand upon his 
 guard, not only against his enemies, but his 
 friends also; which Alexander much more 
 vividly and more roundly manifested in ef- 
 fect, when, having notice by a letter from 
 Parmenio, that Philip, his most beloved phy- 
 sician, was by Darius' money corrupted to
 
 24 MONTAIGNE 
 
 poison him, at the same time that he gave 
 the letter to Philip to read, drank off the 
 potion he had brought him. Was not this 
 to express a resolution, that if his friends had 
 a mind to despatch him out of the world, he 
 was willing to give them opportunity to do 
 it? This prince, is, indeed, the sovereign 
 pattern of hazardous actions; but I do not 
 know whether there be another passage in 
 his life wherein there is so much firm cour- 
 age as in this, nor so illustrious an image of 
 the beauty and greatness of his mind. 
 
 Those who preach to princes so circum- 
 spect and vigilant a jealousy and distrust, 
 under color of security, preach to them ruin 
 and dishonor: nothing noble can be per- 
 formed without danger. I know a person, 
 naturally of a very great daring and enter- 
 prising courage, whose good fortune is con- 
 tinually marred by such persuasions, that he 
 keep himself close surrounded by his friends, 
 that he must not hearken to any reconcilia- 
 tion with his ancient enemies, that he must 
 stand aloof, and not trust his person in hands 
 stronger than his own, what promises or 
 offers soever they may make him, or what
 
 MONTAIGNE 25 
 
 advantages soever he may see before him. 
 And I know another, who has unexpectedly 
 advanced his fortunes by following a clear 
 contrary advice. 
 
 Courage, the reputation and glory of which 
 men seek with so greedy an appetite, presents 
 itself, when need requires, as magnificently 
 in cuerpo, as in full armor; in a closet, as in 
 a camp; with arms pendant, as with arms 
 raised. 
 
 This over-circumspect and wary prudence 
 is a mortal enemy to all high and generous 
 exploits. Scipio, to sound Syphax's inten- 
 tion, leaving his army, abandoning Spain, not 
 yet secure nor well settled in his new con- 
 quest, could pass over into Africa in two 
 small ships, to commit himself, in an enemy's 
 country, to the power of a barbarian king, to 
 a faith untried and unknown, without obliga- 
 tion, without hostage, under the sole security 
 of the grandeur of his own courage, his good 
 fortune, and the promise of his high hopes: 
 
 "Faith reposed generally binds faith.' 
 
 In a life of ambition and glory, it is necessary
 
 26 MONTAIGNE 
 
 to hold a stiff rein upon suspicion: fear and 
 distrust invite and draw on offence. The 
 most mistrustful of our kings established 
 his affairs principally by voluntarily com- 
 mitting his life and liberty into his enemies' 
 hands, by that action manifesting that he had 
 absolute confidence in them, to the end they 
 might repose as great an assurance in him. 
 Caesar only opposed the authority of his 
 countenance and the haughty sharpness of his 
 rebukes to his mutinous legions in arms 
 against him: 
 
 "He stood on a mound of banked-up turf, 
 his countenance intrepid, and made himself 
 feared, he fearing nothing. ' ' 
 
 But it is true, withal, that this undaunted 
 assurance is not to be represented in its sim- 
 ple and entire form, but by such whom the 
 apprehension of death, and the worst that 
 can happen, does not terrify and affright; 
 for to represent a pretended resolution with 
 a pale and doubtful countenance and tremb- 
 ling limbs, for the service of an important 
 reconciliation, will effect nothing to purpose. 
 'Tis an excellent way to gain the heart and
 
 MONTAIGNE 27 
 
 will of another, to submit and intrust one's 
 self to him, provided it appear to be freely 
 done, and without the constraint of necessity, 
 and in such a condition, that a man mani- 
 festly does it out of a pure and entire con- 
 fidence in the party, at least, with a counte- 
 nance clear from any cloud of suspicion. I 
 saw, when I was a boy, a gentleman, who was 
 governor of a great city, upon occasion of 
 a popular commotion and fury, not knowing 
 what other course to take, go out of a place 
 of very great strength and security, and com- 
 mit himself to the mercy of the seditious 
 rabble, in hopes by that means to appease the 
 tumult before it grew to a more formidable 
 head; but it was ill for him that he did so, 
 for he was there miserably slain. But I am 
 not, nevertheless, of opinion, that he com- 
 mitted so great an error in going out, as men 
 commonly reproach his memory withal, as 
 he did in choosing a gentle and submissive 
 way for the effecting his purpose, and in en- 
 deavoring to quiet this storm, rather by 
 obeying than commanding, and by entreaty 
 rather than remonstrance; and I am inclined 
 to believe, that a gracious severity, with a
 
 28 MONTAIGNE 
 
 soldier-like way of commanding, full of 
 security and confidence, suitable to the 
 quality of his person, and the dignity of his 
 command, would have succeeded better with 
 him; at least, he had perished with greater 
 decency and reputation. There is nothing so 
 little to be expected or hoped for from this 
 many-headed monster, in its fury, as human- 
 ity and good nature; it is much more capable 
 of reverence and fear. I should also reproach 
 him, that having taken a resolution (in my 
 judgment rather brave than rash) to expose 
 himself, weak and naked, in this tempestuous 
 sea of enraged madmen, he ought to have 
 stuck to his text, and not for an instant to 
 have abandoned the high part he had under- 
 taken; whereas, coming to discover his dan- 
 ger nearer hand, and his nose happening to 
 bleed, he again changed that demiss and 
 fawning countenance he had at first put on, 
 into another of fear and amazement, filling 
 his voice with entreaties and his eyes with 
 tears, and, endeavoring so to withdraw and 
 secure his person, that carriage more inflamed 
 their fury, and soon brought the effects of it 
 upon him.
 
 MONTAIGNE 29 
 
 It was upon a time intended that there 
 should be a general muster of several troops 
 in arms (and that is the most proper occasion 
 of secret revenges, and there is no place 
 where they can be executed with greater 
 safety), and there were public and manifest 
 appearances, that there was no safe coming 
 for some, whose principal and necessary office 
 it was to review them. Whereupon a con- 
 sultation was held, and several counsels were 
 proposed, as in a case that was very nice and 
 of great difficulty; and moreover of grave 
 consequence. Mine, amongst the rest, was, 
 that they should by all means avoid giving 
 any sign of suspicion, but that the officers 
 who were most in danger should boldly go, 
 and with cheerful and erect countenances ride 
 boldly and confidently through the ranks, and 
 that instead of sparing fire (which the coun- 
 sels of the major part tended to) they should 
 entreat the captains to command the soldiers 
 to give round and full volleys in honor of 
 the spectators, and not to spare their powder. 
 This was accordingly done, and served so 
 good use, as to please and gratify the sus- 
 pected troops, and thenceforward to beget a
 
 30 MONTAIGNE 
 
 mutual and wholesome confidence and intelli- 
 gence amongst them. 
 
 I look upon Julius Caesar's way of winning 
 men to him as the best and finest that can 
 be put in practice. First, he tried by clem- 
 ency to make himself beloved even by his 
 very enemies, contenting himself, in detected 
 conspiracies, only publicly to declare, that 
 he was pre-acquainted with them; which be- 
 ing done, he took a noble resolution to await 
 without solicitude or fear, whatever might 
 be the event, wholly resigning himself to the 
 protection of the gods and fortune : for, ques- 
 tionless, in this state he was at the time when 
 he was killed. 
 
 A stranger having publicly said, that he 
 could teach Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, 
 an infallible way to find out and discover all 
 the conspiracies his subjects could contrive 
 against him, if he would give him a good sum 
 of money for his pains, Dionysius hearing of 
 it, caused the man to be brought to him, that 
 he might learn an art so necessary to his 
 preservation. The man made answer, that 
 all the art he knew, was, that he should give 
 him a talent, and afterwards boast that he
 
 MONTAIGNE 31 
 
 had obtained a singular secret from him. 
 Dionysius liked the invention, and accord- 
 ingly caused six hundred crowns to be 
 counted out to him. It was not likely he 
 should give so great a sum to a person un- 
 known, but upon the account of some ex- 
 traordinary discovery, and the belief of this 
 served to keep his enemies in awe. Princes, 
 however, do wisely to publish the informa- 
 tions they receive of all the practices against 
 their lives, to possess men with an opinion 
 they have so good intelligence that nothing 
 can be plotted against them, but they have 
 present notice of it. The Duke of Athens did 
 a great many foolish things in the establish- 
 ment of his new tyranny over Florence: but 
 this especially was most notable, that having 
 received the first intimation of the con- 
 spiracies the people were hatching against 
 him, from Matteo di Morozzo, one of the con- 
 spirators, he presently put him to death, to 
 suppress that rumor, that it might not be 
 thought any of the city disliked his govern- 
 ment. 
 
 I remember I have formerly read a story 
 of some Eoman of great quality who, flying
 
 32 MONTAIGNE 
 
 the tyranny of the Triumvirate, had a 
 thousand times by the subtlety of as many in- 
 ventions escaped from falling into the hands 
 of those that pursued him. It happened one 
 day that a troop of horse, which was sent out 
 to take him, passed close by a brake where 
 he was squat, and missed very narrowly of 
 spying him: but he considering, at this point, 
 the pains and difficulties wherein he had so 
 long continued to evade the strict and in- 
 cessant searches that were every day made 
 for him, the little pleasure he could hope for 
 in such a kind of life, and how much better 
 it was for him to die once for all, than to be 
 perpetually at this pass, he started from his 
 seat, called them back, showed them his form, 
 and voluntarily delivered himself up to their 
 cruelty, by that means to free both himself 
 and them from further trouble. To invite a 
 man's enemies to come and cut his throat, 
 seems a resolution a little extravagant and 
 odd; and yet I think he did better to take 
 that course, than to live in continual feverish 
 fear of an accident for which there was no 
 cure. But seeing all the remedies a man can 
 apply to such a disease, are full of unquiet-
 
 MONTAIGNE 33 
 
 ness and uncertainty, 'tis better with a manly 
 conrage to prepare one's self for the worst 
 that can happen, and to extract some consola- 
 tion from this, that we are not certain the 
 thing we fear will ever come to pass. 
 
 OF PEDANTRY 
 
 I WAS often, when a boy, wonderfully con- 
 cerned to see, in the Italian farces, a pedant 
 always brought in for the fool of the play, 
 and that the title of Magister was in no 
 greater reverence amongst us: for being de- 
 livered up to their tuition, what could I do 
 less than be jealous of their honor and repu- 
 tation? I sought indeed to excuse them by 
 the natural incompatibility betwixt the vul- 
 gar sort and men of a finer thread, both in 
 judgment and knowledge, forasmuch as they 
 go a quite contrary way to one another: but 
 in this, the thing I most stumbled at was, that 
 the finest gentlemen were those who most 
 despised them; witness our famous poet Du 
 Bellay 
 
 "But above all things I hate pedantic learn- 
 in*."
 
 34 MONTAIGNE 
 
 And 'twas so in former times; for Plutarch 
 says that Greek and Scholar were terms of 
 reproach and contempt amongst the Romans. 
 But since, with the better experience of age, 
 I find they had very great reason so to do, 
 and that 
 
 "The greatest clerks are not the wisest 
 men." 
 
 But whence it should come to pass, that a 
 mind enriched with the knowledge of so 
 many things should not become more quick 
 and sprightly, and that a gross and vulgar 
 understanding should lodge within it, with- 
 out correcting and improving itself, all the 
 discourses and judgments of the greatest 
 minds the world ever had, I am yet to seek. 
 To admit so many foreign conceptions, so 
 great, and so high fancies, it is necessary (as 
 a young lady, one of the greatest princesses 
 of the kingdom, said to me once, speaking of 
 a certain person) that a man's own brain 
 must be crowded and squeezed together into 
 a less compass, to make room for the others; 
 I should be apt to conclude, that as plants are 
 suffocated and drowned with too much nour-
 
 MONTAIGNE 35 
 
 ishment, and lamps with too much oil, so with 
 too much study and matter is the active part 
 of the understanding which, being embar- 
 rassed, and confounded with a great diversity 
 of things, loses the force and power to dis- 
 engage itself, and by the pressure of this 
 weight, is bowed, subjected, and doubled up. 
 But it is quite otherwise; for our soul 
 stretches and dilates itself proportionably as 
 it fills; and in the examples of elder times, we 
 see, quite contrary, men very proper for pub- 
 lic business, great captains, and great states- 
 men very learned withal. 
 
 And, as to the philosophers, a sort of men 
 remote from all public affairs, they have been 
 sometimes also despised by the comic liberty 
 of their times; their opinions and manners 
 making them appear, to men of another sort, 
 ridiculous. Would you make them judges of 
 a lawsuit, of the actions of men? they are 
 ready to take it upon them, and straight begin 
 to examine if there be life, if there be motion, 
 if man be any other than an ox; what it is to 
 do and to suffer? what animals law and 
 justice are! Do they speak of the magis- 
 trates, or to him, 'tis with a rude, irreverent,
 
 36 MONTAIGNE 
 
 and indecent liberty. Do they hear their 
 prince, or a king commended? they make no 
 more of him, than of a shepherd, goatherd, 
 or neatherd: a lazy Condon, occupied in 
 milking and shearing his herds and flocks, 
 bnt more rudely and harshly than the herd 
 or shepherd himself. Do you repute any man 
 the greater for being lord of two thousand 
 acres of land? they laugh at such a pitiful 
 pittance, as laying claim themselves to the 
 whole world for their possession. Do you 
 boast of your nobility, as being descended 
 from seven rich successive ancestors? they 
 look upon you with an eye of contempt, as 
 men who have not a right idea of the uni- 
 versal image of nature, and that do not con- 
 sider how many predecessors every one of 
 us has had, rich, poor, kings, slaves, Greeks, 
 and barbarians; and though you were the 
 fiftieth descendant from Hercules, they look 
 upon it as a great vanity, so highly to value 
 this, which is only a gift of fortune. And 
 'twas so the vulgar sort contemned them, 
 as men ignorant of the most elementary and 
 ordinary things; as presumptuous and in- 
 solent.
 
 MONTAIGNE 37 
 
 But this Platonic picture is far different 
 from that these pedants are presented by. 
 Those were envied for raising themselves 
 above the common sort, for despising the 
 ordinary actions and offices of life, for having 
 assumed a particular and inimitable way of 
 living, and for using a certain method of 
 high-flight and obsolete language, quite dif- 
 ferent from the ordinary way of speaking: 
 but these are contemned as being as much be- 
 low the usual form, as incapable of public 
 employment, as leading a life and conform- 
 ing themselves to the mean and vile manners 
 of the vulgar: 
 
 "I hate idle works, philosophical utter- 
 ances. 1 ' 
 
 For what concerns the philosophers, as I 
 have said, if they were great in science, they 
 were yet much greater in action. And, as it 
 is said of the geometrician of Syracuse, who 
 having been disturbed from his contempla- 
 tion, to put some of his skill in practice for 
 the defence of his country, that he suddenly 
 set on foot dreadful and prodigious engines, 
 that wrought effects beyond all human ex-
 
 38 MONTAIGNE 
 
 pectation; himself, notwithstanding, disdain- 
 ing all this handiwork, and thinking in this 
 he had played the mere mechanic, and vio- 
 lated the dignity of his art, of which these 
 performances of his he accounted but trivial 
 experiments and playthings: so they, when- 
 ever they have been put upon the proof of 
 action, have been seen to fly to so high a 
 pitch, as made it very well appear, their souls 
 were marvellously elevated, and enriched by 
 the knowledge of things. But some of them, 
 seeing the reins of government in the hands 
 of incapable men, have avoided all manage- 
 ment of political affairs ; and he who demand- 
 ed of Crates, how long it was necessary to 
 philosophize, received this answer: "Till our 
 armies are no more commanded by fools." 
 Heraclitus resigned the royalty to his brother, 
 and, to the Ephesians, who reproached 
 him that he spent his time in playing with 
 children before the temple: "Is it not bet- 
 ter," said he, "to do so, than to sit at the 
 helm of affairs in your company!" Others 
 having their imagination advanced above the 
 world and fortune, have looked upon the 
 tribunals of justice, and even the thrones of
 
 MONTAIGNE 39 
 
 kings, as paltry and contemptible; insomuch, 
 that Empedocles refused the royalty that the 
 Agrigentines offered to him. Thales, once 
 inveighing in discourse against the pains and 
 care men put themselves to to become rich, 
 was answered by one in the company, that 
 he did like the fox, who found fault with what 
 he could not obtain. Whereupon, he had a 
 mind, for the jest's sake, to show them to the 
 contrary; and having, for this occasion, made 
 a muster of all his wits, wholly to employ 
 them in the service of profit and gain, he set 
 a traffic on foot, which in one year brought 
 him in so great riches, that the most ex- 
 perienced in that trade could hardly in their 
 whole lives, with all their industry, have 
 raked so much together. That which Aris- 
 totle reports of some who called both him and 
 Anaxagoras, and others of their profession, 
 wise but not prudent, in not applying their 
 study to more profitable things though I 
 do not well digest this verbal distinction 
 that will not, however, serve to excuse my 
 pedants, for to see the low and necessitous 
 fortune wherewith they are content, we have 
 rather reason to pronounce that they are 
 neither wise nor prudent.
 
 40 MONTAIGNE 
 
 But letting this first reason alone, I think 
 it better to say, that this evil proceeds from 
 their applying themselves the wrong way to 
 the study of the sciences; and that, after the 
 manner we are instructed, it is no wonder if 
 neither the scholars nor the masters become, 
 though more learned, ever the wiser, or more 
 able. In plain truth, the cares and expense 
 our parents are at in our education, point at 
 nothing, but to furnish our heads with knowl- 
 edge; but not a word of judgment and virtue. 
 Cry out, of one that passes by, to the people: 
 "0, what a learned man!" and of another, 
 "0, what a good man!" they will not fail to 
 turn their eyes, and address their respect to 
 the former. There should then be a third 
 crier, "0, the blockheads!" Men are apt 
 presently to inquire, does such a one under- 
 stand Greek or Latin! Is he a poet? or does 
 he write in prose f But whether he be grown 
 better or more discreet, which are qualities 
 of principal concern, these are never thought 
 of. "We should rather examine, who is better 
 learned, than who is more learned. 
 
 We only labor to stuff the memory, and 
 leave the conscience and the understanding
 
 MONTAIGNE 41 
 
 unfurnished and void. Like birds who fly 
 abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home 
 in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to 
 feed their young; so our pedants go picking 
 knowledge here and there, out of books, and 
 hold it at the tongue's end, only to spit it out 
 and distribute it abroad. And here I cannot 
 but smile to think how I have paid myself 
 in showing the foppery of this kind of learn- 
 ing, who myself am so manifest an example; 
 for, do I not the same thing throughout 
 almost this whole composition? I go here 
 and there, culling out of several books the 
 sentences that best please me, not to keep 
 them (for I have no memory to retain them 
 in), but to transplant them into this; where, 
 to say the truth, they are no more mine than 
 in their first places. "We are, I conceive, 
 knowing only in present knowledge, and not 
 at all in what is past, no more than in that 
 which is to come. But the worst on't is, their 
 scholars and pupils are no better nourished 
 by this kind of inspiration; and it makes no 
 deeper impression upon them, but passes 
 from hand to hand, only to make a show to be 
 tolerable company, and to tell pretty stories,
 
 42 MONTAIGNE 
 
 like a counterfeit coin in counters, of no other 
 use or value, but to reckon with, or to set up 
 at cards : 
 
 1 ' They have learned to speak among others, 
 not with themselves.' ' 
 
 "We have not to talk, but to govern." 
 
 Nature, to show that there is nothing bar- 
 barous where she has the sole conduct, often- 
 times, in nations where art has the least to 
 do, causes productions of wit, such as may 
 rival the greatest effect of art whatever. In 
 relation to what I am now speaking of, the 
 Gascon proverb, derived from a cornpipe, is 
 very quaint and subtle: 
 
 "You may blow till your eyes start out; but 
 if once you offer to stir your fingers, it is all 
 over." 
 
 We can say, Cicero says thus; these were the 
 manners of Plato ; these are the very words of 
 Aristotle: but what do we say ourselves? 
 What do we judge? A parrot would say as 
 much as that. 
 And this puts me in mind of that rich gen-
 
 MONTAIGNE 43 
 
 tleman of Rome, who had been solicitous, with 
 very great expense, to procure men that were 
 excellent in all sorts of science, whom he 
 had always attending his person, to the end, 
 that when amongst his friends any occasion 
 fell out of speaking of any subject whatso- 
 ever, they might supply his place, and be 
 ready to prompt him, one with a sentence of 
 Seneca, another with a verse of Homer, and 
 so forth, every one according to his talent; 
 and he fancied this knowledge to be his own, 
 because it was in the heads of those who lived 
 upon his bounty : as they also do, whose learn- 
 ing consists in having noble libraries. I know 
 one, who, when I question him what he 
 knows, he presently calls for a book to show 
 me, and dares not venture to tell me so much, 
 as that he has piles in his posteriors, till first 
 he has consulted his dictionary, what piles 
 and what posteriors are. 
 
 We take other men's knowledge and 
 opinions upon trust; which is an idle and 
 superficial learning. We must make it our 
 own. We are in this very like him, who hav- 
 ing need of fire, went to a neighbor's house 
 to fetch it, and finding a very good one there,
 
 44 MONTAIGNE 
 
 sat down to warm himself without remember- 
 ing to carry any with him home. What good 
 does it do us to have the stomach full of meat, 
 if it does not digest, if it be not incorporated 
 with us, if it does not nourish and support 
 us? Can we imagine that Lucullus, whom let- 
 ters, without any manner of experience, made 
 so great a captain, learned to be so after this 
 perfunctory manner? We suffer ourselves to 
 lean and rely so strongly upon the arm of 
 another, that we destroy our own strength 
 and vigor. Would I fortify myself against 
 the fear of death, it must be at the expense 
 of Seneca: would I extract consolation for 
 myself or my friend, I borrow it from Cicero. 
 I might have found it in myself, had I been 
 trained to make use of my own reason. I do 
 not like this relative and mendicant under- 
 standing; for though we could become learned 
 by other men's learning, a man can never be 
 wise but by his own wisdom : 
 
 "I hate the wise man, who in his own con- 
 cern is not wise." 
 
 Whence Ennius:
 
 MONTAIGNE 45 
 
 "That wise man knows nothing, who can- 
 not profit himself by his wisdom." 
 
 1 'If he be grasping, or a boaster, and some- 
 thing softer than an Euganean lamb." 
 
 "For wisdom is not only to be acquired, 
 bnt to be utilized.' 
 
 Dionysius laughed at the grammarians, 
 who set themselves to inquire into the 
 miseries of Ulysses, and were ignorant of 
 their own; at musicians, who were so exact 
 in tuning their instruments, and never tuned 
 their manners; at orators, who made it a 
 study to declare what is justice, but never 
 took care to do it. If the mind be not better 
 disposed, if the judgment be no better settled, 
 I had much rather my scholar had spent his 
 time at tennis, for, at least, his body would 
 by that means be in better exercise and 
 breath. Do but observe him when he comes 
 back from school, after fifteen or sixteen 
 years that he has been there; there is nothing 
 bo unfit for employment; all you shall find 
 he has got, is, that his Latin and Greek have 
 only made him a greater coxcomb than when
 
 46 MONTAIGNE 
 
 he went from home. He should bring back 
 his soul replete with good literature, and he 
 brings it only swelled and puffed up with vain 
 and empty shreds and patches of learning; 
 and has really nothing more in him than he 
 had before. 
 
 These pedants of ours, as Plato says of the 
 Sophists, their cousin-germans, are, of all 
 men, they who most pretend to be useful to 
 mankind, and who alone, of all men, not only 
 do better and improve that which is com- 
 mitted to them, as a carpenter or a mason 
 would do, but make them much worse, and 
 make us pay them for making them worse, to 
 boot. If the rule which Protagoras proposed 
 to his pupils were followed either that they 
 should give him his own demand, or make 
 affidavit upon oath in the temple how much 
 they valued the profit they had received un- 
 der his tuition, and satisfy him accordingly 
 my pedagogues would find themselves 
 sorely gravelled, if they were to be judged 
 by the affidavits of my experience. My Peri- 
 gordin patois very pleasantly calls these pre- 
 tenders to learning, lettre-ferits, as a man 
 should say, letter-marked men on whom let-
 
 MONTAIGNE 47 
 
 ters have been stamped by the blow of a 
 mallet. And, in truth, for the most part, they 
 appear to be deprived even of common sense; 
 for you see the husbandman and the cobbler 
 go simply and fairly about their business, 
 speaking only of what they know and under- 
 stand ; whereas these fellows, to make parade 
 and to get opinion, mustering this ridiculous 
 knowledge of theirs, that floats on the super- 
 ficies of the brain, are perpetually perplexing 
 and entangling themselves in their own non- 
 sense. They speak fine words sometimes, 
 'tis true, but let somebody that is wiser apply 
 them. They are wonderfully well acquainted 
 with Galen, but not at all with the disease of 
 the patient; they have already deafened you 
 with a long ribble-row of laws, but under- 
 stand nothing of the case in hand ; they have 
 the theory of all things, let who will put it in 
 practice. 
 
 I have sat by, when a friend of mine, in my 
 own house, for sport-sake, has with one of 
 these fellows counterfeited a jargon of Gali- 
 matias, patched up of phrases without head 
 or tail, saving that he interlarded here and 
 there some terms that had relation to their
 
 48 MONTAIGNE 
 
 dispute, and held the coxcomb in play a whole 
 afternoon together, who all the while thought 
 he had answered pertinently and learnedly to 
 all his objections; and yet this was a man of 
 letters, and reputation, and a fine gentleman 
 of the long robe: 
 
 "0 you, patrician blood, to whom it is 
 permitted to live with eyes in the back of 
 your head, beware of grimaces at you from 
 behind." 
 
 Whosoever shall narrowly pry into and 
 thoroughly sift this sort of people, wherewith 
 the world is so pestered, will, as I have done, 
 find, that for the most part, they neither un- 
 derstand others, nor themselves; and that 
 their memories are full enough, but the judg- 
 ment totally void and empty; some excepted, 
 whose own nature has of itself formed them 
 into better fashion. As I have observed, for 
 example, in Adrian Turnebus, who having 
 never made other profession than that of 
 mere learning only, and in that, in my 
 opinion, he was the greatest man that has 
 been these thousand years, had nothing at all 
 in him of the pedant, but the wearing of
 
 MONTAIGNE 49 
 
 his gown, and a little exterior fashion, that 
 could not be civilized to courtier ways, which 
 in themselves are nothing. I hate our people, 
 who can worse endure an ill-contrived robe 
 than an ill-contrived mind, and take their 
 measure by the leg a man makes, by his be- 
 havior, and so much as the very fashion of 
 his boots, what kind of man he is. For within 
 there was not a more polished soul upon 
 earth. I have often purposely put him upon 
 arguments quite wide of his profession, 
 wherein I found he had so clear an insight, so 
 quick an apprehension, so solid a judgment, 
 that a man would have thought he had never 
 practised any other thing but arms, and been 
 all his life employed in affairs of State. These 
 are great and vigorous natures: 
 
 "Whom benign Titan (Prometheus) has 
 framed of better clay." 
 
 that can keep themselves upright in despite 
 of a pedantic education. But it is not enough 
 that our education does not spoil us; it must, 
 moreover, alter us for the better. 
 
 Some of our Parliaments, when they are to 
 admit officers, examine only their learning;
 
 50 MONTAIGNE 
 
 to which some of the others also add the trial 
 of understanding, by asking their judgment 
 of some case in law; of these the latter, me- 
 thinks, proceed with the better method; for 
 although both are necessary, and that it is 
 very requisite they should be defective in 
 neither, yet, in truth, knowledge is not so 
 absolutely necessary as judgment; the last 
 may make shift without the other, but the 
 other never without this. For as the Greek 
 verse says 
 
 "To what use serves learning, if under- 
 standing fail us." 
 
 Would to God that, for the good of our judi- 
 cature, these societies were as well furnished 
 with understanding and conscience as they 
 are with knowledge. 
 
 "We do not study for life, but only for the 
 school." 
 
 We are not to tie learning to the soul, but to 
 work and incorporate them together: not to 
 tincture it only, but to give it a thorough and 
 perfect dye; which, if it will not take color, 
 and meliorate its imperfect state, it were
 
 MONTAIGNE 51 
 
 without question better to let it alone. 'Tis a 
 dangerous weapon, that will hinder and 
 wound its master, if put into an awkward and 
 unskillful hand: 
 
 "So that it were better not to have 
 learned." 
 
 And this, peradventure, is the reason why 
 neither we nor theology require much learn- 
 ing in women; and that Francis, Duke of 
 Brittany, son of John V., one talking with 
 him about his marriage with Isabella the 
 daughter of Scotland, and adding that she 
 was homely bred, and without any manner of 
 learning, made answer, that he liked her the 
 better, and that a woman was wise enough, 
 if she could distinguish her husband's shirt 
 from his doublet. So that it is no so great 
 wonder, as they make of it, that our ancestors 
 had letters in no greater esteem, and that 
 even to this day they are but rarely met with 
 in the principal councils of princes; and if 
 the end and design of acquiring riches, which 
 is the only thing we propose to ourselves, by 
 the means of law, physic, pedantry, and even 
 divinity itself, did not uphold and keep them
 
 52 MONTAIGNE 
 
 in credit, you would, with doubt, see them 
 in as pitiful a condition as ever. And what 
 loss would this be, if they neither instruct us 
 to think well nor to do well ? 
 
 "Since the savans have made their appear- 
 ance among us, the good people have become 
 eclipsed." 
 
 All other knowledge is hurtful to him who 
 has not the science of goodness. 
 
 But the reason I glanced upon but now, 
 may it not also hence proceed, that, our 
 studies in France having almost no other aim 
 but profit, except as to those who, by nature 
 born to offices and employments rather of 
 glory than gain, addict themselves to letters, 
 if at all, only for so short a time (being taken 
 from their studies before they can come to 
 have any taste of them, to a profession that 
 has nothing to do with books), there ordi- 
 narily remain no others to apply themselves 
 wholly to learning, but people of mean con- 
 dition, who in that only seek the means to 
 live; and by such people, whose souls are, 
 both by nature and by domestic education and 
 example, of the basest alloy the fruits of
 
 MONTAIGNE 53 
 
 knowledge are immaturely gathered and ill 
 digested, and delivered to their recipients 
 quite another thing. For it is not for knowl- 
 edge to enlighten a sonl that is dark of itself, 
 nor to make a blind man see. Her business 
 is not to find a man's eyes, but to guide, 
 govern, and direct them, provided he have 
 sound feet and straight legs to go upon. 
 Knowledge is an excellent drug, but no drug 
 has virtue enough to preserve itself from 
 corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted 
 and impure wherein it is put to keep. Such 
 a one may have a sight clear enough who 
 looks asquint, and consequently sees what is 
 good, but does not follow it, and sees knowl- 
 edge, but makes no use of it. Plato's prin- 
 cipal institution in his Republic is to fit his 
 citizens with employments suitable to their 
 nature. Nature can do all, and does all. 
 Cripples are very unfit for exercises of the 
 body, and lame souls for exercises of the 
 mind. Degenerate and vulgar souls are un- 
 worthy of philosophy. If we see a shoe- 
 maker with his shoes out at the toes, we say, 
 'tis no wonder; for, commonly, none go worse 
 shod than they. In like manner, experience
 
 54 MONTAIGNE 
 
 often presents ns a physician worse phy- 
 sicked, a divine less reformed, and (con- 
 stantly) a scholar of less sufficiency, than 
 other people. 
 
 Aristo of Chios had reason to say that 
 philosophers did their auditors harm, foras- 
 much as most of the souls of those that heard 
 them were not capable of deriving benefit 
 from instruction, which, if not applied to 
 good, would certainly be applied to ill: 
 
 "They proceeded effeminate debauchees 
 from the school of Aristippus, cynics from 
 that of Zeno." 
 
 In that excellent institution that Xenophon 
 attributes to the Persians, we find that they 
 taught their children virtue, as other nations 
 do letters. Plato tells us that the eldest son 
 in their royal succession was thus brought up; 
 after his birth he was delivered, not to 
 women, but to eunuchs of the greatest author- 
 ity about their kings for their virtue, whose 
 charge it was to keep his body healthful and 
 in good plight; and after he came to seven 
 years of age, to teach him to ride and to go
 
 MONTAIGNE 55 
 
 a-hunting. When he arrived at fourteen he 
 was transferred into the hands of four, the 
 wisest, the most just, the most temperate, and 
 most valiant of the nation ; of whom the first 
 was to instruct him in religion, the second to 
 be always upright and sincere, the third to 
 conquer his appetites and desires, and the 
 fourth to despise all danger. 
 
 It is a thing worthy of very great consider- 
 ation, that in that excellent, and, in truth, for 
 its perfection, prodigious form of civil 
 regimen set down by Lycurgus, though so 
 solicitous of the education of children, as a 
 thing of the greatest concern, and even in the 
 very seat of the Muses, he should make so 
 little mention of learning; as if that generous 
 youth, disdaining all other subjection but that 
 of virtue, ought to be supplied, instead of 
 tutors to read to them arts and sciences, with 
 such masters as should only instruct them in 
 valor, prudence and justice; an example that 
 Plato has followed in his laws. The manner 
 of their discipline was to propound to them 
 questions in judgment upon men and their 
 actions; and if they commended or con- 
 demned this or that person or fact, they were
 
 56 MONTAIGNE 
 
 to give a reason for so doing; by which means 
 they at once sharpened their understanding, 
 and learned what was right. Astyages, in 
 Xenophon, asks Cyrus to give an account of 
 his last lesson; and thus it was, "A great boy 
 in our school, having a little short cassock, by 
 force took a longer from another that was 
 not so tall as he, and gave him his own in ex- 
 change: whereupon I, being appointed judge 
 of the controversy, gave judgment, that I 
 thought it best each should keep the coat he 
 had, for that they both of them were better 
 fitted with that of one another than with their 
 own: upon which my master told me, I had 
 done ill, in that I had only considered the 
 fitness of the garments, whereas I ought to 
 have considered the justice of the thing, 
 which required that no one should have any- 
 thing forcibly taken from him that is his 
 own." And Cyrus adds that he was whipped 
 for his pains, as we are in our villages for 
 forgetting the first aorist of tupto. 
 
 My pedant must make me a very learned 
 oration, in genere demonstrative, before he 
 can persuade me that his school is like unto 
 that. They knew how to go the readiest way
 
 MONTAIGNE 57 
 
 to work; and seeing that science, when most 
 rightly applied and best understood, can do 
 no more but teach us prudence, moral hon- 
 esty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first 
 hand, to initiate their children with the 
 knowledge of effects, and to instruct them, 
 not by hearsay and rote, but by the experi- 
 ment of action, in lively forming and mould- 
 ing them; not only by words and precepts, but 
 chiefly by works and examples; to the end it 
 might not be a knowledge in the mind only, 
 but its complexion and habit: not an acquisi- 
 tion, but a natural possession. One asking to 
 this purpose, Agesilaus, what he thought 
 most proper for boys to learn! "What they 
 ought to do when they come to be men, ' ' said 
 he. It is no wonder, if such an institution 
 produced so admirable effects. 
 
 They used to go, it is said, to the other 
 cities of Greece, to inquire out rhetoricians, 
 painters, and musicians; but to Lacedaemon 
 for legislators, magistrates, and generals of 
 armies; at Athens they learned to speak well: 
 here to do well ; there to disengage themselves 
 from a sophistical argument, and to unravel 
 the imposture of captious syllogisms; here to
 
 58 MONTAIGNE 
 
 evade the baits and allurements of pleasure, 
 and with a noble courage and resolution to 
 conquer the menaces of fortune and death; 
 those cudgelled their brains about words, 
 these made it their business to inquire into 
 things; there was an eternal babble of the 
 tongue, here a continual exercise of the soul. 
 And therefore it is nothing strange if, when 
 Antipater demanded of them fifty children 
 for hostages, they made answer, quite con- 
 trary to what we should do, that they would 
 rather give him twice as many full-grown 
 men, so much did they value the loss of their 
 country's education. "When Agesilaus 
 courted Xenophon to send his children to 
 Sparta to be bred, "it is not," said he, "there 
 to learn logic or rhetoric, but to be instructed 
 in the noblest of all sciences, namely, the 
 science to obey and to command." 
 
 It is very pleasant to see Socrates, after his 
 manner, rallying Hippias, who recounts to 
 him what a world of money he has got, 
 especially in certain little villages of Sicily, 
 by teaching school, and that he made never 
 a penny at Sparta: "What a sottish and stupid 
 people," said Socrates, "are they, without
 
 MONTAIGNE 59 
 
 sense or understanding, that make no account 
 either of grammar or poetry, and only busy 
 themselves in studying the genealogies and 
 successions of their kings, the foundations, 
 rises, and declensions of states, and such 
 tales of a tub!" After which, having made 
 Hippias from one step to another ac- 
 knowledge the excellency of their form of 
 public administration, and the felicity and 
 virtue of their private life, he leaves him to 
 guess at the conclusion he makes of the 
 inutilities of his pedantic arts. 
 
 Examples have demonstrated to us that in 
 military affairs, and all others of the like 
 active nature, the study of sciences more 
 softens and untempers the courages of men 
 than it in any way fortifies and excites them. 
 The most potent empire that at this day ap- 
 pears to be in the whole world is that of the 
 Turks, a people equally inured to the estima- 
 tion of arms and the contempt of letters. I 
 find Rome was more valiant before she grew 
 so learned. The most warlike nations at this 
 time in being are the most rude and ignorant: 
 the Scythians, the Parthians, Tamerlane, 
 serve for sufficient proof of this. When the
 
 60 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Goths overran Greece, the only thing that 
 preserved all the libraries from the fire was, 
 that some one possessed them with an opinion 
 that they were to leave this kind of furniture 
 entire to the enemy, as being most proper to 
 divert them from the exercise of arms, and 
 to fix them to a lazy and sedentary life. When 
 our King Charles Viil., almost without strik- 
 ing a blow, saw himself possessed of the king- 
 dom of Naples and a considerable part of 
 Tuscany, the nobles about him attributed this 
 unexpected facility of conquest to this, that 
 the princes and nobles of Italy, more studied 
 to render themselves ingenious and learned, 
 than vigorous and warlike. 
 
 OF THE INSTITUTION OF CHILDREN. 
 To Madame Diane de Forx, 
 
 COMTESSE DE GURSON. 
 
 I NEVER yet saw that father, but let his son 
 be never so decrepit or deformed, would not, 
 notwithstanding, own him: not, nevertheless, 
 if he were not totally besotted, and blinded 
 with his paternal affection, that he did not 
 well enough discern his defects : but that with
 
 MONTAIGNE 61 
 
 all defaults he was still his. Just so, I see 
 better than any other, that all I write here 
 a re hut the idle reveries of a man that has 
 only nibbled upon the outward crust of 
 sciences in his nonage, and only retained a 
 general and formless image of them ; who has 
 got a little snatch of everything and nothing 
 of the whole, a la Francoise. For I know, in 
 general, that there is such a thing as physic, 
 as jurisprudence: four parts in mathematics, 
 and, roughly, what all these aim and point 
 at; and, peradventure, I yet know farther, 
 what sciences in general pretend unto, in 
 order to the service of our life: but to dive 
 f arther than that, and to have cudgelled my 
 brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch 
 of all modern learning, or particularly ad- 
 dicted myself t o any one science, I have never 
 doufi it; neither is there any one art of which 
 I am able to draw the first lineaments and 
 dead color; insomuch that there is not a 
 boy of the lowest form in a school, that may 
 not pretend to be wiser than I, who am not 
 able to examine him in his first lesson, which, 
 if I am at any time forced upon, I am neces- 
 sitated in my own defence, to ask him, un-
 
 62 . MONTAIGNE 
 
 aptly enough, some universal questions, such 
 as may serve to try his natural understand- 
 ing; a lesson as strange and unknown to 
 him, as his is to me. 
 
 I never seriously settled myself to the read- 
 i ng any book of solid learning but Plutarch 
 and Seneca; and there, like the Danaides, I 
 eternally fill, and it as constantly runs out; 
 something of which drops upon this paper, 
 but little or nothing stays with me. History 
 is- jny particular game as to matter of read - 
 ing, or else poetrv. for which I have a par- 
 ticular kindness and esteem por, as Cleanthes 
 fiaid, as the voice, forced through the narrow 
 passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcible 
 and shrill: so, methinks, a sentence pressed 
 within the harmony of verse darts out more 
 briskly upon the understanding, and strikes 
 my ear and apprehension with a smarter and 
 more pleasing effectj As to the natural parts 
 I have, of which this is the essay, I find them 
 to bow under the burden; my fancy and 
 judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping 
 and stumbling in the way; and when I have 
 gone as far as I can, I am in no degree satis- 
 fied; I discover still a new and greater ex-
 
 MONTAIGNE 63 
 
 tent of land before me, with a troubled and 
 imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds, 
 that I am not able to penetrate. And taking 
 upon me to write indifferently of whatever 
 comes into my head, and therein making use 
 of nothing but my own proper and natural 
 means, if it befall me, as oft-times it does, 
 accidentally to meet in any good author, the 
 same heads and commonplaces upon which I 
 have attempted to write (as I did but just 
 now in Plutarch's "Discourse of the Force 
 of Imagination ' ' ) , to see myself so weak and 
 bo forlorn, so heavy and so flat t in co mpari- 
 son of those better writers. I at once pity or 
 despise myself. Yet do I please myself w ith 
 this, that my opinions have often the honor 
 . and good fortune to jump with theirs^ and 
 that I go in the, aamft path, though at a very 
 great distance, and can say. "Ah. that is so." 
 I -am farther satisfied to find that T havft a 
 quality, whi ch every one is not blessed 
 withal, which is, to discern the vast difference 
 between them and me; and notwithstanding 
 all that, suffer my own inventions, low and 
 feeble as they are, to run on in their career, 
 without mending or plastering up the de-
 
 64 MONTAIGNE 
 
 fects that this comparison has laid open to 
 my own view. And, in plain truth, a man 
 had need of a good strong back to keep pace 
 with these people. The indiscreet scribblers 
 o f onr times, who, amongst their laborious 
 nni.hiTiffR T insert wfr ole section g and pggflg cmt 
 of ancient authors, w ith a design, by that 
 means, to illustrate their own writings, do 
 quite contrary: for t his infinite dissimilitude 
 of ornaments renders the complexion of their 
 o wn compositions so sallow and deformed, 
 that they lose much more than they get. 
 
 The philosophers, Chrysippus and Epi- 
 curus, were in this of two quite contrary 
 humors: the first not only in his books 
 mixed passages and sayings of other authors, 
 but entire pieces, and, in one, the whole 
 Medea of Euripides; which gave Apollodorus 
 occasion to say, that should a man pick out 
 of his writings all that was none of his, he 
 would leave him nothing but blank paper: 
 whereas the latter, quite on the contrary, in 
 three hundred volumes that he left behind 
 him, has not so much as one quotation. 
 
 T happened the ot her dav upon this piece 
 of fortune; I was reading a French book.
 
 MONTAIGNE 65 
 
 where after I had a long time run dreaming 
 over a great many words, so dull, so insipid, 
 so void of all wit or common sense, that in- 
 deed they were only French words: after a 
 lo ng and tedious travel, I came at last to meet 
 wi th a piece that was lofty, rich, and elevated 
 to ^the very clouds; of whi ch, had I found 
 either the declivity easy or the ascent 
 gradual, there had been some excuse; but it 
 was so perpendicular a precipice, and so 
 wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that 
 by the six first words, I found myself flying 
 in to the other world, and thence discovered 
 the vale whence I came so deep and low, that 
 I have never had since the heart to descend 
 in to it any more. If I should set out one of 
 m y discourses with such rich spoils as these, 
 i t would but too evidently manifest the im- 
 pe rfection of my own writing. To reprehend 
 the fault in others that I am guilty of my- 
 self, appears to me no more unreasonable, 
 than to condemn, as I often do, those of 
 others in myself: they are to be everywhere 
 reproved, and ought to have no sanctuary 
 allowed them. I know very well how audaci- 
 ously I myself, at every turn, attempt to equal
 
 66 MONTAIGNE 
 
 myself to my thefts, and to make my style 
 go hand in hand with them, not without a 
 temerarious hope of deceiving the eyes of my 
 reader from discerning the difference; but 
 withal it is as much by the benefit of my ap- 
 plication, that I hope to do it, as by that of 
 my invention or any force of my own. Be- 
 sides, I do not offer to contend with the 
 whole body of these champions, nor hand to 
 hand with any one of them: 'tis only by 
 flights and little light attempts that I en- 
 gage them; I do not grapple with them, but 
 try their strength only, and never engage so 
 far as I make a show to do. If I could hold 
 them in play, I were a brave fellow; for I 
 never attack them, but where they are most 
 sinewy and strong. X o cover a man's self (as 
 I have seen some do) with another m an's 
 ar mor, so as not to discover so much as his 
 fingers' ends; to carry on a design (as it is 
 not hard for a man that has anything of a 
 scholar in him, in an ordinary subject to do) 
 under old inventions patched up here and 
 the re with his own trumper y, and the n t o en- 
 dea vor to conceal the theft, and to mak e it 
 p ass for his own, is first injustice and mea n-
 
 MONTAIGNE 67 
 
 ne s of spirit in thos e who do it, w ho having 
 nothing in them of their own fit to procure 
 them a reputation, endeavor to do it by at- 
 tempting to impose things upon the world in 
 their own name, which they have no manner 
 of title to ; and next, a ridiculous folly to con- 
 tent themselves with acquiring the ignorant 
 approbation of the vulgar by such a pitiful 
 cheat, at the price at the same time of de- 
 grading themselves in the eyes of men of un- 
 derstanding, who turn up their noses at all 
 this borrowed incrustation, yet whose praise 
 alone is worth the having. A For my own part, 
 th ere is nothing I would -not sooner do t han 
 th at, neither have I said so much of oth ers, 
 bu t to get a better opportunity to explain my- 
 self. No r in this do I glance at the composers 
 of centos, who declare themselves for such; 
 of which sort of writers I have in my time 
 known many very ingenious, and particularly 
 one under the name of Capilupus, besides the 
 ancients. These are really men of wit, and 
 that make it appear they are so, both by that 
 and other ways of writing; as for example, 
 Lipsius, in that learned and laborious con- 
 texture of his Politics.
 
 68 MONTAIGNE 
 
 But, be it how it will, and how inconsid- 
 erable soever these ineptitudes may be, I will 
 say I never intended to conceal them, no more 
 than my old bald grizzled likeness before 
 them, where the painter has presented 
 you not with a perfect face, but with mine. 
 For these are my own particular opinions 
 and fancies, and I deliver them as only what 
 I myself believe, and not for what is to be 
 believed by others. I have no other end in 
 this ^ writing, but only, to discover myself, 
 who also shall, peradventure, be an other 
 t jiing to-morrow, if I chance to meet a ny new 
 i nstruction to change me. I have no au- 
 thority to be believed, neither do I desire it, 
 being too conscious of my own inerudition 
 to be able to instruct others. 
 
 Some one, then, having seen the preceding 
 chapter, the other day told me at my house, 
 that I should a little farther have extended 
 my discourse on the education of children. 
 Now, madam, if I had any sufficiency in this 
 subject, . I could not possibly better employ 
 it, than to present my best instructions to the 
 little man that threatens you shortly with a 
 happy birth (for you are too generous to be-
 
 MONTAIGNE 69 
 
 gin otherwise than with a male) ; for, having 
 had so great a hand in the treaty of your 
 marriage, I have a certain particular right 
 and interest in the greatness and prosperity 
 of the issue that shall spring from it; beside 
 that, your having had the best of my services 
 so long in possession, sufficiently obliges me 
 to desire the honor and advantage of all 
 wherein you shall be concerned. But, in 
 truth, all I understand as to that particular 
 is only this, t hat the greatest and most im- 
 p ortant difficulty of human science is the edu- 
 f cation of children. F or as in agriculture, the 
 husbandry that is to precede planting, as also 
 planting itself, is certain, plain, and well 
 known; but after that which is planted comes 
 to life, there is a great deal more to be done, 
 more art to be used, more care to be taken, 
 and much more difficulty to cultivate and 
 bring it to perfection: so it is with me nj it 
 i s no hard matter to get children; but after 
 they are born, then begins the trouble, 
 solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, 
 and bring them up. The symptoms of their 
 iTiftlj nfltimis in t hat tender age are so obscur e, 
 a n_d the promises so uncertain and fallacious,
 
 70 MONTAIGNE 
 
 t hat it is very hard to establish any solid 
 judgment or conjecture upon them. Look at 
 Cimon, for example, and Themistocles, and a 
 thousand others, who very much deceived the 
 expectation men had of them. Cubs of bears 
 and puppies readily discover their natural 
 inclination; but men, so soon as ever they are 
 grown up, applying themselves to certain 
 habits, engaging themselves in certain 
 opinions, and conforming themselves to par- 
 ticular laws and customs, easily alter, or at 
 least disguise, their true and real disposition; 
 and yet it is hard to force the propension of 
 nature. Whence it comes to pass, that for 
 not having chosen the right course, \je__often_ 
 tak e very gr ea t pains, and consume a good 
 p art of our time in training up children to 
 t hings, for which, by their natur al constitu- 
 t ion, the y are tot ally unfit . In this difficulty, 
 nevertheless, I am clearly of opinion, that 
 they ought to be elemented in the best and 
 most advantageous studies, without taking 
 too much notice of, or being too superstitious 
 in those light prognostics they give of them- 
 selves in their tender years, and to which 
 Plato, in his Republic, gives, methinks, too 
 much authority.
 
 MONTAIGNE 71 
 
 Madam, science is a very great ornamnet, 
 and a thing of marvellous use, especially in 
 persons raised to that degree of fortune in 
 which you are. And, in truth, in persons of 
 mean and low condition, it cannot perform 
 its true and genuine office, being naturally 
 more prompt to assist in the conduct of war, 
 in the government of peoples, in negotiating 
 the leagues and friendships of princes and 
 foreign nations, than in forming a syllogism 
 in logic, in pleading a process in law, or in 
 prescribing a dose of pills in physic. Where- 
 fore, madam, believing you will not omit this 
 so necessary feature in the education of your 
 children, who yourself have tasted its sweet- 
 ness, and are of a learned extraction (for we 
 yet have the writings of the ancient Counts 
 of Foix, from whom my lord, your husband, 
 and yourself, are both of you descended, and 
 Monsieur de Candale, your uncle, every day 
 obliges the world with others, which will ex- 
 tend the knowledge of this quality in your 
 family for so many succeeding ages) L I will , 
 upon_tliis_Qc casion, presume to acquaint yo ur 
 ladyshi p^ with one particular fancy of my 
 pwiy contrary to the common method, which
 
 72 MONTAIGNE 
 
 is all I am able to contribute to your service 
 in this affair. 
 
 Th e charge of the tutor you shall provi de 
 for vour son y upon the choice of whom de- 
 p ends the whole success of his educati on, has 
 several other great and considerable parts 
 and duties required in so important a trust, 
 besides that of which I am about to speak: 
 these, however, I shall not mention, as being 
 unable to add anything of moment to the 
 common rules: and in this, wherein I take 
 upon me to advise, he may follow it so far 
 only as it shall appear advisable. 
 
 For a boy of quality then, who pretends t o 
 Ls l etters not upon the account of profit (for 
 so mean an object as that is unworthy of the 
 grace and favor of the Muses, and, more- 
 over, in it a man directs his service to and 
 depends upon others) , nor so much for out- 
 ward ornament, as for his own proper an d 
 peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich him- 
 self within, ha ving rather a desire to come 
 out an accomplished cavalier than a mere 
 scholar or learned man; for such a one, I say, 
 I would, also, have his friends solicitous to 
 find him out a tutor, who has rather a well-
 
 
 
 MONTAIGNE 73 
 
 made than a well-filled head; seeking, indeed, 
 both the one and the other, but rather of the 
 two to prefer manners and judgment to m ere 
 learning, and that this man should exercise 
 his charge after a new method. 
 
 ' Tjs the custom of p edagogues to be 
 et ernally thundering in their pupil's ears, as 
 they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the 
 business of the pupil is only to repeat what 
 the others have said: now I would have a 
 tu tor to correct this error, and , that at the 
 very first, he should according to the capacity 
 he has to deal with, put it to the test, per- 
 mitt ing his pupil himself to taste things, an d 
 o f himself to discern and choose them, some- 
 t imes opening the way to him, and sometimes 
 le aving him to open it for himself; t hat is, 
 I would not have him alone to inve nt and 
 s peak, but that he should also hear his pupil 
 speak in turn. Socrates, and since him 
 Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, 
 and then they spoke to them: 
 
 "The authority of those who teach, is very \ 
 often an impediment to those who desire to < 
 learn."
 
 74 
 
 MONTAIGNE 
 
 V 
 
 It is g ood to make him, like a young horse, 
 trot before him, that he may .judge of his 
 
 going, an d how much he is to abate of his 
 
 V< 
 
 own speed, to accommodate himself to the 
 vigor and capacity o f thft other. For want 
 of which due proportion we spoil all; which 
 also to know how to adjust, and to keep 
 within an exact and due measure, is one of 
 the hardest things I know, and 'tis the effect 
 of a high and well-tempered soul, to know 
 how to condescend to such puerile motions 
 and to govern and direct them. [I walk 
 fir mer and more secure up hill than down l 
 S uc]i as. according to our common wa y 
 
 \\\ o f teaching, undertake, with one and the 
 s ame lesson, and the same measure of direc- 
 t ion to instruct several boys of differing and 
 un equal capacities, are infinitely mis taken; 
 and 'tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of 
 scholars, there are not found above two or 
 three who bring away any good account of 
 their time and discipline. Let the master 
 n ot only examine him about the grammatical 
 
 K2/ c onstruction of the bare words of his lesson, 
 hut ahnnt the sense and substance of them, 
 and let him judge of the profit he has made ,
 
 MONTAIGNE 75 
 
 not by the testimony of fris memory T but by 
 that of his life. L et him make him put what 
 he has learned into a hundred several forms, 
 and accommodate it to so many several sub- 
 jects, to see if he yet rightly comprehends it, 
 and has made it his own, taking instruction 
 of his progress by the pedagogic institutions 
 of Plato. " Tis a sign of crudity and indige s- (^ 
 ti on to disgorge what we eat in the same c on- 
 dition it was swallowed ; the stomach has not 
 performed its office unless it have altered the 
 form and condition of what w<* flommittpd to 
 it to concoct. Our minds work only upon 
 trust, w hen bound and compelled to follow 
 th e appetite of another's fancy, enslaved an d /* 
 c aptivated under the authority of another' s \j) 
 i nstruction; we have been so subjec ted to 
 th e trammel, that we have no free , nor 
 n atural pace of our own; our own vigor and 
 liberty are extinct and gone: 
 
 * ' They never become their own guardians. ' ' 
 
 I was privately carried at Pisa to see a 
 very honest man, but so great an Aristotelian, 
 that his most usual thesis was: "That the 
 touchstone and square of all solid imagina-
 
 76 MONTAIGNE 
 
 tion, and of all truth, was an absolute con- 
 formity to Aristotle's doctrine; and that all 
 besides was nothing but inanity and chimera; 
 for that he had seen all, and said all." A 
 position, that for having been a little too in- 
 juriously and broadly interpreted, brought 
 him once and long kept him in great danger 
 of the Inquisition at Rome. 
 
 L ei him make him examine and thoroughly 
 s ift everything he read s r and lodge nothing- 
 l^ i n/iiis fancv upon simple authority and upon 
 trust. Aris totle's principles will then be no 
 more principles to him, than those of Epi- 
 curus and the Stoics: let this diversity of 
 o pinions be propounded to, and laid bef ore 
 hi m: he will himself choose, if he be able? 
 if not, he will remain in dnnht 
 
 "It pleases me to doubt, not less than to 
 know," 
 
 for, if he embr ace the opinions of Xenophon 
 a nd Plato, by his own reason, they will no 
 m ore be theirs, but become his own. W ho 
 follows another, follows nothing, finds noth- 
 ing, nay, is inquisitive after nothing. 
 
 (
 
 MONTAIGNE 77 
 
 * * We are under no king; let each vindi cate 
 hims e lf." 
 
 Let him, at least, know that he knows. It 
 will be necessary that he imbibe their 
 knowledge, not that he be corrupted with 
 their precepts; and no matter if he forget 
 where he had his learning, provided he know 
 how to apply it to his own use. Truth and 
 reason are common to every one, and are no 
 more his who spake them first, than his who* 
 speaks them after: 'tis no more according to 
 Plato, than according to me, since both he 
 and I equally see and understand them. Bees 
 cuIL their several sweets from this flowerand 
 t hat blossom, here and there where they fin d 
 t hem, but themselves afterwards make the 
 honey, which is all and purely their own, and 
 no more thvme and marjoram : so the seve ral 
 fragments he borrows from others, he will 
 transform and shuffle together to compile a 
 work that shall be absolutely his own; tha t 
 is to say, his judgment: his instruction, 
 labor and study, tend to nothing else but 
 to form that. He is not obliged to discover 
 
 D
 
 78 MONTAIGNE 
 
 wh ence he got the materials that have as - 
 sisted him ? but only to p oflaBB what h^ has 
 himself done with them. M en that live upon 
 pillage and borrowing, expose their pur 
 chases and buildings to every one's view: 
 but do not proclaim how they came by th 
 money. We do not see the fees and per 
 quisites of a gentleman of the long robe; but 
 we see the alliances wherewith he fortifies 
 himself and his family, and the titles and 
 honors he has obtained for him and his. No 
 man divulges his revenue; or, at least, which 
 way it comes in: but every one publishes his 
 -z\ acquisitions. Tjbe advantages of our study 
 are to bec ome better and more wise. "lis, 
 
 I i ^ m - 
 
 says Epicharmus, jhe understanding that s ees 
 a nd hears, 'tis the unders tanding that im- 
 p roves everything, that orders pvprythin gj 
 and that acts, rules, and reigns: all other 
 faculties are blind, and deaf, and without 
 soul. And certainly we render it timorous 
 and servile, in not allowing it the liberty and 
 privilege to do anything of itself. Whoever 
 asked his pupil what he thought of grammar 
 and rhetoric, or of such and such a sentence 
 of Cicero? Our masters stick them, full 
 
 3 
 
 i
 
 MONTAIGNE 79 
 
 feathered, in our memories, and there es- 
 tablish them like oracles, of which the let- 
 ters and syllables are of the substance of the 
 thing. To know by rote, is no knowledge, 
 and signifies no more but only to retain what 
 one has intrusted to our memory. That 
 which a man rightly knows and understands, 
 he is the free disposer of at his own full 
 liberty, without any regard to the author 
 from whence he had it, or fumbling over the 
 leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning 
 is a poor, paltry learning; it may serve for 
 ornament, but there is yet no foundation for 
 any superstructure to be built upon it, ac- 
 cording to the opinion of Plato, who says, 
 that constancy, faith, and sincerity, are the 
 true philosophy, and the other sciences, that 
 are directed to other ends, mere adulterate 
 paint. I could wish that Paluel or Pompey, 
 those two noted dancers of my time, could 
 have taught us to cut capers, by only seeing 
 them do it, without stirring from our places, 
 as these men pretend to inform the under- 
 standing, without ever setting it to work; or 
 that we could learn to ride, handle a pike, 
 touch a lute, or sing, without the trouble of
 
 80 MONTAIGNE 
 
 practice, as these attempt to make us judge 
 and speak well, without exercising us in 
 judging or speaking. Now in this initiation 
 of our studies in their progress, whatsoever 
 presents itself before us is book sufficient; 
 a roguish trick of a page, a sottish mistake of 
 a servant, a jest at the table, are so many 
 new subjects. 
 
 And for this reason, conversation with men 
 i s of very great use and travel into foreign 
 countries: not to bring back (as most of our 
 young monsieurs do) an acconnt only of how 
 many paces Santa Eotonda is in circuit; or 
 of the richness of Signora Livia's petticoats; 
 or, as some others, how much Nero's face, in 
 a statue in such an old ruin, is longer and 
 broader than that made for him on some 
 medal; but to be able chiefly to give an ac- 
 c ount of the humors, manners, customs, and 
 l aws of those nations where he has bee n* 
 and that we may whet and sharpen our wits 
 by rubbing them against those of other s. J. 
 wou ld that a boy should be sent abroad very 
 (^) young, and first, so as to kill two birds with 
 one stone, into those neig h boring nations 
 wh ose language is most differing from our
 
 MONTAIGNE 81 
 
 own, an d to which, if it be not formed be- 
 times, the tongue will grow too stiff to bend. 
 And also 'tis the general opinion of all, 
 that jbl child should not be bronp ftt rip in hia ^ ^ 
 mother's lap. M others are too tender, and 
 their natural affection is apt to make the 
 most discreet of them all so overfond, that 
 t hey can neither find in their hearts to give 
 t hem due correction for the faults they may 
 commit, nor suffer them to be inured to hard- 
 shi ps and hazards, as they ought to be. T hey 
 will not endure to see them return all dust 
 and sweat from their exercise, to drink cold 
 drink when they are hot, nor see them mount 
 an unruly horse, nor take a foil in hand 
 against a rude fencer, or so much as to dis- 
 charge a carbine. And yet there is no 
 remedy; whoever will breed a boy to be good 
 for anythin g when he comes to be a man f 
 must by no means spare him when young , 
 a nd must very often transgress th e rules of, 
 physic: 
 
 "Let him lead his life in the open air, and 
 in business." 
 
 It is not enough to fortify his soul; you are
 
 82 MONTAIGNE 
 
 also to make his sinews strong; for the soul 
 
 w jll be oppressed if not assisted by the mem - 
 b ers, and would have too hard a task to dis - 
 c harge two offices alone. I k now very well 
 to my cost, how much mine groans under the 
 burden, from being accommodated with a 
 body so tender and indisposed, as eternally 
 leans and presses upon her; and often in my 
 reading perceive that our masters, in their 
 writings, make examples pass for mag- 
 nanimity and fortitude of mind, which really 
 are rather toughness of skin and hardness of 
 bones ; for I have seen men, women, and chil- 
 dren, naturally born of so hard and insen- 
 sible a constitution of body, that a sound 
 cudgelling has been less to them than a flirt 
 with a finger would have been to me, and 
 that would neither cry out, wince, nor shrink, 
 for a good swinging beating; and when 
 wrestlers counterfeit the philosophers in 
 patience, 'tis rather strength of nerves than 
 stoutness of heart, ffow to be inured to un - 
 d ergo labor, is to be accustomed to endu re 
 jfain : 
 
 " Labor hardens us against pain."
 
 MONTAIGNE 83 
 
 A boy is to be broken in to the toil and 
 ro ughness of exercise, so as to be trained up 
 to .the pain and suffering of dislocation s, 
 colics, cauteries, and even imprisonment 
 and the rack itself; for he may come by mis- 
 fortune to be reduced to the worst of these, 
 which (as this world goes) is sometimes in- 
 flicted on the good as well as the bad. As 
 for proof, in our present civil war whoever 
 draws his sword against the laws, threatens 
 the honestest men with the whip and the 
 halter. 
 
 And, moreover, b y living at home, the a u- 
 t hprity of this governor, which ought to be 
 so vereign over the boy he has received in to 
 his charge, is often checked and hindere d by 
 t he presence of parents; to which may also 
 be added, that the respect the whole family 
 pay him, as their master's son, and the 
 knowledge he has of the estate and greatness 
 he is heir to, are, in my opinion, no small in- 
 conveniences in these tender years. 
 
 And yet, even in this conversing with men 
 I spoke of but now, I have observed this 
 vice, that instead of gathering observations 
 from others, we make it our whole business to
 
 84 MONTAIGNE 
 
 lay ourselves open to them, and are more 
 co ncerned how to expose and set ont our ow n 
 co mmodities, than how to increase onr stock 
 (0 b y acquiri ng new. Silence, therefore, and 
 m odesty are very advantageous qualities in 
 c onversation. On e should, therefore, train 
 up this boy to be sparing and an husband of 
 his knowledge when he has acquired it; and 
 to forbear taking exceptions at or reproving 
 every idle saying or ridiculous story that is 
 said or told in his presence; for it is a very 
 unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything 
 that is not agreeable to our own palate. Let 
 him jje satisfied with correcting himself, and 
 not seem to condemn everything in another 
 
 he would n ot do himself, nor dispute it as 
 a gainst common customs: 
 
 "Let us be wise without ostentation, with- 
 out envy." 
 
 Let him avoid these vain and uncivil images 
 
 of authority, this childish ambition of covet- 
 ing to appear better bred and more accom - 
 pl ished, than he really will, by such carriag e, 
 discover himself to be. And, as if oppor-
 
 MONTAIGNE 85 
 
 timities of interrupting and reprehending 
 were not to fee omitted, to desire thence to 
 derive the reputation of something more than 
 ordinary. For as it becomes none but great 
 poets to make use of the poetical license, so 
 it is intolerable for any but men of great and 
 illustrious souls to assume privilege above 
 the authority of custom: 
 
 "If Socrates and Aristippus have com- 
 mitted any act against manners and custom, 
 let him not think that he is allowed to do the 
 same; for it was by great and divine benefits 
 that they obtained this privilege." 
 
 Let him be instructed not to engage in dis- 
 co urse or disput e but with a champ ion 
 worthy of him, and, even there, not to make 
 use of all the little subtleties that may seem 
 pat for his purpose, but only such arguments 
 as may best serve him. Let him be taught to 
 be curious in the election and choice of his 
 reasons, to abominate impertinence, and con- 
 sequently, to affect brevity; but, above all, 
 let him be lessoned to acquiesce and submit 
 to truth so soon as ever he shall discover it,
 
 86 MONTAIGNE 
 
 whether in his opponent's argument, or upo n 
 better consideration of his own; for he shall 
 never be preferred to the chair for a mere 
 clatter of words and syllogisms, and is no 
 further engaged to any argument whatever, 
 than as he shall in his own judgment approve 
 it: nor yet is arguing a trade, where the 
 liberty of recantation and getting off upon 
 better thoughts, are to be sold for ready 
 money: 
 
 "Neither is he driven by any necessity, that 
 he should defend all things that are pre- 
 scribed and enjoined him." 
 
 If his governor be of my humor, he will 
 form his will to be a very good and loyal 
 subject to his prince, very affectionate to his 
 person, and very stout in his quarrel; but 
 withal he will cool in him the desir e of having 
 "J) any other tie to his service than public duty. 
 
 Besides several other inconveniences that are 
 inconsistent with the liberty every honest 
 man ought to have, a man's judgment, being 
 bri bed and prepossessed by these particular 
 o bligations, is either blinded and less free to 
 exercise its function, o r is blemished with
 
 MONTAIGNE 87 
 
 ingratitude and indiscretion. A man that is 
 purely a courtier, can neither have power 
 nor will to speak or think otherwise than 
 favorably and well of a master, who, 
 amongst so many millions of other subjects, 
 has picked out him with his own hand to 
 nourish and advance; this favor, and the 
 profit flowing from it, must needs, and not 
 without some show of reason, corrupt his 
 freedom and dazzle him; and we commonly see 
 these people speak in another kind of phrase 
 than is ordinarily spoken by others of the 
 same nation, though what they say in that 
 courtly language is not much to be believed. 
 Le t his conscience and virtu e be eminently 
 manifest in his speaking, and have only rea- 
 son for their guide. Make him understand, 
 that t o acknowledge the error he shall d is- 
 co yer in his own argument, though only 
 found o ut by himself, is an effect of jud gment 
 and sincerity, which are the principal things 
 he is to seek afte r; that obstinacy and con- 
 tention are common qualities, most appear- 
 ing in mean souls; that to revise and correct 
 himself, to forsake an unjust argument in 
 the height and heat of dispute, are rare*
 
 88 MONTAIGNE 
 
 great, and philosophical qualities. Let him 
 
 A be advised, being in company, to have his 
 [1J, eye and ear in every corne r; for I find that 
 the places of greatest honor are commonly 
 seized upon by men that have least in them, 
 and that the greatest fortunes are seldom 
 accompanied with the ablest parts. I have 
 been present when, whilst they at the upper 
 end of the chamber have been only comment- 
 ing the beauty of the arras, or the flavor of 
 the wine, many things that have been very 
 finely said at the lower end of the table have 
 been lost and thrown away. Let him 
 
 exa mine every man's talent; a peasant, a 
 bricklaye r, a passenger: one may lea rn some- 
 th ing from every one of these in their se veral 
 capacities, and something will be picked out 
 of their discours e whereof some use may be 
 m ade at one time or another; na y, even the 
 folly and impertinence of others will con- 
 tribute to his instruction. B y observing the 
 grace s and manners of all he sees, he will 
 create, to JhimseJf ML.emulatioiL_oi . the. good, 
 and a contempt of the bad. 
 Let an honest curiosity be suggeste d to his 
 U fa ncy of being inqu isitive after e veryt hing;
 
 MONTAIGNE 89 
 
 whatever there is singular and rare near the 
 place where he is, let him go and see it; a 
 fine house, a noble fountain, an eminent man, 
 the place where a battle has been anciently 
 fought, the passages of Caesar and Charle- 
 magne : 
 
 "What country is bound in frost, what land 
 is friable with heat, what wind serves fairest 
 for Italy.' ' 
 
 Let him inquire into the manners, revenues, 
 and alliances of princes, things in themselves 
 very pleasant to learn, and very useful to 
 know. 
 
 In this conversing with men, I mean also, 
 and principally, those who only live in the 
 records of history; he shall, by reading those 
 books, converse with the great and heroic 
 souls of the best ages. 'Tis an idle and vain 
 study to those who make it so by doing it 
 after a negligent manner, but to those who do 
 it with care and observation, 'tis a study of 
 inestimable fruit and value; and the only 
 study, as Plato reports, that the Lacedae- 
 monians reserved to themselves. What profit 
 shall he not reap as to the business of men,
 
 X 
 
 90 MONTAIGNE 
 
 by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But, 
 withal, let my governor remember to what 
 \d atkj frig in structions are principally directed , 
 and that he do not so much imprint in his 
 pupil 's memory the date of the ruin of 
 Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and 
 Scipio; nor so much where Marcellus died, as 
 why it was unworthy of his duty that he died 
 there. L et him not teach him so muc h the 
 na rrative parts of h istory as to j udge them; 
 th e reading of them, in my opinion, is a thing 
 tha t jrf all others we apply ourselves unto 
 wi th the most differing measure . I have read 
 a hundred things in Livy that another has 
 not, or not taken notice of at least; and 
 Plutarch has read a hundred more there than 
 ever I could find, or than, peradventure, that 
 author ever wrote; to some it is merely a 
 grammar study, to others the very anatomy 
 of philosophy, by which the most abstruse 
 parts of our human nature penetrate. There 
 are in Plutarch many long discourses very 
 worthy to be carefully read and observed, 
 for he is, in my opinion, of all others the 
 greatest master in that kind of writing; but 
 there are a thousand others which he has only
 
 MONTAIGNE 91 
 
 touched and glanced upon, where he only 
 points with his finger to direct us which way 
 we may go if we will, and contents himself 
 sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in 
 the nicest article of the question, whence we 
 are to grope out the rest. As, for example, 
 where he says that the inhabitants of Asia 
 came to be vassals to one only, for not having 
 been able to pronounce one syllable, which 
 is No. Which saying of his gave perhaps 
 matter and occasion to La Boetie to write his 
 "Voluntary Servitude.'' Only to see him 
 pick out a light action in a man's life, or a 
 mere word that does not seem to amount even 
 to that, is itself a whole discourse. 'Tis to 
 our prejudice that men of understanding 
 should so immoderately affect brevity; no 
 doubt their reputation is the better by it, but 
 in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch 
 had rather we should applaud his judgment 
 than commend his knowledge, and had rather 
 leave us with an appetite to read more, than 
 glutted with that we have already read. He 
 knew very well, that a man may say too 
 much even upon the best subjects, and that 
 Alexandridas justly reproached him who
 
 92 MONTAIGNE 
 
 made very good but too long speeches to the 
 Ephori, when he said: "0 stranger- thou 
 speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but 
 not as thou shouldst speak them." Such as 
 have lean and spare bodies stuff themselves 
 out with clothes: so they who are defective 
 in matter endeavor to make amends with 
 words. 
 
 H uman understanding is m flrvftllonsly nn- 
 li ghtened by daily conversation with m en, 
 f or we are, otherwise, compressed and hea ped 
 u p in ourselves, and have our sight limited 
 to the length of our own noses. One asking 
 Socrates of what country he was, he did not 
 make answer, of Athens, but of the world; he 
 whose imagination was fuller and wider, em- 
 braced the whole world for his country, and 
 extended his society and friendship to all 
 mankind; not as we do, who look no further 
 than our feet. When the vines of my village 
 are nipped with the frost, my parish priest 
 presently concludes, that the indignation of 
 God is gone out against all the human race, 
 and that the cannibals have already got the 
 pip. Who is it that, seeing the havoc of 
 these civil wars of ours, does not cry out, that
 
 MONTAIGNE 93 
 
 the machine of the world is near dissolution, 
 and that the day of judgment is at hand; 
 without considering, that many worse things 
 have been seen, and that in the meantime, 
 people are very merry in a thousand other 
 parts of the earth for all this? For my part, 
 considering the license and impunity that 
 always attend such commotions, I wonder 
 they are so moderate, and that there is no 
 more mischief done. To him who feels the 
 hailstones patter about his ears, the whole 
 hemisphere appears to be in storm and 
 tempest; like the ridiculous Savoyard, who 
 said very gravely, that if that simple king 
 of France could have managed his fortune as 
 he should have done, he might in time have 
 come to have been steward of the household 
 to the duke his master: the fellow could not, 
 in his shallow imagination, conceive that 
 there could be anything greater than a Duke 
 of Savoy. And, in truth, we are all of us, 
 insensibly, in this error, an error of a very 
 great weight and very pernicious conse- 
 quence. But whoever shall represent to his 
 fa ncy, as in a picture, that great image of our 
 mother nature, in her full majesty and lustre,
 
 A 
 
 v v, 
 
 94 MONTAIGNE 
 
 whoe ver in her face shall read so general _a nd 
 so co nstant a variety, whoever shall observe 
 h imself in that figure, and not himself b aL- 
 a- whole kingdom, no bigger than, th e least 
 
 t ouch or prick of a pencil in comparison of 
 
 the whole, that man alone is able to y*^ 1 
 t hings according to their tr ufr flBJaMJM Ittd 
 grandeur. 
 
 T his great world which some do yet mu lti- 
 pl y, as several species under one genus, is the 
 mirror wherein we are to behold ourselve s, 
 t o be able to know ourselves as we ought t o 
 d o in the true bias. In short, I would hav e 
 this to be the book my young gent leman 
 should study with the most attention. S o 
 many humors, so many sects, so many judg- 
 ments, opinions, laws, and customs, teach us 
 to judge aright of our own, and inform our 
 understanding to discover its imperfection 
 and natural infirmity, which is no trivial 
 speculation. So many mutations of states 
 and kingdoms, and so many turns and revo- 
 lutions of public fortune, will make us wise 
 enough to make no great wonder of our own. 
 So many great names, so many famous vic- 
 tories and conquests drowned and swallowed
 
 MONTAIGNE 95 
 
 in oblivion, render our hopes ridiculous of 
 eternising our names by the taking of half- 
 a-score of light horse, or a henroost, which 
 only derives its memory from its ruin. The 
 pride and arrogance of so many foreign 
 pomps, the inflated majesty of so many courts 
 and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our 
 sight without closing our eyes to behold the 
 lustre of our own; so many trillions of men, 
 buried before us, encourage us not to fear to 
 go seek such good company in the other 
 world: and so of the rest. Pythagoras was 
 wont to say, that our life resembles the great 
 and populous assembly of the Olympic games, 
 wherein some exercise the body, that they 
 may carry away the glory of the prize: others 
 bring merchandise to sell for profit : there are 
 also some (and those none of the worst sort) 
 who pursue no other advantage than only to 
 look on, and consider how and why every- 
 thing is done, and to be spectators of the lives 
 of other men, thereby the better to judge of 
 and regulate their own. 
 
 To examples may fitly be applied all the 
 profitable discourses of philosophy, to which 
 all human actions, as to their best rule, ought
 
 96 MONTAIGNE 
 
 to be especially directed: . scholar shall be 
 taught to know: 
 
 "What we are, and to what life we are be- 
 gotten; what it is right to wish; what is the 
 use of new money; how much it becomes us 
 to give to our country and dear kindred; 
 whom the Deity has commanded thee to be; 
 and in what human part thou art placed." 
 
 what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; 
 what ought to be the end and design of study; 
 what valor, temperance, and justice are; the 
 difference betwixt ambition and avarice, 
 servitude and subjection, license and liberty; 
 by what token a man may know true and 
 solid contentment; how far death, affliction, 
 and disgrace are to be apprehended: 
 
 "And how you may shun or sustain every 
 hardship ;" 
 
 by what secret springs we move, and the rea- 
 son of our various agitations and irresolu- 
 tions: for, methinks the first doctrine with 
 
 /.r\ which one should season his understand ing, 
 
 o ughtrio be that which regulates his manners 
 and his sense : that teaches him to know him *
 
 MONTAIGNE 97 
 
 sqlf , and how both well to die and well to 
 live. Amongst the liberal sciences, let us be- 
 g in with that which makes ns free; not that 
 th ey do not all serve in some measure to th e 
 i nstruction and nse of life, as all other 
 things in some sort also do; but let ns make 
 ch oice of that which directly and professed ly 
 serves to that end. If we are once able to 
 restrain the offices of human life within their 
 just and natural limits, we shall find that 
 most of the sciences in use are of no great 
 use to us, and even in those that are, that 
 there are many very unnecessary cavities 
 and dilatations which we had better let alone, 
 and, following Socrates' direction, limit the 
 course of our studies to those things only" 
 where is a true and real utility: 
 
 "Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the 
 hour of living well is like the clown, waiting 
 till the river shall have flowed out: but the 
 river still flows, and will flow for ever." 
 
 'Tis a great foolery to teach our chil- 
 dren : 
 
 "What influence Pisces have, or the sign
 
 98 MONTAIGNE 
 
 of angry Leo, or Capricorn, washed by the 
 Hesperian wave;" 
 
 the knowledge of the stars and the motion of 
 the eighth sphere before their own: 
 
 "What care I about the Pleiades or the 
 stars of Taurus I" 
 
 Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, "To 
 what purpose," said he, "should I trouble 
 myself in searching out the secrets of the 
 stars, having death or slavery continually 
 before my eyes?" for the kings of Persia 
 were at that time preparing to invade his 
 country. Every one ought to say thus, "Be- 
 ing assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, 
 temerity, superstition, and having within so 
 many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder 
 over the world's changes f " 
 
 Af ter having taught him what will make 
 h im more wise and good, you may then en- 
 te rtain him with the elements of logic, 
 physics, geometry, rhetoric, and the scienc e 
 which he shall then himself most incline to, 
 his judgment being beforehand formed and 
 fit to choose, he will quickly make his own.
 
 MONTAIGNE 99 
 
 T he way of instructing him ought to be some- 
 t imes by discourse, and sometimes by read - 
 i ng; sometimes his governor shall put th e 
 author hi mself, which he shall thin k most 
 pepper for him j into his hands, and some - 
 fimno iiy fjjo marrow and substance of it; 
 and if h jmsplf bp not r>rmvprsa nt enough in 
 books to turn to all the fine disc ourses the 
 books contain for his purpose, there may 
 s ome man of learning be joined to him, t hat 
 upon every occasion shall supply him with 
 what he stands in need of, to furnish it to 
 his pupil. And who can doubt but that this 
 way of teaching is much more easy and 
 natural than that of Gaza, in which the pre- 
 cepts are so intricate, and so harsh, and the 
 words so vain, lean, and insignificant, that 
 there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing 
 that quickens and elevates the wit and fancy, 
 whereas here the mind has what to feed upon 
 and to digest. This fruit, therefore, is not 
 only without comparison, much more fair and 
 beautiful; but will also be much more early 
 ripe. 
 
 'Tis a thousand pities that matters should 
 be at such a pass in this age of ours, that 
 
 if
 
 100 MONTAIGNE 
 
 philosophy, even with men of understanding, 
 should be looked upon as a vain and fantastic 
 name, a thing of no use, no value, either in 
 opinion or effect, of which I think those 
 ergotisms and petty sophistries, by prepos- 
 sessing the avenues to it, are the cause. And 
 people are much to blame to represent it to 
 children for a thing of so difficult 
 access, and with such a frowning, 
 grim, and formidable aspect.. "Who is 
 it that has disguised it thus, with this 
 false, pale, and ghostly countenance 1 ? There 
 is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, 
 and I had like to have said, more wanton. 
 She preaches nothing but feasting and jollity; 
 a melancholic anxious look shows that she 
 does not inhabit there. Demetrius the gram- 
 marian finding in the temple of Delphos a 
 knot of philosophers set chatting together, 
 said to them, "Either I am much deceived, 
 or by your cheerful and pleasant coun- 
 tenances, you are engaged in no very deep 
 discourse." To which one of them, Hera- 
 cleon the Megarean, replied: " 'Tis for such 
 as are puzzled about inquiring whether the 
 future tense of the verb Ballo be spelt with
 
 MONTAIGNE 101 
 
 a double L, or that hunt after the derivation 
 of the comparatives Cheirou and Beltiou, and 
 the superlatives Cheiriotou and Beliotou, 
 to knit their brows whilst discoursing of 
 their science; but as to philosophical dis- 
 courses, they always divert and cheer up 
 those that entertain them, and never deject 
 them or make them sad:" 
 
 "How charming is divine philosophy! 
 Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose ; 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute." 
 
 "You may discern the torments of mind 
 lurking in a sick body; you may discern its 
 joys: either expression the face assumes 
 from the mind." 
 
 The soul that lodges philosophy, ought t o 
 be of such a constitution of health, as to ren- 
 d er the body in like manner healthful too; 
 she ought to make her tranquillity and satis- 
 faction shine so as to appear without, and 
 her contentment ought to fashion the out- 
 ward behavior to her own mold, and con- 
 sequently to fortify it with a graceful con- 
 fidence, an active and joyous carriage, and
 
 102 MONTAIGNE 
 
 a serene and contented countenance. .The 
 m ost manifest siff n of wisdom is a continual 
 cheerfulness; her s tate is like that of things 
 in the regions above the moon, always clear 
 and serene. 'Tis Baroco and Baralipton that 
 render their disciples so dirty and ill- 
 favored, and not she; they do not so much as 
 know her but by hearsay. What! It is she 
 that calms and appeases the storms and 
 tempests of the soul, and who teaches famine 
 and fevers to laugh and sing; and that, not 
 by certain imaginary epicycles, but by 
 natural and manifest reasons. She has virtue 
 for her end, which is not, as the schoolmen 
 say, situate upon the summit of a perpen- 
 dicular, rugged, inaccessible precipice: such 
 as have approached her find her, quite on the 
 contrary, to be seated in a fair, fruitful, and 
 flourishing plain, whence she easily discovers 
 all things below; to which place any one may, 
 however, arrive, if he know but the way, 
 through shady, green, and sweetly-flourishing 
 avenues, by a pleasant, easy, and smooth 
 descent, like that of the celestial vault. 'Tis 
 for not having frequented this supreme, this 
 beautiful, triumphant, and amiable, this
 
 MONTAIGNE 103 
 
 equally delicious and courageous virtue, this 
 so professed and implacable enemy to 
 anxiety, sorrow, fear, and constraint, who, 
 having nature for her guide, has fortune and 
 pleasure for her companions, that they have 
 gone, according to their own weak imagina- 
 tion, and created this ridiculous, this sorrow- 
 ful, querulous, despiteful, 'threatening, ter- 
 rible image of it to themselves and others, 
 and placed it upon a rock apart, amongst 
 thorns and brambles, and made of it a hob- 
 goblin to affright people. 
 
 But the governor that I would have, that 
 
 n ' * 
 
 i s such a one as knows it to be his duty to 
 possess his pupil with as much or more 
 a ffection than reverence to virtue, will be 
 able to inform him, that the poets have ever- 
 more accommodated themselves to the public 
 hu mor, and make him sensible, that the gods 
 have planted more toil and sweat in the 
 avenues of the cabinets of Venus than in 
 those of Minerva. And when he shall once 
 find him begin to apprehend, and shall repre- 
 sent to him a Bradamante or an Angelica for 
 a mistress, a natural, active, generous, and 
 not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in com-
 
 104 MONTAIGNE 
 
 parison of a soft, delicate, artificial simper- 
 ing, and affected form; the one in the habit 
 of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering 
 helmet, the other tricked up in curls and rib- 
 bons like a wanton minx; he will then look 
 upon his own affection as brave and mascu- 
 line, when he shall choose quite contrary to 
 that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia. 
 S uch a tutor will make a pupil digest this 
 |4f) new lesson, that the height and value of true 
 viz vi rtue consists in the facility, utility, an d 
 pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, 
 t hat boys, as well as men, and the innocent as 
 w ell as the subtle, may make it their own; 
 i t is by order, and not by force, that it is to 
 be acqu ired. Socrates, her first minion, is so 
 averse to all manner of violence, as totally 
 to throw it aside, to slip into the more natural 
 facility of her own progress ; 'tis the nursing 
 mother of all human pleasures, who in ren- 
 dering them just, renders them also pure and 
 permanent; in moderating them, keeps them 
 in breath and appetite; in interdicting those 
 which she herself refuses, whets our desire 
 to those that she allows; and, like a kind and 
 liberal mother, abundantly allows all that
 
 MONTAIGNE 105 
 
 nature requires, even to satiety, if not to las- 
 situde; unless we mean to say that the 
 regimen which stops the toper before he has 
 drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he 
 has eaten to a surfeit, and the lecher before 
 he has got the pox, is an enemy to pleasure. 
 If the ordinary fortune fail, she does without 
 it, and forms another, wholly her own, not so 
 fickle and unsteady as the other. She can be 
 rich, be potent and wise, and knows how to 
 lie upon soft perfumed beds: she loves life, 
 beauty, glory, and health; but her proper and 
 peculiar office is to know how to regulate the 
 use of all these good things, and how to lose 
 them without concern: an office much more 
 noble than troublesome, and without which 
 the whole course of life is unnatural, turbu- 
 lent, and deformed, and there it is indeed, 
 that men may justly represent those monsters 
 upon rocks' and precipices. 
 
 If this pupil shall happen to be of so con- 
 trary a disposition, that he had rather hear 
 a tale of a tub than the true narrative of some 
 noble expedition or some wise and learned 
 discourse; who at the beat of drum, that ex- 
 cites the youthful ardor of his companions,
 
 106 MONTAIGNE 
 
 leaves that to follow another that calls to a 
 morris or the bears; who would not wish, 
 and find it more delightful and more excel- 
 lent, to return all dust and sweat victorious 
 from a battle, than from tennis or from a ball, 
 with the prize of those exercises; I see no 
 other remedy, but that he be bound prentice 
 in some good town to learn to make minced 
 pies, though he were the son of a duke; ac- 
 cording to Plato's precept, thaj ; children are 
 to be placed out and disposed of, not accord- 
 ing to the wealth, qualities, or condition of 
 tlie father, but according to the faculties and 
 
 the capacity of their own souls. 
 
 Si nce philosophy is that which instructs us 
 to Jive, and that infancy has there its lesson s 
 a s well as other ages, why is it not communi- 
 cat ed to children betimes! 
 
 "The clay is moist and soft: now, now 
 make haste, and form the pitcher on the 
 rapid wheel." 
 
 Th ev begin to teach us to live when w e 
 h ave almost done livin g. A hundred students 
 have got the pox before they have come to 
 read Aristotle's lecture on temperance.
 
 MONTAIGNE 107 
 
 Cicero said, that though he should live two 
 men's ages, he should never find leisure to 
 study the lyric poets; and I find these 
 sophisters yet more deplorably unprofitable. 
 The boy we would breed has a great deal less 
 time to spare; he owes but the first fifte en or 
 si xteen years of his life t o education; the re- 
 mainder is due to action. Let us, therefore, 
 e mploy that short time in necessary instmc - 
 tion. Away with the thorny subtleties of 
 dialectics; they are abuses, things by which 
 our lives can never be amended: take the 
 
 pla in philosophical discourses, learn h ow 
 ri ghtly to choose, and then rightly to apply 
 them; they are more easy to be understood 
 than one of Boccaccio's novels; a child from 
 nurse is much more capable of them, than 
 of learning to read or to write. Philosophy 
 h as discourses proper for childhood, as well 
 as for the decrepit age of men. 
 
 I am of Plutarch's mind, that Aristotle did 
 not so much trouble his great disciple with 
 the knack of forming syllogisms, or with the 
 elements of geometry, as with infusing into 
 him good precepts concerning valor, 
 prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the
 
 108 MONTAIGNE 
 
 contempt of fear; and with this ammunition, 
 sent him, whilst yet a boy, with no more than 
 thirty thousand foot, four thousand horse, 
 and but forty-two thousand crowns, to sub- 
 jugate the empire of the whole earth. For 
 the other acts and sciences, he says, Alexan- 
 der highly indeed commended their excel- 
 lence and charm, and had them in very great 
 honor and esteem, but not ravished with 
 them to that degree as to be tempted to affect 
 the practice of them in his own person: 
 
 "Seek hence, young men and old men, a 
 certain end to the mind, and a viaticum for 
 miserable gray hairs." 
 
 Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to 
 Meniceus, says, "That neither the youngest 
 should refuse to philosophize, nor the oldest 
 grow weary of it." Who does otherwise, 
 seems tacitly to imply, that either the time 
 of living happily is not yet come, or that it is 
 already past. And yet, for all that, J would 
 not have this pupil of ours imprisoned and 
 m adft a slave to his book; nor would I have 
 him given up to the morosity and melancholic 
 humor of a sour ill-natured pedant; I would
 
 MONTAIGNE 109 
 
 not have his spirit cowed and snbdned, by ap- 
 plying him to the rack, and tormenting him, 
 as some do, fourteen or fifteen honrs a day, 
 and so make a pack-horse of him . Neither 
 s hould I think it good, when, by reason qfji 
 s olitary and melancholic complexion, he is 
 discovered to be overmuch addicted to hi s 
 book , to nourish that humor in him; for that 
 r enders him unfit for civil conversation, and 
 how many have I seen in my time totally 
 brutified by an immoderate thirst after 
 knowledge? Carneades was so besotted with 
 it, that he would not find time so much as to 
 comb his head or to pare his nails. Neither 
 would I have his generous manners spoiled 
 and corrupted by the incivility and barbarism 
 of those of another. The French wisdom was 
 
 a nciently turned into proverb: " Early, T>uT 
 ^pf no continuance." A nd, in truth, we yet 
 see, that nothing can be more ingenious and 
 pleasing than the children of France; but 
 they ordinarily deceive the hope and expecta- 
 tion that have been conceived of them; and 
 grown up to be men, have nothing extraordi- 
 nary or worth taking notice of: I have heard 
 men of good understanding say, these col-
 
 110 MONTAIGNE 
 
 leges of ours to which we send our young 
 people (and of which we have but too many) 
 make them such animals as they are. 
 
 But to our little monsieur, a closet, a gar- 
 den, the table, his bed, solitude, and company, 
 morning and evening, all hours shall be the 
 sa me, and all places to him a st udy; for 
 p hilosophy, who, as the formatrix of judg- 
 ment and manners, shall be his principal les - 
 son, has that privilege to have a hand i n 
 everything. The o rator Isocrates, being at a 
 feast entreated to speak of his art, all the 
 company were satisfied with and com- 
 mended his answer: "It is not now a time," 
 said he, "to do what I can do; and that which 
 it is now time to do, I cannot do." For to 
 make orations and rhetorical disputes in a 
 company met together to laugh and make 
 good cheer, had been very unseasonable and 
 improper, and as much might have been said 
 of all the other sciences. But as to what con - 
 c erns philosophy, that part of it at least that 
 treats of man, and of his offices and duties, it 
 fras been the common opinion of all w ise men, 
 that, ou t of respect to the sweetness of her 
 conversation, she is ever to be admitted in all
 
 MONTAIGNE 111 
 
 sports and entertainments. An d Plato, hav- 
 ing invited her to his feast, we see after how 
 gentle and obliging a manner, accommodated 
 both to time and place, she entertained the 
 company, though in a discourse of the highest 
 and most important nature: 
 
 "It profits poor and rich alike, and, neg- 
 lected, will equally hurt old and young." 
 
 B y, this method of instru ction, my young 
 pupil will be much mo re and better employed 
 t han his fellows of the college are. But as 
 the steps we take in walking to and fro in a 
 gallery, though three times as many, do not 
 tire a man so much as those we employ in a 
 formal journey, so out lesson, as it were ac- 
 ci dentally occurring, without any se t obliga- 
 t ion of time or place, and falling natur ally 
 intc L every action, will insensibly insinuate 
 i tself. By which means our very exercises 
 and recreations, running, wrestling, music, 
 dancing, hunting, riding, and fencing, will 
 prove to be a good part of our study. I 
 wo uld have his outward fashion and mien, 
 and the disposition of his limbs, formed at 
 the same time with his mind. ' Tis-not a soul,
 
 112 MONTAIGNE 
 
 'ti s not a body that we are train ing up, but 
 a man, and we ought not to divide him. And, 
 as Plato says, we are no t to fashion nnp with- 
 out the other,, but make them draw togethe r 
 like two horses harnessed to a coach. By 
 which saying of his, does he not seem to allow 
 more time for, and to take more care of exer- 
 cises for the body, and to hold that the mind, 
 in a good proportion, does her business at 
 the same time too? 
 
 / As to the rest, this method of educa tion 
 
 Pl ight to be carried on with a severe sweet y 
 ness. quite contrary to the p ractice of our 
 p edants, who, instead of tempting and allur-, 
 ing children to letters by apt and gentle ways, 
 do in truth present nothing before them but 
 jods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away 
 with this violence,! away with this compul- 
 sion ! than which, I certainly believe nothing 
 more dulls and degenerates a well-descended 
 nature. If you would have him apprehend 
 shame and chastisement, do not harden him 
 to them: i nure him to heat and cold, to wind 
 a nd sun, and to dangers that he ough t to 
 4espise; wean him from all effeminacy and 
 del icacy in clothes and lodging, eating and
 
 MONTAIGNE 113 
 
 d rinking; accustom him to everythin g that 
 he may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight, 
 but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young 
 man. I have ever from a child to the age 
 wherein I now am, been of this opinion, and 
 am still constant to it. ftut amongst other 
 things, the strict government of most of our 
 c olleges has evermore displeased me; per- 
 adventure, they might have erred less perni- 
 ciously on the indulgent side. 'Tis a real 
 house of correction of imprisoned youth. 
 They are made debauched by being punished 
 before they are so. I fe but come in when 
 the y_ are about their lesson, and you sha ll 
 hear nothing but the outcries of boys under 
 execution, with the thundering noise of thei r 
 pe dagogues drunk with fu ry. A very pretty 
 way this, to tempt these tender and timorous 
 souls to love their book, with a furious 
 countenance, and a rod in hand! A cursed 
 and pernicious way of proceeding! Besides 
 what Quintilian has very well observed, that 
 this imperious authority is often attended by 
 very dangerous consequences, and particu- 
 larly our way of chastising. How much more 
 decent would it be to see their classes
 
 114 MONTAIGNE 
 
 strewed with green leaves and fine flowers, 
 than with the bloody stumps of birch and 
 willows? Were it left to my ordering, I 
 should paint the school with the pictures of 
 joy and gladness; Flora and the Graces, as 
 the philosopher Speusippus did his. Where 
 their profit is, let them there have their 
 pleasure too. Such viands as are proper and 
 wholesome for children, should be sweetened 
 with sugar, and such as are dangerous to 
 them, embittered with gall. 'Tis marvellous 
 to see how solicitous Plato is in his Laws con- 
 cerning the gaiety and diversion of the youth 
 of his city, and how much and often he en- 
 larges upon the races, sports, songs, leaps and 
 dances: of which, he says, that antiquity has 
 given the ordering and patronage particu- 
 larly to the gods themselves, to Apollo, 
 Minerva, and the Muses. He insists long 
 upon, and is very particular in, giving innum- 
 erable precepts for exercises; but as to the 
 lettered sciences, says very little, and only 
 seems particularly to recommend poetry upon 
 the account of music. 
 
 All singularity in our manners and condi- 
 tions is to be avoided, as inconsistent with
 
 MONTAIGNE 115 
 
 civil society. Who would not be astonished 
 at so strange a constitution as that of Demo- 
 phoon, steward to Alexander the Great, who 
 sweated in the shade and shivered in the sun? 
 I have seen those who have run from the 
 smell of a mellow apple with greater precipi- 
 tation than from a harquebuss shot; others 
 afraid of a mouse; others vomit at the sight 
 of cream; others ready to swoon at the mak- 
 ing of a feather bed; Germanicus could 
 neither endure the sight nor the crowing of 
 a cock. I will not deny, but that there may, 
 peradventure, be some occult cause and 
 natural aversion in these cases; but, in my 
 opinion, a man might conquer it, if he took 
 it in time. Precept has in this wrought so 
 effectually upon me, though not without some 
 pains on my part, I confess, that beer ex- 
 cepted, my appetite accommodates itself in- 
 differently to all sorts of diet. 
 
 You ng bodies are su pple; one should, 
 therefore, in that age bend and ply th egLift 
 all fashion s and customs: and prov ided a 
 man can contain the appetite and the will 
 within their due limits, let a young man, in 
 God's name, be rendered fit for all nations
 
 116 MONTAIGNE 
 
 and all companies, even to debauchery and 
 excess, if need be; that is, where he shall do 
 it ont of complacency to the cnstoms of the 
 place. Let him be able to do everything, hu t 
 lo ve to do nothing bnt what is good. The 
 philosophers themselves do not justify Callis- 
 thenes for forfeiting the favor of his master 
 Alexander the Great, by refusing to pledge 
 him a cup of wine. Let him laugh, play, 
 wench with his prince: nay, I would have 
 him, even in his debauches, too hard for the 
 rest of the company, and to excel his com- 
 panions in ability and vigor, and that he 
 may not give over doing it, either through 
 defect of power or knowledge how to do it, 
 but for want of will: 
 
 " T here is a vast difference betwixt for - 
 bearing to sin, and not knowing how to sin." 
 
 I thought I passed a compliment upon a lord, 
 as free from those excesses as any man in 
 France, by asking him before a great deal 
 of very good company, how many times in 
 his life he had been drunk in Germany, in 
 the time of his being there about his 
 Majesty's affairs; which he also took as it
 
 MONTAIGNE 117 
 
 was intended, and made answer "Three 
 times;" and withal told us the whole story 
 of his debauches. I know some who, for want 
 of this faculty, have found a great incon- 
 venience in negotiating with that nation. I 
 have often with great admiration reflected 
 upon the wonderful constitution of Alci- 
 biades, who so easily could transform him- 
 self to so various fashions without any 
 prejudice to his health; one while outdoing 
 the Persian pomp and luxury, and another, 
 the Lacedaemonian austerity and frugality; 
 as reformed in Sparta, as voluptuous in 
 Ionia: 
 
 "Every complexion of life, and station, and 
 circumstance became Aristippus." 
 
 I would have my pupil to be such a one: 
 
 " I shall admire him whom suffering covers 
 with a torn cloak, if a ch an ged fortune be^ 
 comes him, and he bears both parts without " 
 indecorum." 
 
 These are my lessons, and he who puts them 
 in practice shall reap more advantage than 
 he who has had them read to him only, and
 
 118 MONTAIGNE 
 
 so only knows them. If yon see him, you 
 hear him; if yon hear him, you see him. God 
 forbid, says one in Plato, that to philosophize 
 were only to read a great many books, and 
 to learn the arts. 
 
 1 ' T hey have proceeded to this dis cipline 
 o f living well^ which of all arts is the gre atest, 
 by t heir lives, rather than by their re ading. ' ' 
 
 Leo, prince of Phlius, asking Heraclides 
 Ponticus of what art or science he made pro- 
 fession : "I know, ' ' said he, ' ' neither art nor 
 science, but I am a philosopher." One re- 
 proaching Diogenes that, being ignorant, he 
 should pretend to philosophy: "I there- 
 fore,' p answered he, "pretend to it with so 
 much the more reason. ' ' Hegesias entreated 
 that he would read a certain book to him: 
 "You are pleasant," said he; "you choose 
 those figs that are true and natural, and not 
 those that are painted; why do you not also 
 choose exercises which are naturally true, 
 rather than those written?" 
 
 The lad will not so much get his lesson by 
 h eart as he will practise it: he will repeat it 
 i n his actions. "We shall discover IF there be 
 p rudence in his exercises, if there be sin cerity
 
 MONTAIGNE 119 
 
 an d justice in his deportment, if there be 
 jgrac e and judgment in his speaking; if there 
 be constancy in his sickness; if t here be 
 modesty in his mirth, temperan ce in his 
 Measures, order in his domestic economy, in- 
 difference in his palate, whether what he eats 
 or drinks be flesh or fish, wine or water: 
 
 "W ho considers his own discipline, not as 
 a vain ostentation of science, but as a law and 
 role_o Oit'e; and who obeys his own decree r 
 a nd the jaws he_has prescribed jQaJnaBL!! 
 
 The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of 
 our doctrine. Zeuxidamus, to one who asked 
 him, why the Lacedaemonians did not commit 
 their constitutions of chivalry to writing, and 
 deliver them to their young men to read, 
 made answer, that it was because they would 
 inure them to action, and not amuse them 
 with words. With such a one, after fifteen 
 or sixteen years* study, compare one of our 
 c ollege Latinists, who has thrown away s o 
 much time in nothing but learning to speak. 
 The world is nothing but babble; and I hardly 
 ever yet saw that man who did not rather 
 prate too much, than speak too little. And
 
 120 MONTAIGNE 
 
 ye t half of our age is embezzled this way: 
 we are kept four or five years to learn words 
 only, and to tack them together into clauses; 
 as many more to form them into a long dis- 
 course, divided into four or five parts; and 
 other five years, at least, to learn succinctly 
 to mix and interweave them after a subtle 
 and intricate manner: leHis leave all this to 
 t hose who make a profession of i t. 
 
 Going one day to Orleans, I met in that 
 plain on this side Clery, two teachers who 
 were coming to Bordeaux, about fifty paces 
 distant from one another; and, a good way 
 further behind them, I discovered a troop of 
 horse, with a gentleman at the head of them, 
 who was the late Monsieur le Comte de la 
 Rochefoucauld. One of my people inquired of 
 the foremost of these masters of arts, who 
 that gentleman was that came after him; he, 
 having not seen the train that followed after, 
 and thinking his companion was meant, 
 pleasantly answered, "He is not a gentleman; 
 he is a grammarian; and I am a logician." 
 Now we who, quite contrary, do not here pre- 
 t end to breed a grammarian or a logician , but 
 a , gentleman, let us leave them to abuse their
 
 MONTAIGNE 121 
 
 leisure; our business lies elsewhere. . Let 
 b ut our pupil be well furnished with th ings, 
 w ords will follow but too fast; he will pul l 
 t hem after him if they do not voluntarily fol- 
 low^ I have observed some to make excuses, 
 that they cannot express themselves, and pre- 
 tend to have their fancies full of a great many 
 very fine things, which yet, for want of elo- 
 quence, they cannot utter; 'tis a mere shift, 
 and nothing else. Will you know what I 
 think of it? I think they are nothing but 
 shadows of some imperfect images and con- 
 ceptions that they know not what to make of 
 within, nor consequently bring out; they do 
 not yet themselves understand what they 
 would be at, and if you but observe how they 
 haggle and stammer upon the point of par- 
 turition, you will soon conclude, that their 
 labor is not to delivery, but about concep- 
 tion, and that they are but licking their form- 
 less embryo. Fo s^my part, I hold, and 
 S otsrates comm ands it, that whoever has in 
 his mind a sprightly and clear imagination^ 
 fate will express it well enough in one kind of 
 tongue or another, and, if he be <? umh r by 
 
 , giffns: ,._
 
 122 MONTAIGNE 
 
 "And the words will not reluctantly follow 
 the thing preconceived." 
 
 And as another as poetically says in his 
 prose: 
 
 "When things have taken possession of 
 the mind, the words trip." 
 
 and this other: 
 
 " The things themselves carry the words 
 with them.' 7 
 
 He knows nothing of ablative, conjunctive, 
 substantive, or grammar, no more than his 
 lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and 
 yet these will give you a bellyful of talk, if 
 you will hear them, and peradventure shall 
 trip as little in their language as the best 
 masters of art in France. He knows no 
 rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe the 
 benevolence of the courteous reader; neither 
 does he care to know it. Indeed all this fine 
 decoration of painting is easily effaced by 
 the lustre of a simple and blunt truth; these 
 fine flourishes serve only to amuse the vulgar, 
 of themselves incapable of more solid and 
 nutritive diet, as Aper very evidently dem-
 
 MONTAIGNE 123 
 
 onstrates in Tacitus. The ambassadors of 
 Samos, prepared with a long and elegant 
 oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, 
 to incite him to a war against the tyrant 
 Polycrates; who, after he had heard their 
 harangue with great gravity and patience, 
 gave them this answer: "As to the exordium, 
 I remember it not, nor consequently the mid- 
 dle of your speech; and for what concerns 
 your conclusion, I will not do what you de- 
 sire;" a very pretty answer this, methinks, 
 and a pack of learned orators most sweetly 
 gravelled. And what did the other man say? 
 The Athenians were to choose one of two 
 architects for a very great building they had 
 designed; of these, the first, a pert affected 
 fellow, offered his service in a long pre- 
 meditated discourse upon the subject of the 
 work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the 
 voices of the people in his favor; but the 
 other in three words: "O Athenians, what 
 this man says, I will do." When Cicero was 
 in the height and heat of an eloquent 
 harangue, many were struck with admira- 
 tion; but Cato only laughed, saying, "We 
 have a mirth-making consul." Let it go be-
 
 124 MONTAIGNE 
 
 fore, or come after, a good sentence or a thing 
 well said, is always in season; if it neither 
 snit well with what went before, nor has 
 mnch coherence with what follows after, it 
 is good in itself. I am none of t hose who 
 t hink that good rhyme makes a good poem. 
 Let him make short long, and long short if 
 he will, 'tis no great matter^f there be in- 
 
 ve ntion, and that the wit and .judgment have 
 w ell performed their offices, I will say, here's 
 a good poet, but an ill rhymer; 
 
 "Of delicate humor, but of rugged versi- 
 fication.' ' 
 
 Let a man, says Horace, divest his work of 
 all method and measure: 
 
 "Take away certain rhythms and 
 measures, and make the word which was first 
 in order come later, putting that which 
 should be last first, you will still find the 
 scattered remains of the poet. ' ' 
 
 He will never the more lose himself for that; 
 the very pieces will be fine by themselves. 
 Menander's answer had this meaning, who 
 being reproved by a friend, the time drawing
 
 MONTAIGNE 125 
 
 on at which he had promised a comedy, that 
 he had not yet fallen in hand with it: "It is 
 made, and ready," said he, "all but the 
 verses. " Having contrived the subject, and 
 disposed the scenes in his fancy, he took 
 little care for the rest, ^ nce Ronsard and 
 Du ^Bellay have given reputation to our 
 French poesy, every little dabbler, for aught 
 I see, swells his words as high, and makes 
 his cadenc es very near as harmon ious as 
 
 "He has more sound than force." 
 
 For the vulgar, there were never so many 
 poetasters as now; hut though they find it no 
 
 ha rd matter to imitate their rhyme, they yet 
 f all infinitely short of imitating the rich de - 
 scriptions of the one, and the delicate inven- 
 Jtjpn of the other of these masters . 
 
 But what will become of our young gen- 
 tleman, if he be attacked with the sophistic 
 subtlety of some syllogism? "A ham makes 
 a man drink; drink quenches thirst: ergo a 
 ham quenches thirst!" Why, let him laugh 
 at it; it will be more discretion to do so, 
 than to go about to answer it; or let him
 
 126 MONTAIGNE 
 
 borrow this pleasant evasion from Aristip- 
 pns: "Why should I trouble myself to untie 
 that, which bound as it is, gives me so much 
 trouble?" One offering at this dialectic 
 juggling against Cleanthes, Chrysippus took 
 him short, saying, ' ' Reserve these baubles to 
 play with children, and do not by such fool- 
 eries divert the serious thoughts of a man of 
 years." If these ridiculous subtleties, 
 
 "Contorta'et aculeata sophismata," 
 
 as Cicero calls them, are designed to possess 
 him with an untruth, they are dangerous; but 
 if they signify no more than only to make him 
 laugh, I do not see why a man need to be 
 fortified against them. There are some so 
 ridiculous, as to go a mile out of their way to 
 hook in a fine word: 
 
 "Who do not fit words to the subject, but 
 seek out for things quite from the purpose 
 to fit the words." 
 
 And as another says: 
 
 "Who by their fondness of some fine 
 sounding word, may be tempted to some- 
 thing they had no intention to write."
 
 MONTAIGNE 127 
 
 I for my part rather bring in a fine sentence 
 
 by head and shoulders to fit my purpose, than 
 diz firt my designs_lo_ hunt after a s entence. 
 O n the contrary, words are to serve, and to 
 follow a man's purpose; and let Oascon c ome 
 jn^play where French will not do. I would 
 have things so excelling, and so wholly pos- 
 se ssing the imagination of him that hea rs, 
 that he should have something else to do , 
 & an to think of words. The way of speak- 
 i ng that I love, is natural and plain, the sam e 
 i n writing as in speaking, and a^ sinewy and 
 muscular way of expre ssing nmn'p p^lf, 
 s hort and pithy, not so elegant and artifi cial 
 as prompt and vehement: 
 
 "That utterance indeed will have a taste 
 which shall strike (the ear);" 
 
 rather hard than wearisome; free from affec- 
 tation; irregular, incontinuous, and bold; 
 where every piece makes up an entire body; 
 not like a pedant, a 'preacher, or a pleader, 
 but rather a soldier-like style, as Suetonius 
 calls that of Julius Caesar; and yet I see no 
 reason why he should call it so. I have ever 
 been ready to imitate the negligent garb,
 
 128 MONTAIGNE 
 
 which is yet observable amongst the young 
 men of onr time, to wear my cloak on one 
 shoulder, my cap on one side, a stocking in 
 disorder, which seems to express a kind of 
 haughty disdain of these exotic ornaments, 
 and a contempt of the artificial; frut I find 
 th is negligence of much better use in the fo rm 
 of speaking. All affectation, particularly in 
 t he French gaiety and freedom, is ungra ceful 
 i n a courtier, and in a monarchy every g en- 
 t leman ought to be fashioned according to 
 the court model; for which reason, an_ easy 
 
 fth( 
 nan 
 
 d natural negligence does well. I n o more 
 like a web where the knots and seams are to 
 be seen, than a fine figure, so delicate, that 
 a man may tell all the bones and veins: 
 
 "L et the language that is dedicated to 
 t ruth be plain and unaffec ted. 77 
 
 "Who studies to speak accurately, that 
 does not at the same time wish to perplex his 
 auditory? 77 
 
 That eloquence prejudices the subject it 
 would advance, that wholly attracts us to 
 itself. And as in our* outward habit, 'tis a
 
 MONTAIGNE 129 
 
 ridiculous effeminacy to distinguish ourselves 
 by a particular and unusual garb or fashion; 
 so in language, to study new phrases, and to 
 affect words that are not of current use, pro- 
 ceeds from a puerile and scholastic ambition. 
 May I be bound to speak no other language 
 than what is spoken in the market-places of 
 Paris! Aristophanes the grammarian was 
 quite out, when he reprehended Epicurus for 
 his plain way of delivering himself, and the 
 design of his oratory, which was only per- 
 spicuity of speech. The imitation of words, 
 by its own facility, immediately disperses 
 itself through a whole people; but the imita- 
 tion of inventing and fitly applying those 
 words is of a slower progress. The gen- 
 erality of readers, for having found a like 
 robe, very mistakingly imagine they have the 
 same body and inside too, whereas force and 
 sinews are never to be borrowed; the gloss 
 and outward ornament, that is, words and 
 elocution, may. Most of those I converse 
 with, speak the same language I here write; 
 but whether they think the same thoughts I 
 cannot say. The Athenians, says Plato, study 
 fulness and elegancy of speaking; the
 
 130 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Lacedaemonians affect brevity, and those of 
 Crete to aim more at the fecundity of con- 
 ception than the fertility of speech; and these 
 are the best. Zeno used to say that he had 
 two sorts of disciples, one that he called 
 students, curious to learn things, and 
 these were his favorites; the other, 
 pedants, that cared for nothing but words. 
 Not that fine speaking is not a very good 
 and commendable quality; but not so excel- 
 lent and so necessary as some would make it; 
 and I am scandalized that our whole life 
 should be spent in nothing else. I would 
 first understand my own language, and that 
 of my neighbors, with whom most of my 
 business and conversation lies. 
 
 No doubt but Greek and Latin are very 
 great ornaments, and of very great use, but 
 we buy them too dear. I will here discover 
 one way, which has been experimented in my 
 own person, by which they are to be had bet- 
 ter cheap, and such may make use of it as 
 will. My late father having made the most 
 precise inquiry that any man could possibly 
 make amongst men of the greatest learning 
 and judgment, of an exact method of educa-
 
 MONTAIGNE 131 
 
 tion, was by them cautioned of this incon- 
 venience then in use, and made to believe, 
 that the tedious time we applied to the learn- 
 ing of the tongues of them who had them 
 for nothing, was the sole cause we could not 
 arrive to the grandeur of soul and perfection 
 of knowledge, of the ancient Greeks and 
 Romans. I do not, however, believe that to 
 be the only cause. So it is, that the expedient 
 my father found out for this was, that in my 
 infancy, and before I began to speak, he com- 
 mitted me to the care of a German, who since 
 died a famous physician in France, totally 
 ignorant of our language, and very well 
 versed in Latin. This man, whom he had 
 sent for expressly, and who was paid very 
 highly, had me continually in his arms; he 
 had with him also joined two others, of in- 
 ferior learning, to attend me, and to relieve 
 him; these spoke to me in no other language 
 but Latin. As to the rest of his household, 
 it was an inviolable rule, that neither him- 
 self, nor my mother, nor valet, nor chamber- 
 maid, should speak anything in my company ; 
 but such Latin words as each one had learned 
 to chatter with me. It is not to be imagined
 
 132 MONTAIGNE 
 
 how great an advantage this proved to the 
 whole family; my father and my mother by 
 this means learned Latin enough to under- 
 stand it perfectly well, and to speak it to snch 
 a degree as was sufficient for any necessary 
 use; as also those of the servants did who 
 were most frequently with me. In short, we 
 Latined it at such a rate, that it overflowed 
 to all the neighboring villages, where there 
 yet remain, that have established themselves 
 by custom, several Latin appellations of 
 artisans and their tools. As for what con- 
 cerns myself, I was above six years of age 
 before I understood either French or Peri- 
 gordin, any more than Arabic; and without 
 art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or 
 the expense of a tear, I had, by that time, 
 learned to speak as pure Latin as my master 
 himself, for I had no means of mixing it up 
 with any other. If, for example, they were 
 to give me a theme after the college fashion, 
 they gave it to others in French; but to me 
 they were to give it in bad Latin, to turn it 
 into that which was good. And Nicolas 
 Grouchy, who wrote a book De Comitiis 
 Romanorum: Guillaume Guerente, who wrote
 
 MONTAIGNE 133 
 
 a comment upon Aristotle: George Buchanan, 
 that great Scottish poet: and Marc Antoine 
 Muret (whom both France and Italy have 
 acknowledged for the best orator of his 
 time), my domestic tutors, have all of them 
 often told me that I had in my infancy that 
 language so very fluent and ready, that they 
 were afraid to enter into discourse with me. 
 And particularly Buchanan, whom I since 
 saw attending the late Mareschal de Brissac, 
 then told me, that he was about to write a 
 treatise of education, the example of which 
 he intended to take from mine; for he was 
 then tutor to that Comte de Brissac who 
 afterward proved so valiant and so brave a 
 gentleman. 
 
 As to Greek, of which I have quasi no 
 knowledge, my father designed to have it 
 taught me by art, but a new way, and by way 
 of sport; rolling our declensions to and fro, 
 after the manner of those who, by certain 
 games of tables, learn geometry and arith- 
 metic. For he, amongst other rules, had 
 been advised to make me relish science and 
 duty by an unforced will, and of my own 
 voluntary motion, and to educate my 'soul in
 
 134 MONTAIGNE 
 
 all liberty and delight, without any severity 
 or constraint; which he was an observer of 
 to snch a degree, even of superstition, if I 
 may say so, that some being of opinion that 
 it troubles and disturbs the brains of children 
 suddenly to wake them in the morning, and 
 to snatch them violently and over-hastily 
 from sleep (wherein they are much more 
 profoundly involved than we), he caused me 
 to be wakened by the sound of some musical 
 instrument, and was never unprovided of a 
 musician for that purpose. By this example 
 you may judge of the rest, this alone being 
 sufficient to recommend both the prudence 
 and the affection of so good a father, who is 
 not to be blamed if he did not reap fruits 
 answerable to so exquisite a culture. Of this, 
 two things were the cause: first, a sterile and 
 improper soil; for, though I was of a strong 
 and healthful constitution, and of a disposi- 
 tion tolerably sweet and tractable, yet I was, 
 withal, so heavy, idle, and indisposed, that 
 they could not rouse me from my sloth, not 
 even to get me out to play. What I saw, I 
 saw clearly enough, and under this heavy 
 complexion nourished a bold imagination and
 
 MONTAIGNE 135 
 
 opinions above my age. I had a slow wit 
 that wonld go no faster than it was led; a 
 tardy understanding, a languishing inven- 
 tion, and above all, incredible defect of 
 memory; so that, it is no wonder, if from 
 all these nothing considerable could be ex- 
 tracted. Secondly, like those who, impatient 
 of a long and steady cure, submit to all sorts 
 of prescriptions and recipes, the good man 
 being extremely timorous of any way fail- 
 ing in a thing he had so wholly set his heart 
 upon, suffered himself at last to be overruled 
 by the common opinions, which always fol- 
 low their leader as a flight of cranes, and 
 complying with the method of the time, hav- 
 ing no more those persons he had brought 
 out of Italy, and who had given him the first 
 model of education, about him, he sent me at 
 six years of age to the College of Guienne, at 
 that time the best and most flourishing in 
 France. And there it was not possible to add 
 anything to the care he had to provide me the 
 most able tutors, with all other circum- 
 stances of education, reserving also several 
 particular rules contrary to the college prac- 
 tice; but so it was, that with all these precau-
 
 136 MONTAIGNE 
 
 tions, it was a college still. My Latin im- 
 mediately grew corrupt, of which also by dis- 
 continuance I have since lost all manner of 
 use; so that this new way of education served 
 me to no other end, than only at my first 
 coming to prefer me to the first forms; for at 
 thirteen years old, that I came out of the 
 college, I had run through my whole course 
 (as they call it), and, in truth, without any 
 manner of advantage, that I can honestly 
 brag of, in all this time. 
 
 The first taste which I had for books came 
 to me from the pleasure in reading the fables 
 of Ovid's Metamorphoses; for, being about 
 seven or eight years old, I gave up all other 
 diversions to read them, both by reason that 
 this was my own natural language, the easiest 
 book that I was acquainted with, and for the 
 subject, the most accommodated to the 
 capacity of my age: for as for the Lancelots 
 du Lac, the Amadis, the Huons of Bordeaux, 
 and such farragos, by which children are 
 amused, I had never so much as heard their 
 names, no more than I yet know what they 
 contain; so exact was the discipline wherein 
 I was brought up. But this was enough to
 
 MONTAIGNE 137 
 
 make me neglect the other lessons that were 
 prescribed me; and here it was infinitely to 
 my advantage, to have to do with an under- 
 standing tutor, who very well knew discreetly 
 to connive at this and other truantries of 
 the same nature; for by this means I ran 
 through Virgil 'a Aeneid, and then Terence, 
 and then Plautus, and then some Italian 
 comedies, allured by the sweetness of the 
 subject; whereas had he been so foolish as 
 to have taken me off this diversion, I do 
 really believe, I had brought away nothing 
 from the college but a hatred of books, as 
 almost all our young gentlemen do. But he 
 carried himself very discreetly in that busi- 
 ness, seeming to take no notice, and allow- 
 ing me only such time as I could steal from 
 my other regular studies, vrhich whetted my 
 appetite to devour those books. For the 
 chief things my father expected from their 
 endeavors to whom he had delivered me for 
 education, were affability and good-humor; 
 and, to say the truth, my manners had no 
 other vice but sloth and want of metal. The 
 fear was not that I should do ill, but that I 
 should do nothing; nobody prognosticated
 
 138 MONTAIGNE 
 
 that I should be wicked, but only useless; 
 they foresaw idleness, but no malice; and I 
 find it falls out accordingly. The complaints 
 I hear of myself are these: "He is idle, cold 
 in the offices of friendship and relation, and 
 in those of the public, too particular, too dis- 
 dainful." But the most injurious do not 
 say, "Why has he taken such a thing? Why 
 has he not paid such a one?" but, "Why 
 does he part with nothing! Why does 
 he not give!" And I should take it for 
 a favor that men would expect from me no 
 greater effects of supererogation than these. 
 But they are unjust to exact from me what 
 I do not owe, far more rigorously than they 
 require from others that which they do owe. 
 In condemning me to it, they efface the grati- 
 fication of the action, and deprive me of the 
 gratitude that would be my due for it; 
 whereas the active well-doing ought to be of 
 so much the greater value from my hands, by 
 how much I have never been passive that 
 way at all. I can the more freely dispose 
 of my fortune the more it is mine, and of my- 
 self the more I am my own. Nevertheless, 
 if I were good at setting out my own actions,
 
 MONTAIGNE 139 
 
 I could, peradventure, very well repel these 
 reproaches, and could give some to under- 
 stand, that they are not so much offended, 
 that I do not enough, as that I am ahle to do 
 a great deal more than I do. 
 
 Yet for all this heavy disposition of mine, 
 my mind, when retired into itself, was not 
 altogether without strong movements, solid 
 and clear judgments about those objects it 
 could comprehend, and could also, without 
 any helps, digest them; but, amongst other 
 things, I do really believe, it had been totally 
 impossible to have made it to submit by vio- 
 lence and force. Shall I here acquaint you 
 with one faculty of my youth? I had great 
 assurance of countenance, and flexibility of 
 voice and gesture, in applying myself to any 
 part I undertook to act: for before 
 
 "The next from the eleventh year had 
 scarcely taken hold of me," 
 
 I played the chief parts in the Latin tragedies 
 of Buchanan, Guerente, and Muret, that were 
 presented in our College of Guienne with 
 great dignity: now Andreas Goveanus, our 
 principal, as in all other parts of his charge,
 
 140 MONTAIGNE 
 
 was, without comparison, the best of that 
 employment in France; and I was looked 
 upon as one of the best actors. 'Tis an exer- 
 cise that I do not disapprove in young people 
 of condition; and I have since seen our 
 princes, after the example of some of the 
 ancients, in person handsomely and com- 
 mendably perform these exercises; it was 
 even allowed to persons of quality to make 
 a profession of it in Greece: 
 
 "He opened the matter to Aristo the tragi- 
 cal actor; he was of an honest stock and for- 
 tune; nor did the art, because nothing of the 
 kind is a cause of shame among the Greeks, 
 discredit him." 
 
 Nay, I have always taxed those with im- 
 pertinence who condemn these entertain- 
 ments, and with injustice those who refuse 
 to admit such comedians as are worth seeing 
 into our good towns, and grudge the people 
 that public diversion. Well-governed cor- 
 porations take care to assemble their citizens, 
 not only to the solemn duties of devotion, but 
 also to sports and spectacles. They find so- 
 ciety and friendship augmented by it; and
 
 MONTAIGNE 141 
 
 besides, can there possibly be allowed a more 
 orderly and regular diversion than what is 
 performed in the sight of every one, and 
 very often in the presence of the supreme 
 magistrate himself? And I, for my part, 
 should think it reasonable, that the prince 
 should sometimes gratify his people at his 
 own expense, out of paternal goodness and 
 affection; and that in populous cities there 
 should be theatres erected for such enter- 
 tainments, if but to divert them from worse 
 and private actions. 
 
 To return to my subject, there is nothing 
 like alluring the appetite and affections; 
 otherwise you make nothing but so many 
 asses laden with books; by dint of the lash, 
 you give them their pocketful of learning to 
 keep; whereas, to do well you should not only 
 lodge it with them, but make them espouse 
 it.
 
 142 MONTAIGNE 
 
 IT IS FOLLY TO REFER TRUTH AND 
 ERROR TO OUR OWN CAPACITY 
 
 'TIS NOT, perhaps, without reason, that we 
 attribute facility of belief and easiness of per- 
 suasion to simplicity and ignorance; for I 
 fancy I have heard belief compared to the 
 impression of a seal upon the soul, which by 
 how much softer and of less resistance it is, 
 is the more easy to be impressed upon: 
 
 "As the scale of the balance must give way 
 to the weight that presses it down, so the 
 mind yields to demonstration. ' ' 
 
 But how much the soul is more empty and 
 without counterpoise, with so much greater 
 facility it yields under the weight of the 
 first persuasion. And this is the reason that 
 children, the common people, women, and 
 sick folks, are most apt to be led by the ears. 
 But then, on the other hand, 'tis a foolish 
 presumption to slight and condemn all things 
 for false that do not appear to us probable; 
 which is the ordinary vice of such as fancy 
 themselves wiser than their neighbors. I 
 was myself once one of those; and if I heard
 
 MONTAIGNE 143 
 
 talk of dead folks walking, of prophecies, en- 
 chantments, witchcrafts, or any other story 
 I had no mind to believe: 
 
 "Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, sorceries, 
 Nightmares, and Thessalian prodigies.' 
 
 I presently pitied the poor people that were 
 abused by these follies. Whereas I now find, 
 that I myself was to be pitied as mnch, at 
 least, as they; not that experience has taught 
 me anything to alter my former opinions, 
 though my curiosity has endeavored that 
 way; but reason has instructed me, that thus 
 resolutely to condemn anything for false and 
 impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to 
 circumscribe and limit the will of God, and 
 the power of our mother nature, within the 
 bounds of my own capacity, than which no 
 folly can be greater. If we give the names 
 of monster and miracle to everything our 
 reason cannot comprehend, how many are 
 continually presented before our eyes? Let 
 us but consider through what clouds, and as 
 it were groping in the dark, our teachers lead 
 us to the knowledge of most of the things 
 about us; assuredly we shall find that it is
 
 144 MONTAIGNE 
 
 rather custom than knowledge that takes 
 away their strangeness: 
 
 "Weary to satiety of the sight, now no one 
 deigns to look np to heaven's lucid temples." 
 
 and that if those things were now newly 
 presented to us, we should think them as in- 
 credible, if not more, than any others. 
 
 "Si nunc primum mortalibus adsint 
 Ex improviso, si sint objecta repente, 
 Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici, 
 Aute minus ante quod auderent fore credere 
 gentes." 
 
 He that had never seen a river, imagined 
 the first he met with to be the sea; and the 
 greatest things that have fallen within our 
 knowledge, we conclude the extremes that 
 nature makes of the kind: 
 
 "A little river seems to him, who has never 
 seen a larger river, a mighty stream; and so 
 with other things a tree, a man anything 
 appears greatest to him that never knew a 
 greater." 
 
 "Things grow familiar to men's minds by 
 being often seen; nor are they inquisitive 
 about things they daily see."
 
 MONTAIGNE 145 
 
 The novelty, rather than the greatness of 
 things, tempts us to inquire into their causes. 
 We are to judge with more reverence, and 
 with greater acknowledgment of our own 
 ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite power 
 of nature. How many unlikely things are 
 there testified by people worthy of faith, 
 which, if we cannot persuade ourselves abso- 
 lutely to believe, we ought at least to leave 
 them in suspense; for, to condemn them as 
 impossible, is by a temerarious presumption 
 to pretend to know the utmost bounds of pos- 
 sibility. Did we rightly understand the dif- 
 ference betwixt the impossible and the un- 
 usual, and betwixt that which is contrary to 
 the order and course of nature and contrary 
 to the common opinion of men, in not believ- 
 ing rashly, and on the other hand, in not be- 
 ing too incredulous, we should observe the 
 rule of Ne quid nimis enjoined by Chilo. 
 
 When we find in Froissart, that the Comte 
 de Foix knew in Beam the defeat of John, 
 king of Castile, at Jubera the next day after 
 it happened, and the means by which he tells 
 us he came to do so, we may be allowed to be 
 a little merry at it, as also at what our annals
 
 146 MONTAIGNE 
 
 report, that Pope Honorius, the same day 
 that King Philip Augustus died at Mantes, 
 performed his public obsequies at Rome, and 
 commanded the like throughout Italy, the 
 testimony of these authors not being, per- 
 haps, of authority enough to restrain us. But 
 what if Plutarch, besides several examples 
 that he produces out of antiquity, tells us, he 
 knows of certain knowledge, that in the time 
 of Domitian, the news of the battle lost by 
 Antony in Germany was published at Rome, 
 many days' journey from thence, and dis- 
 persed throughout the whole world, the same 
 day it was fought; and if Caesar was of 
 opinion, that it has often happened, that the 
 report has preceded the incident, shall we 
 not say, that these simple people have suf- 
 fered themselves to be deceived with the 
 vulgar, for not having been so clear-sighted 
 as we? Is there anything more delicate, 
 more clear, more sprightly, than Pliny's 
 judgment, when he is pleased to set it to 
 work? Anything more remote from vanity? 
 Setting aside his learning, of which I make 
 less account, in which of these excellences do 
 any of us excel him ? And yet there is scarce
 
 MONTAIGNE 147 
 
 a young schoolboy that does not convict him 
 of untrnth, and that pretends not to instruct 
 him in the progress of the works of nature. 
 
 When we read in Bouchet the miracles of 
 St. Hilary's relics, away with them: his au- 
 thority is not sufficient to deprive us of the 
 liberty of contradicting him; but generally 
 and offhand to condemn all suchlike stories, 
 seems to me a singular impudence. That 
 great St. Augustin testifies to have seen a 
 blind child recover sight upon the relics of 
 St. Gervasius and St. Protasius at Milan; a 
 woman at Carthage cured of a cancer, by the 
 sign of the cross made upon her by a woman 
 newly baptized; Hesperius, a familiar friend 
 of his, to have driven away the spirits that 
 haunted his house, with a little earth of the 
 sepulchre of our Lord; which earth, being 
 also transported thence into the church, a 
 paralytic to have there been suddenly cured 
 by it; a woman in a procession, having 
 touched St. Stephen's shrine with a nosegay, 
 and rubbing her eyes with it, to have re- 
 covered her sight, lost many years before; 
 with several other miracles of which he pro- 
 fesses himself to have been an eyewitness: of
 
 148 MONTAIGNE 
 
 what shall we excuse him and the two holy 
 bishops, Aurelius and Maximums, both of 
 whom he attests to the truth of these things? 
 Shall it be of ignorance, simplicity, and 
 facility; or of malice and imposture? Is any 
 man now living so impudent as to think him- 
 self comparable to them in virtue, piety, 
 learning, judgment, or any kind of perfec- 
 tion? 
 
 "Who, though they should adduce no rea- 
 son, would convince me with their authority 
 alone.' ' 
 
 ,r Tis a presumption of great danger and con- 
 sequence, besides the absurd temerity it 
 draws after it, to contemn what we do not 
 comprehend. For after, according to your 
 fine understanding, you have established the 
 limits of truth and error, and that, after- 
 wards, there appears a necessity upon you 
 of believing stranger things than those you 
 have contradicted, you are already obliged to 
 quit your limits. Now, that which seems to 
 me so much to disorder our consciences in 
 the commotions we are now in concerning re- 
 ligion, is the Catholics dispensing so much
 
 MONTAIGNE 149 
 
 with their belief. They fancy they appear 
 moderate, and wise, when they grant to their 
 opponents some of the articles in question; 
 but, besides that they do not discern what 
 advantage it is to those with whom we con- 
 tend, to begin to give ground and to retire, 
 and how much this animates our enemy to 
 follow his blow: these articles which they 
 select as things indifferent, are sometimes of 
 very great importance. We are either wholly 
 and absolutely to submit ourselves to the au- 
 thority of our ecclesiastical polity, or totally 
 throw off all obedience to it: 'tis not for us 
 to determine what and how much obedience 
 we owe to it. And this I can say, as having 
 myself made trial of it, that having formerly 
 taken the liberty of my own swing and fancy, 
 and omitted or neglected certain rules of the 
 discipline of our Church, which seemed to 
 me vain and strange: coming afterwards to 
 discourse of it with learned men, I have found 
 those same things to be built upon very good 
 and solid ground and strong foundation; and 
 that nothing but stupidity and ignorance 
 makes us receive them with less reverence 
 than the rest. Why do we not consider what
 
 150 MONTAIGNE 
 
 contradictions we find in our own judgments; 
 how many things were yesterday articles of 
 our faith, that to-day appear no other than 
 fables! Glory and curiosity are the scourges 
 of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our 
 noses into everything, the other forbids us 
 to leave anything doubtful and undecided. 
 
 OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 HAVING CONSIDERED the proceedings of 
 a painter that serves me, I had a mind to imi- 
 tate his way. He chooses the fairest place and 
 middle of any wall, or panel, wherein to 
 draw a picture, which he finishes with his 
 utmost care and art, and the vacuity about it 
 he fills with grotesques, which are odd fan- 
 tastic figures without any grace but what 
 they derive from their variety, and the ex- 
 travagance of their shapes. And in truth, 
 what are these things I scribble, other than 
 grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of 
 various parts, without any certain figure, or 
 any other than accidental order, coherence, 
 or proportion?
 
 MONTAIGNE 151 
 
 "A fair woman in her upper form termi- 
 nates in a fish." 
 
 In this second part I go hand in hand with 
 my painter; but fall very short of him in the 
 first and the better, my power of handling not 
 being such, that I dare to offer at a rich 
 piece, finely polished, and set off according to 
 art. I have therefore thought fit to borrow 
 one of Estienne de la Boetie, and such a one 
 as shall honor and adorn all the rest of my 
 work namely, a discourse that he called 
 Voluntary Servitude; but, since, those who 
 did not know him have properly enough 
 called it "Le contr' Un." He wrote in his 
 youth by way of essay, in honor of liberty 
 against tyrants; and it has since run through 
 the hands of men of great learning and judg- 
 ment, not without singular and merited com- 
 mendation ; for it is finely written, and as full 
 as anything can possibly be. And yet one 
 may confidently say it is far short of what 
 he was able to do ; and if in that more mature 
 age, wherein I had the happiness to know 
 him, he had taken a design like this of mine, 
 to commit his thoughts to writing, we should 
 have seen a great many rare things, and such
 
 152 MONTAIGNE 
 
 as would have gone very near to have rivalled 
 the best writings of antiquity: for in natural 
 parts especially, I know no man comparable 
 to him. But he has left nothing behind him, 
 save this treatise only (and that too by 
 chance, for I believe he never saw it after it 
 first went out of his hands), and some obser- 
 vations upon that edict of January, made 
 famous by our civil wars, which also shall 
 elsewhere, peradventure, find a place. These 
 were all I could recover of his remains, I to 
 whom with so affectionate a remembrance, 
 upon his death-bed, he by his last will be- 
 queathed his library and papers, the little 
 book of his works only excepted, which I com- 
 mitted to the press. And this particular obli- 
 gation I have to this treatise of his, that it 
 was the occasion of my first coming ac- 
 quainted with him; for it was showed to me 
 long before I had the good fortune to know 
 him; and gave me the first knowledge of his 
 name, proving the first cause and foundation 
 of a friendship, which we afterwards im- 
 proved and maintained, so long as God was 
 pleased to continue us together, so perfect, 
 inviolate, and entire, that certainly the like
 
 MONTAIGNE 153 
 
 is hardly to be found in story, and amongst 
 the men of this age, there is no sign nor trace 
 of any such thing in use; so much concurrence 
 is required to the building of such a one, that 
 'tis much, if fortune bring it but once to pass 
 in three ages. 
 
 There is nothing to which nature seems so 
 much to have inclined us, as to society; and 
 Aristotle says, that the good legislators had 
 more respect to friendship than to justice. 
 Now the most supreme point of its perfection 
 is this: for, generally, all those that pleasure, 
 profit, public or private interest create and 
 nourish, are so much the less beautiful and 
 generous, and so much the less friendships, 
 by how much they mix another cause, and 
 design, and fruit in friendship, than itself. 
 Neither do the four ancient kinds, natural, 
 social, hospitable, venereal, either separately 
 or jointly, make up a true and perfect friend- 
 ship. 
 
 That of children to parents is rather re- 
 spect: friendship is nourished by communica- 
 tion, which cannot by reason of the great 
 disparity, be betwixt these, but would rather 
 perhaps offend the duties of nature; for
 
 154 MONTAIGNE 
 
 neither are all the secret thoughts of fathers 
 fit to be communicated to children, lest it 
 beget an indecent familiarity betwixt them; 
 nor can the advices and reproofs, which is 
 one of the principal offices of friendship, be 
 properly performed by the son to the father. 
 There are some countries where 'twas the 
 custom for children to kill their fathers; and 
 others, where the fathers killed their chil- 
 dren, to avoid their being an impediment one 
 to another in life ; and naturally the expecta- 
 tions of the one depend upon the ruin of the 
 other. There have been great philosophers 
 who have made nothing of this tie of nature, 
 as Aristippus for one, who being pressed 
 home about the affection he owed to his chil- 
 dren, as being come out of him, presently fell 
 to spit, saying, that this also came out of 
 him, and that we also breed worms and lice; 
 and that other, that Plutarch endeavored to 
 reconcile to his brother: "I make never the 
 more account of him," said he, "for coming 
 out of the same hole. ' ' This name of brother 
 does indeed carry with it a fine and delectable 
 sound, and for that reason, he and I called one 
 another brothers: but the complication of in-
 
 MONTAIGNE 155 
 
 terests, the division of estates, and that the 
 wealth of the one should be the property of 
 the other, strangely relax and weaken the 
 fraternal tie: brothers pursuing their fortune 
 and advancement by the same path, 'tis hardly 
 possible but they must of necessity often 
 jostle and hinder one another. Besides, why 
 is it necessary that the correspondence of 
 manners, parts, and inclinations, which be- 
 gets the true and perfect friendships, should 
 always meet in these relations! The father 
 and the son may be of quite contrary 
 humors, and so of brothers: he is my son, 
 he is my brother; but he is passionate, ill- 
 natured, or a fool. And moreover, by how 
 much these are friendships that the law and 
 natural obligation impose upon us, so much 
 less is there of our own choice and voluntary 
 freedom; whereas that voluntary liberty of 
 ours has no production more promptly and 
 properly its own that affection and friend- 
 ship. Not that I have not in my own person 
 experimented all that can possibly be expected 
 of that kind, having had the best and most 
 indulgent father, even to his extreme old age, 
 that ever was, and who was himself de-
 
 156 MONTAIGNE 
 
 scended from a family for many generations 
 famous and exemplary for brotherly con- 
 cord: 
 
 "And I myself, known to have a paternal 
 love toward my brothers.' ' 
 
 We are not here to bring the love we bear 
 to women, though it be an act of our own 
 choice, into comparison, nor rank it with the 
 others. The fire of this, I confess: 
 
 "Nor is the goddess unknown to me who 
 mixes a sweet bitterness with my love," 
 
 is more active, more eager, and more sharp: 
 but withal, 'tis more precipitant, fickle, mov- 
 ing, and inconstant; a fever subject to inter- 
 missions and paroxysms, that has seized but 
 on one part of us. Whereas on friendship, 
 'tis a general and universal fire, but tem- 
 perate and equal, a constant established heat, 
 all gentle and smooth, without poignancy or 
 roughness. Moreover, in love, 'tis no other 
 than frantic desire for that which flies from 
 us: 
 
 "As the hunter pursues the hare, in cold
 
 MONTAIGNE 157 
 
 and heat, to the mountain, to the shore, nor 
 cares for it farther when he sees it taken, and 
 only delights in chasing that which flees from 
 him; ,, 
 
 so soon as it enters into the terms of friend- 
 ship, that is to say, into a concurrence of 
 desires, it vanishes and is gone, fruition de- 
 stroys it, as having only a fleshly end, and 
 such a one as is subject to satiety. Friend- 
 ship, on the contrary, is enjoyed proportion- 
 ably as it is desired; and only grows up, is 
 nourished and improved by enjoyment, as be- 
 ing of itself spiritual, and the soul growing 
 Btill more refined by practice. Under this 
 perfect friendship, the other fleeting affec- 
 tions have in my younger years found some 
 place in me, to say nothing of him, who him- 
 self so confesses but too much in his verses; 
 so that I had both these passions, but always 
 so, that I could myself well enough distin- 
 guish them, and never in any degree of com- 
 parison with one another; the first maintain- 
 ing its flight in so lofty and so brave a place, 
 as with disdain to look down, and see the 
 other flying at a far humbler pitch below. 
 As concerning marriage, besides that it is
 
 158 MONTAIGNE 
 
 a covenant, the entrance into which only is 
 free, bnt the continuance in it forced and 
 compulsory, having another dependence than 
 that of our own free will, and a bargain com- 
 monly contracted to other ends, there almost 
 always happens a thousand intricacies in it to 
 unravel, enough to break the thread and to 
 divert the current of a lively affection: 
 whereas friendship has no manner of busi- 
 ness or traffic with aught but itself. More- 
 over, to say truth, the ordinary talent of 
 women is not such as is sufficient to maintain 
 the conference and communication required 
 to the support of this sacred tie; nor do they 
 appear to be endued with constancy of mind, 
 to sustain the pinch of so hard and durable 
 a knot. And doubtless, if without this, there 
 could be such a free and voluntary familiar- 
 ity contracted, where not only the souls might 
 have this entire fruition, but the bodies also 
 might sljare in the alliance, and a man be en- 
 gaged throughout, the friendship would cer- 
 tainly be more full and perfect; but it is with- 
 out example that this sex has ever yet ar- 
 rived at such perfection; and, by the com- 
 mon consent of the ancient schools, it is 
 wholly rejected from it.
 
 MONTAIGNE 159 
 
 That other Grecian licence is justly ab- 
 horred by our manners, which also, from hav- 
 ing, according to their practice, a so neces- 
 sary disparity of age and difference of offices 
 betwixt the lovers, answered no more to the 
 perfect union and harmony that we here re- 
 quire than the other: 
 
 "For what is that friendly love? why does 
 no one love a deformed youth or a comely 
 old man! " 
 
 Neither will that very picture that the 
 Academy presents of it, as I conceive, contra- 
 dict me, when I say, that this first fury in- 
 spired by the son of Venus into the heart of 
 the lover, upon sight of the flower and prime 
 of a springing and blossoming youth, to 
 which they allow all the insolent and pas- 
 sionate efforts that an immoderate ardor can 
 produce, was simply founded upon external 
 beauty, the false image of corporal genera- 
 tion; for it could not ground this love upon 
 the soul, the sight of which as yet lay con- 
 cealed,, was but now springing, and not of 
 maturity to blossom; that this fury, if it 
 seized upon a low spirit, the means by which
 
 160 MONTAIGNE 
 
 it preferred its suit were rich presents, 
 favor in advancement to dignities, and such 
 trumpery, which they by no means approve; 
 if on a more generous soul, the pursuit was 
 suitably generous, by philosophical instruc- 
 tions, precepts to revere religion, to obey the 
 laws, to die for the good of one's country; by 
 examples of valor, prudence, and justice, the 
 lover studying to render himself acceptable 
 by the grace and beauty of the soul, that of 
 his body being long since faded and decayed, 
 hoping by this mental society to establish a 
 more firm and lasting contract. When this 
 courtship came to effect in due season (for 
 that which they do not require in the lover, 
 namely, leisure and discretion in his pursuit, 
 they strictly require in the person loved, for- 
 asmuch as he is to judge of an internal 
 beauty, of difficult knowledge and abstruse 
 discovery), then there sprung in the person 
 loved the desire of a spiritual conception, by 
 the mediation of a spiritual beauty. This 
 was the principal; the corporeal, an acci- 
 dental and secondary matter; quite the con- 
 trary as to the lover. For this reason they 
 prefer the person beloved, maintaining that
 
 MONTAIGNE 161 
 
 the gods in like manner preferred him too, 
 and very much blame the poet Aeschylus for 
 having, in the loves of Achilles and Patroclus, 
 given the lover's part to Achilles, who was in 
 the first and beardless flower of his adoles- 
 cence, and the handsomest of all the Greeks. 
 After this general community, the sovereign 
 and most worthy part presiding and govern- 
 ing, and performing its proper offices, they 
 say, that thence great utility was derived, 
 both by private and public concerns; that it 
 constituted the force and power of the coun- 
 tries where it prevailed, and the chiefest 
 security of liberty and justice. Of which the 
 healthy loves of Harmodius and Aristogiton 
 are instances. And therefore it is that they 
 called it sacred and divine, and conceive that 
 nothing but the violence of tyrants and the 
 baseness of the common people are inimical 
 to it. Finally, all that can be said in favor 
 of the Academy is, that it was a love which 
 ended in friendship, which well enough 
 agrees with the Stoical definition of love: 
 
 "That love was an effort to form friend- 
 ship from the beauty of the object."
 
 162 MONTAIGNE 
 
 I return to my own more just and true de- 
 scription: 
 
 "Altogether friendships are to be judged 
 from the minds and years of those, when they 
 become fortified and confirmed." 
 
 For the rest, what we commonly call friends 
 and friendships, are nothing but acquaint- 
 ance and familiarities, either occasionally 
 contracted, or upon some design, by means 
 of which there happens some little intercourse 
 betwixt our souls. But in the friendship I 
 speak of, they mix and work themselves into 
 one piece, with so universal a mixture, that 
 there is no more sign of the seam by which 
 they were first conjoined. If a man should 
 importune me to give a reason why I loved 
 him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, 
 than by making answer: because it was he, 
 because it was I. There is, beyond all that 
 I am able to say, I know not what inexplica- 
 ble and fated power that brought on this 
 union. We sought one another long before 
 we met, and by* the characters we heard of 
 one another, which wrought upon our affec- 
 tions more than, in reason, mere reports
 
 MONTAIGNE 163 
 
 should do; I think 'twas by some secret ap- 
 pointment of heaven. We embraced in our 
 names; and at our first meeting, which was 
 accidentally at a great city entertainment, we 
 found ourselves so mutually taken with one 
 another, so acquainted, and so endeared be- 
 twixt ourselves, that from thenceforward 
 nothing was so near to us as one another. He 
 wrote an excellent Latin satire, since printed, 
 wherein he excuses the precipitation of our 
 intelligence, so suddenly come to perfection, 
 saying, that destined to have so short a con- 
 tinuance, as begun so late (for we were both 
 full-grown men, and he some years the older), 
 there was no time to lose, nor were we tied 
 to conform to the example of those slow and 
 regular friendships, that require so many 
 precautions of long preliminary conversation. 
 This has no other idea than that of itself, and 
 can only refer to itself: this is no one special 
 consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, 
 nor a thousand; 'tis I know not what quint- 
 essence of all this mixture, which, seizing my 
 whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself 
 in his, and that having seized his whole will, 
 brought it back with equal concurrence and
 
 164 MONTAIGNE 
 
 appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine. I 
 may truly say lose, reserving nothing to our- 
 selves that was either his or mine. 
 
 When Laelius, in the presence of the 
 Roman consuls, who after they had sentenced 
 Tiberius Gracchus, prosecuted all those who 
 had had any familiarity with him also, came 
 to ask Caius Blosius, who was his chiefest 
 friend, how much he would have done for 
 him, and that he made answer: "All things.' ' 
 "How! All things!" said Laelius. "And 
 what if he had commanded you to fire our 
 temples ?" "He would never have com- 
 manded me that," replied Blosius. "But 
 what if he had?" said Laelius. "I would 
 have obeyed him, ' ' said the other. If he was 
 so perfect a friend to Gracchus as the his- 
 tories report him to have been, there was yet 
 no necessity of offending the consuls by such 
 a bold confession, though he might still have 
 retained the assurance he had of Gracchus' 
 disposition. However, those who accuse this 
 answer as seditious, do not well understand 
 the mystery; nor presuppose, as it was true, 
 that he had Gracchus' will in his sleeve, both 
 by the power of a friend, and the perfect
 
 MONTAIGNE 165 
 
 knowledge he had of the man: they were 
 more friends than citizens, more friends to 
 one another than either enemies or friends to 
 their country, or than friends to ambition 
 and innovation; having absolutely given up 
 themselves to one another, either held abso- 
 lutely the reins of the other's inclination; and 
 suppose all this guided by virtue, and all this 
 by the conduct of reason, which also without 
 these it had not been possible to do, Blosius* 
 answer was such as it ought to be. If any 
 of their actions flew out of the handle, they 
 were neither (according to my measure of 
 friendship) friends to one another, nor to 
 themselves. As to the rest, this answer 
 carries no worse sound, than mine would do 
 to one that should ask me: "If your will 
 should command you to kill your daughter, 
 would you do it?" and that I should make 
 answer, that I would; for this expresses no 
 consent to such an act, forasmuch as I do not 
 in the least suspect my own will, and as little 
 that of such a friend. 'Tis not in the power 
 of all the eloquence in the world, to dispossess 
 me of the certainty I have of the intentions 
 and resolutions of my friend; nay, no one
 
 166 MONTAIGNE 
 
 action of his, what face soever it might bear, 
 could be presented to me, of which I could not 
 presently, and at first sight, find out the 
 moving cause. Our souls had drawn so 
 unanimously together, they had considered 
 each other with so ardent an affection, and 
 with the like affection laid open the very 
 bottom of our hearts to one another's view, 
 that I not only knew his as well as my own; 
 but should certainly in any concern of mine 
 have trusted my interest much more wil- 
 lingly with him, than with myself. 
 
 Let no one, therefore, rank other common 
 friendships with such a one as this. I have 
 had as much experience of these as another, 
 and of the most perfect of their kind: but I 
 do not advise that any should confound the 
 rules of the one and the other, for they would 
 find themselves much deceived. In those 
 other ordinary friendships, you are to walk 
 with bridle in your hand, with prudence and 
 circumspection, for in them the knot is not 
 so sure that a man may not half suspect it 
 will slip. "Love him," said Chilo, "so as if 
 you were one day to hate him; and hate him 
 so as you were one day to love him." This
 
 MONTAIGNE 167 
 
 precept, though abominable in the sovereign 
 and perfect friendship I speak of, is never- 
 theless very sound as to the practice of the 
 ordinary and customary ones, and to which 
 the saying that Aristotle had so frequent in 
 his mouth, "0 my friends, there is no 
 friend;" may very fitly be applied. In this 
 noble commerce, good offices, presents, and 
 benefits, by which other friendships are sup- 
 ported and maintained, do not deserve so 
 much as to be mentioned; and the reason is 
 the concurrence of our wills; for, as the kind- 
 ness I have for myself receives no increase, 
 for anything I relieve myself withal in time 
 of need (whatever the Stoics say), and as I 
 do not find myself obliged to myself for any 
 service I do myself: so the union of such 
 friends, being truly perfect, deprives them of 
 all idea of such duties, and makes them loathe 
 and banish from their conversation these 
 words of division and distinction, benefits, 
 obligation, acknowledgment, entreaty, thanks, 
 and the like. All things, wills, thoughts, 
 opinions, goods, wives, children, honors, and 
 lives, being in effect common betwixt them, 
 and that absolute concurrence of affections
 
 168 MONTAIGNE 
 
 being no other than one soul in two bodies 
 (according to that very proper definition of 
 Aristotle), they can neither lend nor give 
 anything to one another. This is the reason 
 why the lawgivers, to honor marriage with 
 some resemblance of this divine alliance, in- 
 terdict all gifts betwixt man and wife; in- 
 ferring by that, that all should belong to each 
 of them, and that they have nothing to divide 
 or to give to each other. 
 
 If, in the friendship of which I speak, one 
 could give to the other, the receiver of the 
 benefit would be the man that obliged his 
 friend; for each of them contending and 
 above all things studying how to be useful 
 to the other, he that administers the occasion 
 is the liberal man, in giving his friend the 
 satisfaction of doing that towards him which 
 above all things he most desires. When the 
 philosopher Diogenes wanted money, he used 
 to say, that he redemanded it of his friends, 
 not that he demanded it. And to let you see 
 the practical working of this, I will here pro- 
 duce an ancient and singular example. 
 Eudamidas, a Corinthan, had two friends, 
 Charixenus a Sicyonian and Areteus a Corin-
 
 MONTAIGNE 169 
 
 thian ; this man coming to die, being poor, and 
 his two friends rich, he made his will after 
 this manner. "I bequeath to Areteus the 
 maintenance of my mother, to support and 
 provide for her in her old age; and to Chari- 
 xenus I bequeath the care of marrying my 
 daughter, and to give her as good a portion 
 as he is able; and in case one of these chance 
 to die, I hereby substitute the survivor in his 
 place.' ' They who first saw this will made 
 themselves very merry at the contents: but 
 the legatees, being made acquainted with it, 
 accepted it with very great content; and one 
 of them, Charixenus, dying within five days 
 after, and by that means the charge of both 
 duties devolving solely on him, Areteus 
 nurtured the old woman with very great care 
 and tenderness, and of five talents he had in 
 estate, he gave two and a half in marriage 
 with an only daughter he had of his own, and 
 two and a half in marriage with the daugh- 
 ter of Eudamidas, and on one and the same 
 day solemnized both their nuptials. 
 
 This example is very full, if one thing were 
 not to be objected, namely the multitude of 
 friends: for the perfect friendship I speak of
 
 170 MONTAIGNE 
 
 is indivisible; each one gives himself so en- 
 tirely to his friend, that he has nothing left 
 to distribute to others: on the contrary, is 
 sorry that he is not double, treble, or quad- 
 ruple, and that he has not many souls and 
 many wills, to confer them all upon this one 
 object. Common friendships will admit of 
 division; one may love the beauty of this 
 person, the good-humor of that, the liber- 
 ality of a third, the paternal affection of a 
 fourth, the fraternal love of a fifth, and so of 
 the rest: but this friendship that possesses 
 the whole soul, and there rules and sways 
 with an absolute sovereignty, cannot possibly 
 admit of a rival. If two at the same time 
 should call to you for succor, to which of 
 them would you run? Should they require 
 of you contrary offices, how could you serve 
 them both? Should one commit a thing to 
 your silence that it were of importance to the 
 other to know, how would you disengage 
 yourself? A unique and particular friend- 
 ship dissolves all other obligations whatso- 
 ever: the secret I have sworn not to reveal to 
 any other, I may without perjury communi- 
 cate to him who is not another, but myself.
 
 MONTAIGNE 171 
 
 ,r Tis miracle enough certainly, for a man to 
 double himself, and those that talk of trip- 
 ling, talk they know not of what. Nothing 
 is extreme, that has its like; and he who shall 
 suppose, that of two, I love one as much as 
 the other, that they mutually love one 
 another too, and love me as much, as I love 
 them, multiplies into a confraternity the 
 most single of units, and whereof, moreover, 
 one alone is the hardest thing in the world to 
 find. The rest of this story suits very well 
 with what I was saying; for Eudamidas, as 
 a bounty and favor, bequeaths to his friends 
 a legacy of employing themselves in his 
 necessity; he leaves them heirs to this lib- 
 erality of his, which consists in giving them 
 the opportunity of conferring a benefit upon 
 him; and doubtless, the force of friendship is 
 more eminently apparent in this act of his, 
 than in that of Areteus. In short, these are 
 effects not to be imagined nor comprehended 
 by such as have not experience of them, and 
 which make me infinitely honor and admire 
 the answer of that young soldier to Cyrus, by 
 whom being asked how much he would take 
 for a horse, with which he had won the prize
 
 172 MONTAIGNE 
 
 of a race, and whether he would exchange 
 him for a kingdom? "No, truly, sir," said 
 he, "but I would give him with all my heart, 
 to get thereby a true friend, could I find out 
 any man worthy of that alliance.' ' He did 
 not say ill in saying, "could I find:'' for 
 though one may almost everywhere meet with 
 men sufficiently qualified for a superficial ac- 
 quaintance, yet in this, where a man is to 
 deal from the very bottom of his heart, with- 
 out any manner of reservation, it will be 
 requisite that all the wards and springs be 
 truly wrought and perfectly sure. 
 
 In confederations that hold but by one 
 end, we are only to provide against the im- 
 perfections that particularly concern that 
 end. It can be of no importance to me 
 of what religion my physician or my 
 lawyer is; this consideration has noth- 
 ing in common with the offices of friendship 
 which they owe me; and I am of the same 
 indifference in the domestic acquaintance my 
 servants must necessarily contract with me. 
 I never inquire, when I am to take a foot- 
 man, if he be chaste, but if he be diligent; 
 and am not solicitous if my muleteer be
 
 MONTAIGNE 173 
 
 given to gaming, as if he be strong and able ; 
 or if my cook be a swearer, if he be a good 
 cook. I do not take upon me to direct what 
 other men should do in the government of 
 their families, there are plenty that meddle 
 enough with that, but only give an account of 
 my method in my own : 
 
 "This has been my way; as for you, do as 
 you find needful." 
 
 For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and 
 witty before the learned and the grave; in 
 bed, beauty before goodness; in common dis- 
 course the ablest speaker, whether or no 
 there be sincerity in the case. And, as he 
 that was found astride upon a hobby-horse, 
 playing with his children, entreated the per- 
 son who had surprised him in that posture to 
 say nothing of it till himself came to be a 
 father, supposing that the fondness that 
 would then possess his own soul, would ren- 
 der him a fairer judge of such an action ; so I, 
 also, could wish to speak to such as have had 
 experience of what I say: though, knowing 
 how remote a thing such a friendship is from 
 the common practice, and how rarely it is to
 
 174 MONTAIGNE 
 
 be found, I despair of meeting with any such 
 judge. For even these discourses left us by 
 antiquity upon this subject, seem to me flat 
 and poor, in comparison of the sense I have of 
 it, and in this particular, the effects surpass 
 even the precepts of philosophy: 
 
 "While I have sense left to me, there will 
 never be anything more acceptable to me 
 than an agreeable friend." 
 
 The ancient Menander declared him to be 
 happy that had had the good fortune to meet 
 with but the shadow of a friend: and doubt- 
 less he had good reason to say so, especially 
 if he spoke by experience : for in good earnest, 
 if I compare all the rest of my life, though, 
 thanks be to God, I have passed my time 
 pleasantly enough, and at my ease, and the 
 loss of such a friend excepted, free from any 
 grievous affliction, and in great tranquillity 
 of mind, having been contented with my 
 natural and original commodities, without 
 being solicitous after others; if I should com- 
 pare it all, I say, with the four years I had 
 the happiness to enjoy the sweet society of 
 this excellent man, 'tis nothing but smoke,
 
 MONTAIGNE 175 
 
 an obscure and tedious night. From the 
 day that I lost him: 
 
 "Which I shall ever hold bitter, ever 
 honored (so, gods, have ye willed)." 
 
 I have only led a languishing life; and the 
 very pleasures that present themselves to 
 me, instead of administering anything of con- 
 solation, double my affliction for his loss. 
 We were halves throughout, and to that de- 
 gree, that methinks, by outliving him, I de- 
 fraud him of his part: 
 
 "I have prescribed to myself that it is not 
 rightful to enjoy any pleasure, so long as he, 
 my partner in such great ones, is away." 
 
 I was so grown and accustomed to be always 
 his double in all places and in all things, that 
 methinks I am no more than half of myself: 
 
 "If a superior force has taken that part of 
 my soul, why do I, the remaining one, linger 
 behind? What is left is not so dear, nor an 
 entire thing: this day has wrought the de- 
 struction of both." 
 
 There is no action or imagination of mine
 
 176 MONTAIGNE 
 
 wherein I do not miss him; as I know that he 
 would have missed me: for as he surpassed 
 me by infinite degrees in virtue and all other 
 accomplishments, so he also did in the duties 
 of friendship: 
 
 "What shame can there, or measure, in 
 lamenting so dear a friend ?" 
 
 ' ' brother, taken from me miserable ! with 
 thee, all our joys have vanished, those joys 
 which, in thy life, thy dear love nourished. 
 Dying, thou, my brother, hast destroyed all 
 my happiness. My whole soul is buried with 
 thee. Through, whose death I have banished 
 from my mind these studies, and all the de- 
 lights of the mind. Shall I address thee? 
 I shall never hear thy voice. Never shall I 
 behold thee hereafter. O brother, dearer to 
 me than life. Nought remains, but assuredly 
 I shall ever love thee." 
 
 But let us hear a boy of sixteen speak a 
 little 
 
 Because I have found that that work has 
 been since brought out, and with a mis- 
 chievous design, by those who aim at dis- 
 turbing and changing the condition of our
 
 MONTAIGNE 177 
 
 government, without troubling themselves to 
 think whether they are likely to improve it: 
 and because they have mixed up his work 
 with some of their own performance, I have 
 refrained from inserting it here. But that 
 the memory of the author may not be in- 
 jured, nor suffer with such as could not come 
 nearhand to be acquainted with his prin- 
 ciples, I here give them to understand, that 
 it was written by him in his boyhood, and 
 that by way of exercise only, as a common 
 theme that has been hackneyed by a thousand 
 writers. I make no question but that he him- 
 self believed what he wrote, being so con- 
 scientious that he would not so much as lie 
 in jest: and I moreover know, that could 
 it have been in his own choice, he had rather 
 have been born at Venice, than at Sarlac; and 
 with reason. But he had another maxim 
 sovereignly imprinted in his soul, very re- 
 ligiously to obey and submit to the laws 
 under which he was born. There never was 
 a better citizen, more affectionate to his 
 country; nor a greater enemy to all the com- 
 motions and innovations of his time: so that 
 he would much rather have employed his
 
 178 MONTAIGNE 
 
 talent to the extinguishing of those civil 
 flames, than have added any fuel to them; he 
 had a mind fashioned to the model of better 
 ages. Now, in exchange of this serious 
 piece, I will present you with another of a 
 more gay and frolic air, from the same hand, 
 and written at the same age. 
 
 OF MODERATION. 
 
 AS IF we had an infectious touch, we, by our 
 manner of handling, corrupt things that in 
 themselves are laudable and good: we may 
 grasp virtue so that it becomes vicious, if we 
 embrace it too stringently and with too vio- 
 lent a desire. Those who say, there is never 
 any excess in virtue, forasmuch as it is not 
 virtue when it once becomes excess, only play 
 upon words: 
 
 "Let the wise man bear the name of a mad- 
 man, the just one of an unjust, if he seek 
 wisdom more than is sufficient." 
 
 This is a subtle consideration of philoso- 
 phy. A man may both be too much in love 
 with virtue, and be excessive in a just action.
 
 MONTAIGNE 179 
 
 Holy Writ agrees with this, Be not wiser 
 than you should, but be soberly wise. I have 
 known a great man prejudice the opinion 
 men had of his devotion, by pretending to 
 be devout beyond all examples of others of 
 his condition. I love temperate and moderate 
 natures. An immoderate zeal, even to that 
 which is good, even though it does not offend, 
 astonishes me, and puts me to study what 
 name to give it. Neither the mother of 
 Pausanias, who was the first instructor of 
 her son's process, and threw the first stone 
 towards his death, nor Posthumius the dic- 
 tator, who put his son to death, whom the 
 ardor of youth had successfully pushed 
 upon the enemy a little more advanced than 
 the rest of his squadron, do appear to me so 
 much just as strange; and I should neither 
 advise nor like to follow so savage a virtue, 
 and that costs so dear. The archer that 
 shoots over, misses as much as he that falls 
 short, and 'tis equally troublesome to my 
 sight, to look up at a great light, and to look 
 down into a dark abyss. Callicles in Plato 
 says, that the extremity of philosophy is 
 hurtful, and advises not to dive into it be-
 
 180 MONTAIGNE 
 
 yond the limits of profit; that, taken mod- 
 erately, it is pleasant and nseful; but that in 
 the end it renders a man brutish and vicious, 
 a contemner of religion and the common 
 laws, an enemy to civil conversation, and all 
 human pleasures, incapable of all public ad- 
 ministration, unfit either to assist others or 
 to relieve himself, and a fit object for all sorts 
 of injuries and affronts. He says true; for in 
 its excess, it enslaves our natural freedom, 
 and by an impertinent subtlety, leads us out 
 of the fair and beaten way that nature has 
 traced for us. 
 
 The love we bear to our wives is very law- 
 ful, and yet theology thinks fit to curb and 
 restrain it. As I remember, I have read in 
 one place of St. Thomas Aquinas, where he 
 condemns marriages within any of the for- 
 bidden degrees, for this reason, amongst 
 others, that there is some danger, lest the 
 friendship a man bears to such a woman, 
 should be immoderate; for if the conjugal 
 affection be full and perfect betwixt them, 
 as it ought to be, and that it be over and 
 above surcharged with that of kindred too, 
 there is no doubt, but such an addition will
 
 MONTAIGNE 181 
 
 carry the husband beyond the bounds of rea- 
 son. 
 
 Those sciences that regulate the manners 
 of men, divinity and philosophy, will have 
 their say in everything; there is no action so 
 private and secret that can escape their in- 
 spection and jurisdiction. They are best 
 taught who are best able to control and curb 
 their own liberty; women expose their nudi- 
 ties as much as you will upon the account of 
 pleasure, though in the necessities of physic 
 they are altogether as shy. I will, therefore, 
 in their behalf teach the husbands, that is, 
 such as are too vehement in the exercise of 
 the matrimonial duty if such there still be 
 this lesson, that the very pleasures they 
 enjoy in the society of their wives are re- 
 proachable if immoderate, and that a licen- 
 tious and riotous abuse of them is a fault as 
 reprovable here as in illicit connections. 
 Those immodest and debauched tricks and 
 postures, that the first ardor suggests to us 
 in this affair, are not only indecently but 
 detrimentally practised upon our wives. Let 
 them at least learn impudence from another 
 hand; they are ever ready enough for our
 
 182 MONTAIGNE 
 
 business, and I for my part always went the 
 plain way to work. 
 
 Marriage is a solemn and religions tie, and 
 therefore the pleasure we extract from it 
 should be a sober and serious delight, and 
 mixed with a certain kind of gravity; it 
 should be a sort of discreet and conscientious 
 pleasure. And seeing that the chief end of 
 it is generation, some make a question, 
 whether when men are out of hopes of that 
 fruit, as when they are superannuated or 
 already with child, it be lawful to embrace 
 our wives; 'tis homicide, according to Plato. 
 Certain nations (the Mohammedan, amongst 
 others) abominate all conjunction with 
 women with child, others also, with those who 
 are in their courses. Zenobia would never 
 admit her husband for more than one en- 
 counter, after which she left him to his own 
 swing for the whole time of her conception, 
 and not till after that would again receive 
 him; a brave and generous example of con- 
 jugal continence. It was doubtless from 
 some lascivious poet, and one that himself 
 was in great distress for a little of this sport, 
 that Plato borrowed this story; that Jupiter
 
 MONTAIGNE 183 
 
 was one day so hot upon his wife, that not 
 having so much patience as till she could get 
 to the couch, he threw her upon the floor, 
 where the vehemence of pleasure made him 
 forget the great and important resolutions 
 he had but newly taken with the rest of the 
 gods in his celestial council, and to brag 
 that he had had as good a bout, as when he 
 got her maidenhead, unknown to their 
 parents. 
 
 The kings of Persia were wont to invite 
 their wives to the beginning of their festivals; 
 but when the wine began to work in good 
 earnest, and that they were to give the reins 
 to pleasure, they sent them back to their 
 private apartments, that they might not par- 
 ticipate in their immoderate lust, sending 
 for other women in their stead, with whom 
 they were not obliged to so great a decorum 
 of respect. All pleasures and all sorts of 
 gratifications are not properly and fitly con- 
 ferred upon all sorts of persons. Epami- 
 nondas had committed to prison a young man 
 for certain debauches; for whom Pelopidas 
 mediated, that at his request he might be set 
 at liberty; which Epaminondas denied to him,
 
 184 MONTAIGNE 
 
 but granted it at the first word to a wench 
 of his, that made the same intercession; say- 
 ing, that it was a gratification fit for such a 
 one as she, but not for a captain. Sophocles 
 being joint praetor with Pericles, seeing ac- 
 cidentally a fine boy pass by: "0 what a 
 charming boy is that ! ' ' said he. ' ' That might 
 be very well," answered Pericles, "for any 
 other than a praetor, who ought not only to 
 have his hands, but his eyes, too, chaste." 
 Aelius Verus, the emperor, answered his wife, 
 who reproached him with his love to other 
 women, that he did it upon a conscientious 
 account, forasmuch as marriage was a name 
 of honor and dignity, not of wanton and 
 lascivious desire; and our ecclesiastical his- 
 tory preserves the memory of that woman in 
 great veneration, who parted from her hus- 
 band because she would not comply with his 
 indecent and inordinate desires. In fine, 
 there is no pleasure so just and lawful, where 
 intemperance and excess are not to be con- 
 demned. 
 
 But, to speak the truth, is not man a most 
 miserable creature the while? It is scarce, by 
 his natural condition, in his power to taste
 
 MONTAIGNE 185 
 
 one pleasure pure and entire; and yet must 
 he be contriving doctrines and precepts to 
 curtail that little he has; he is not yet 
 wretched enough, unless by art and study he 
 augment his own misery: 
 
 "We have augmented by art the wretched- 
 ness of fortune.' ' 
 
 Human wisdom makes as ill use of her 
 talent, when she exercises it in rescinding 
 from the number and sweetness of those 
 pleasures that are naturally our due, as she 
 employs it favorably and well in artificially 
 disguising and tricking out the ills of life, to 
 alleviate the sense of them. Had I ruled the 
 roast, I should have taken another and more 
 natural course, which, to say the truth, is 
 both commodious and holy, and should, per- 
 adventure, have been able to have limited it 
 too; notwithstanding that both our spiritual 
 and corporal physicians, as by compact be- 
 twixt themselves, can find no other way to 
 cure, nor other remedy for the infirmities of 
 the body and the soul, than by misery and 
 pain. To this end, watchings, fastings, hair- 
 shirts, remote and solitary banishments, per-
 
 186 MONTAIGNE 
 
 petual imprisonments, whips and other af- 
 flictions, have been introduced amongst men: 
 bnt so, that they should carry a sting with 
 them, and be real afflictions indeed; and not 
 fall ont as it once did to one Gallio, who hav- 
 ing been sent an exile into the isle of Lesbos, 
 news was not long after brought to Rome, 
 that he there lived as merry as the day was 
 long; and that what had been enjoined him 
 for a penance, turned to his pleasure and 
 satisfaction: whereupon the Senate thought 
 fit to recall him home to his wife and family, 
 and confine him to his own house, to accom- 
 modate their punishment to his feeling and 
 apprehension. For to him whom fasting 
 would make more healthful and more 
 sprightly, and to him to whose palate fish 
 were more acceptable than flesh, the prescrip- 
 tion of these would have no curative effect; 
 no more than in the other sort of physic, 
 where drugs have no effect upon him who 
 swallows them with appetite and pleasure: 
 the bitterness of the potion and the abhor- 
 rence of the patient are necessary circum- 
 stances to the operation. The nature that 
 would eat rhubarb like buttered turnips,
 
 MONTAIGNE 187 
 
 would frustrate the use and virtue of it; it 
 must be something to trouble and disturb the 
 stomach, that must purge and cure it; and 
 here the common rule, that things are cured 
 by their contraries, fails; for in this one ill 
 is cured by another. 
 
 This belief a little resembles that other so 
 ancient one, of thinking to gratify the gods 
 and nature by massacre and murder: an 
 opinion universally once received in all reli- 
 gions. And still, in these later times wherein 
 our fathers lived, Amurath at the taking of 
 the Isthmus, immolated six hundred young 
 Greeks to his father's soul, in the nature of 
 a propitiatory sacrifice for his sins. And in 
 those new countries discovered in this age 
 of ours, which are pure and virgin yet, in 
 comparison of ours, this practice is in some 
 measure everywhere received: all their idols 
 reek with human blood, not without various 
 examples of horrid cruelty: some they burn 
 alive, and take, half broiled, off the coals to 
 tear out their hearts and entrails ; some, even 
 women, they flay alive, and with their bloody 
 skins clothe and disguise others. Neither 
 are we without great examples of constancy
 
 188 MONTAIGNE 
 
 and resolution in this affair: the poor souls 
 that are to be sacrificed, old men, women, and 
 children, themselves going about some days 
 before to beg alms for the offering of their 
 sacrifice, presenting themselves to the 
 slaughter, singing and dancing with the 
 spectators. 
 
 The ambassadors of the king of Mexico, 
 setting out to Fernando Cortez the power 
 and greatness of their master, after having 
 told him, that he had thirty vassals, of whom 
 each was able to raise an hundred thousand 
 fighting men, and that he kept his court in 
 the fairest and best fortified city under the 
 sun, added at last, that he was obliged yearly 
 to offer to the gods fifty thousand men. And 
 it is affirmed, that he maintained a continual 
 war, with some potent neighboring nations, 
 not only to keep the young men in exercise, 
 but principally to have wherewithal to fur- 
 nish his sacrifices with his prisoners of war. 
 At a certain town in another place, for the 
 welcome of the said Cortez, they sacrificed 
 fifty men at once. I will tell you this one tale 
 more, and I have done; some of these people 
 being beaten by him, sent to acknowledge
 
 MONTAIGNE 189 
 
 him, and to treat with him of a peace, whose 
 messengers carried him three sorts of gifts, 
 which they presented in these terms: "Be- 
 hold, lord, here are five slaves: if thou art a 
 furious god that feedeth upon flesh and blood, 
 eat these, and we will bring thee more; if 
 thou art an affable god, behold here incense 
 and feathers; but if thou art a man, take 
 these fowls and these fruits that we have 
 brought thee." 
 
 OF CANNIBALS 
 WHEN KING PYRRHUS invaded Italy, 
 having viewed and considered the order of 
 the army the Romans sent out to meet him; 
 "I know not," said he, "what kind of bar- 
 barians" (for so the Greeks called all other 
 nations) "these may be; but the disposition 
 of this army that I see has nothing of bar- 
 barism in it." As much said the Greeks of 
 that which Flaminius brought into their 
 country; and Philip, beholding from an 
 eminence the order and distribution of the 
 Roman camp formed in his kingdom by 
 Publius Sulpicius Galba, spake to the same 
 effect. By which it appears how cautious
 
 190 MONTAIGNE 
 
 men ought to be of taking things upon trust 
 from vulgar opinion, and that we are to judge 
 by the eye of reason, and not from common 
 report. 
 
 I long had a man in my house that lived 
 ten or twelve years in the New World, dis- 
 covered in these latter days, and in that part 
 of it where Villegaignon landed, which he 
 called Antarctic France. This discovery of 
 so vast a country seems to be of very great 
 consideration. I cannot be sure, that here- 
 after there may not be another, so many wiser 
 men than we having been deceived in this. 
 I am afraid our eyes are bigger than our 
 bellies, and that we have more curiosity than 
 capacity; for we grasp at all, but catch noth- 
 ing but wind. 
 
 Plato brings in Solon, telling a story that 
 he had heard from the priests of Sais in 
 Egypt, that of old, and before the Deluge, 
 there was a great island called Atlantis, 
 situate directly at the mouth of the straits of 
 Gibraltar, which contained more countries 
 than both Africa and Asia put together; and 
 that the kings of that country, who not only 
 possessed that Isle, but extended their do-
 
 MONTAIGNE 191 
 
 minion so far into the continent that they 
 had a country of Africa as far as Egypt, and 
 extending in Europe to Tuscany, attempted 
 to encroach even upon Asia, and to subjugate 
 all the nations that border upon the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea, as far as the Black Sea; and to 
 that effect overran all Spain, the Gauls, and 
 Italy, so far as to penetrate into Greece, 
 where the Athenians stopped them: but that 
 some time after, both the Athenians, and they 
 and their island, were swallowed by the 
 Flood. 
 
 It is very likely that this extreme irrup- 
 tion and inundation of water made wonderful 
 changes and alterations in the habitations of 
 the earth, as 'tis said that the sea then 
 divided Sicily from Italy: 
 
 "These lands, they say, formerly with 
 violence and vast desolation convulsed, burst 
 asunder, where before both were one coun- 
 try." 
 
 Cyprus from Syria, the isle of Negropont 
 from the continent of Boeotia, and elsewhere 
 united lands that were separate before, by 
 filling up the channel betwixt them with sand 
 and mud:
 
 192 MONTAIGNE 
 
 "The long-time sterile marsh, adapted for 
 ships, feeds neighboring cities, and feels the 
 heavy plough." 
 
 But there is no great appearance that this 
 isle was this New World so lately discovered : 
 for that almost touched upon Spain, and it 
 were an incredible effect of an inundation, to 
 have tumbled back so prodigious a mass, 
 above twelve hundred leagues: besides that 
 our modern navigators have already almost 
 discovered it to be no island, but terra firma, 
 and continent with the East Indies on the one 
 side, and with the lands under the two poles 
 on the other side; or, if it be separate from 
 them, it is by so narrow a strait and channel, 
 that it none the more deserves the name of 
 an island for that. 
 
 It should seem, that in this great body, 
 there are two sorts of motions, the one 
 natural and the other febrific, as there are in 
 ours. When I consider the impression that 
 our river of Dordogne has made in my time 
 on the right bank of its descent, and that in 
 twenty years it has gained so much, and un- 
 dermined the foundations of so many houses, 
 I perceive it to be an extraordinary agita-
 
 MONTAIGNE 193 
 
 tion: for had it always followed this course, 
 or were hereafter to do it, the aspect of the 
 world would be totally changed. But rivers 
 alter their course, sometimes beating against 
 the one side, and sometimes the other, and 
 sometimes quietly keeping the channel. I 
 do not speak of sudden inundations, the 
 causes of which everybody understands. In 
 Medoc, by the seashore, the Sieur d'Arsac, 
 my brother, sees an estate he had there, 
 buried under the sands which the sea vomits 
 before it: where the tops of some houses are 
 yet to be seen, and where his rents and 
 domains are coverted into pitiful barren pas- 
 turage. The inhabitants of this place affirm, 
 that of late years the sea has driven so 
 vehemently upon them, that they have lost 
 above four leagues of land. These sands are 
 her harbingers: and we now see great heaps 
 of moving sand, that march half a league be- 
 fore her, and occupy the land. 
 
 The other testimony from antiquity, to 
 which some would apply this discovery of 
 the New World, is in Aristotle; at least, if 
 that little book of Unheard-of Miracles be his. 
 He there tells us, that certain Carthaginians,
 
 194 MONTAIGLNE 
 
 having crossed the Atlantic Sea without the 
 Straits of Gibraltar, and sailed a very long 
 time, discovered at last a great and fruitful 
 island, all covered over with wood, and 
 watered with several broad and deep rivers, 
 far remote from all terra firma; and that they, 
 and others after them, allured by the good- 
 ness and fertility of the soil, went thither 
 with their wives and children, and began to 
 plant a colony. But the senate of Cathage 
 perceiving their people by little and little to 
 diminish, issued out an express prohibition, 
 that none, upon pain of death, should trans- 
 port themselves thither; and also drove out 
 these new inhabitants; fearing, 'tis said, lest 
 in process of time they should so multiply 
 as to supplant themselves and ruin their state. 
 But this relation of Aristotle no more agrees 
 with our new-found lands than the other. 
 
 This man that I had was a plain ignorant 
 fellow, and therefore the more likely to tell 
 truth: for your better-bred sort of men are 
 much more curious in their observation, 'tis 
 true, and discover a great deal more; but then 
 they gloss upon it, and to give the greater 
 weight to what they deliver, and allure your
 
 MONTAIGNE 195 
 
 belief, they cannot forbear a little to alter the 
 story; they never represent things to you 
 simply as they are, but rather as they ap- 
 peared to them, or as they would have them 
 appear to you, and to gain the reputation of 
 men of judgment, and the better to induce 
 your faith, are willing to help out the busi- 
 ness with something more than is really true, 
 of their own invention. Now in this case, we 
 should either have a man of irreproachable 
 veracity, or so simple that he has not where- 
 withal to contrive, and to give a color of 
 truth to false relations, and who can have no 
 ends in forging an untruth. Such a one was 
 mine; and besides, he has at divers times 
 brought to me several seamen and merchants 
 who at the same time went the same voyage. 
 I shall therefore content myself with his in- 
 formation, without inquiring what the cosmo- 
 graphers say to the business. We should have 
 topographers to trace out to us the particular 
 places where they have been; but for having 
 had this advantage over us, to have seen the 
 Holy Land, they would have the privilege, 
 forsooth, to tell us stories of all the other 
 parts of the world beside. I would have every
 
 196 MONTAIGNE 
 
 one write what he knows, and as much as he 
 knows, but no more; and that not in this only 
 but in all other subjects; for such a person 
 may have some particular knowledge and ex- 
 perience of the nature of such a river, or such 
 a fountain, who, as to other things, knows no 
 more than what everybody does, and yet to 
 give a currency to his little pittance of learn- 
 ing, will undertake to write the whole body 
 of physics: a vice from which great incon- 
 veniences derive their original. 
 
 Now, to return to my subject, I find that 
 there is nothing barbarous and savage in this 
 nation, by anything that I can gather, ex- 
 cepting, that every one gives the title of bar- 
 barism to everything that is not in use in his 
 own country. As, indeed, we have no other 
 level of truth and reason than the example 
 and idea of the opinions and customs of the 
 place wherein we live: there is always the 
 perfect religion, there the perfect govern- 
 ment, there the most exact and accomplished 
 usage of all things. They are savages at the 
 same rate that we say fruits are wild, which 
 nature produces of herself and by her own 
 ordinary progress; whereas, in truth, we
 
 MONTAIGNE 197 
 
 ought rather to call those wild whose natures 
 we have changed by our artifice and diverted 
 from the common order. In those, the 
 genuine, most useful, and natural virtues and 
 properties are vigorous and sprightly, which 
 we have helped to degenerate in these, by ac- 
 commodating them to the pleasure of our 
 own corrupted palate. And yet for all this, 
 our taste confesses a flavor and delicacy ex- 
 cellent even to emulation of the best of ours, 
 in several fruits wherein those countries 
 abound without art or culture. Neither is it 
 reasonable that art should gain the pre-emin- 
 ence of our great and powerful mother 
 nature. We have so surcharged her with the 
 additional ornaments and graces we have 
 added to the beauty and riches of her own 
 works by our inventions, that we have almost 
 smothered her; yet in other places, where she 
 shines in her own purity and proper lustre, 
 she marvellously baffles and disgraces all our 
 vain and frivolous attempts: 
 
 "And the ivy grows best spontaneously, 
 the arbutus best in solitary caves; and the 
 birds sing more sweetly without art."
 
 198 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Our utmost endeavors cannot arrive at so 
 much as to imitate the nest of the least of 
 birds, its contexture, beauty, and con- 
 venience: not so much as the web of a poor 
 spider. 
 
 All things, says Plato, are produced either 
 by nature, by fortune, or by art; the greatest 
 and most beautiful by the one or the other of 
 the former, the least and the most imperfect 
 by the last. 
 
 These nations then seem to me to be so far 
 barbarous, as having received but very little 
 form and fashion from art and human inven- 
 tion, and consequently to be not much remote 
 from their original simplicity. The laws of 
 nature, however, govern them still, not as yet 
 much vitiated with any mixture of ours: but 
 'tis in such purity, that I am sometimes 
 troubled we were not sooner acquainted with 
 these people, and that they were not discov- 
 ered in those better times, where there were 
 men much more able to judge of them than 
 we are. I am sorry that Lycurgus and Plato 
 had no knowledge of them; for to my appre- 
 hension, what we now see in those nations, 
 does not only surpass all the pictures with
 
 MONTAIGNE 199 
 
 which the poets have adorned the golden age, 
 and all their inventions in feigning a happy 
 state of man, but, moreover, the fancy and 
 even the wish and desire of philosophy itself; 
 so native and so pnre a simplicity, as we by 
 experience see to be in them, could never 
 enter into their imagination, nor could they 
 ever believe that human society could have 
 been maintained with so little artifice and 
 human patchwork. I should tell Plato that it 
 is a nation wherein there is no manner of 
 traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of 
 numbers, no name of magistrate or political 
 superiority; no use of service, riches or 
 poverty, no contracts, no successions, no 
 dividends, no properties, no employments, 
 but those of leisure, no respect of kindred, 
 but common, no clothing, no agriculture, no 
 metal, no use of corn or wine ; the very words 
 that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, 
 avarice, envy, detraction, pardon, never 
 heard of. How much would he find his imagi- 
 nary Republic short of his perfection? 
 
 "Men not far removed from the gods." 
 
 
 
 "These manners nature first inculcated.'
 
 200 MONTAIGNE 
 
 As to the rest, they live in a country very 
 pleasant and temperate, so that, as my wit- 
 ness informed me, 'tis rare to hear of a sick 
 person, and they moreover assure me, that 
 they never saw any of the natives, either 
 paralytic, blear-eyed, toothless, or crooked 
 with age. The situation of their country is 
 along the sea-shore, enclosed on the other side 
 towards the land, with great and high moun- 
 tains, having about a hundred leagues in 
 breadth between. They have great store of 
 fish and flesh, that have no resemblance to 
 those of ours; which they eat without any 
 other cookery, than plain boiling, roasting, 
 and broiling. The first that rode a horse 
 thither, though in several other voyages he 
 had contracted an acquaintance and familiar- 
 ity with them, put them into so terrible a 
 fright, with his centaur appearance, that they 
 killed him with their arrows before they 
 could come to discover who he was. Their 
 buildings are very long, and of capacity to 
 hold two or three hundred people, made of 
 the barks of tall trees, reared with one end 
 upon the ground, and leaning to and support- 
 ing one another at the top, like some of our
 
 MONTAIGNE 201 
 
 barns, of which the covering hangs down to 
 the very ground, and serves for the side 
 walls. They have wood so hard, that they 
 cut with it, and make their swords of it, and 
 their grills of it to broil their meat. Their 
 beds are of cotton, hung swinging from the 
 roof, like our seamen 's hammocks, every man 
 his own, for the wives lie apart from their 
 husbands. They rise with the sun, and so 
 soon as they are up, eat for all day, for they 
 have no more meals but that; they do not then 
 drink, as Suidas reports of some other people 
 of the East that never drank at their meals; 
 but drink very often all day after, and some- 
 times to a rousing pitch. Their drink is made 
 of a certain root, and is of the color of our 
 claret, and they never drink it but luke warm. 
 It will not keep above two or three days; it 
 has a somewhat sharp, brisk taste, is nothing 
 heady, but very comfortable to the stomach; 
 laxative to strangers, but a very pleasant 
 beverage to such as are accustomed to it. 
 They make use, instead of bread, of a certain 
 white compound, like coriander seeds; I have 
 tasted of it ; the taste is sweet and a little flat. 
 The whole day is spent in dancing. Their
 
 202 MONTAIGNE 
 
 young men go a-hnnting after wild beasts 
 with bows and arrows; one part of their 
 women are employed in preparing their drink 
 the while, which is their chief employment. 
 One of their old men, in the morning before 
 they fall to eating, preaches to the whole 
 family, walking from the one end of the house 
 to the other, and several times repeating the 
 same sentence, till he has finished the round, 
 for their houses are at least a hundred yards 
 long. Valor towards their enemies and love 
 towards their wives, are the two heads of his 
 discourse, never failing in the close, to put 
 them in mind, that 'tis their wives who pro- 
 vide them their drink warm and well sea- 
 soned. The fashion of their beds, ropes, 
 swords, and of the wooden bracelets they tie 
 about their wrists, when they go to fight, and 
 of the great canes, bored hollow at one end, 
 by the sound of which they keep the cadence 
 of their dances, are to be seen in several 
 places, and amongst others, at my house. 
 They shave all over, and much more neatly 
 than we, without other razor than one of 
 wood or stone. They believe in the immor- 
 tality of the soul, and that those who have
 
 MONTAIGNE 203 
 
 merited well of the gods are lodged in that 
 part of heaven where the sun rises, and the 
 accursed in the west. 
 
 They have I know not what kind of priests 
 and prophets, who very rarely present them- 
 selves to the people, having their abode in 
 the mountains. At their arrival, there is a 
 great feast, and solemn assembly of many vil- 
 lages : each house, as I have described, makes 
 a village, and they are about a French league 
 distant from one another. This prophet de- 
 claims to them in public, exhorting them to 
 virtue and their duty: but all their ethics are 
 comprised in these two articles, resolution in 
 war, and affection to their wives. He also 
 prophesies to them events to come, and the 
 issues they are to expect from their enter- 
 prises, and prompts them to or diverts them 
 from war: but let him look to't; for if he fail 
 in his divination, and anything happen other- 
 wise than he has foretold, he is cut into a 
 thousand pieces, if he be caught, and con- 
 demned for a false prophet: for that reason, 
 if any of them has been mistaken, he is no 
 more heard of. 
 
 Divination is a gift of God, and therefore
 
 204 MONTAIGNE 
 
 to abuse it, ought to be a punishable impos- 
 ture. Amongst the Scythians, where their 
 diviners failed in the promised effect, they 
 were laid, bound hand and foot, upon carts 
 loaded with firs and bavins, and drawn by 
 oxen, on which they were burned to death. 
 Such as only meddle with things subject to 
 the conduct of human capacity, are excusable 
 in doing the best they can: but those other 
 fellows that come to delude us with assur- 
 ances of an extraordinary faculty, beyond our 
 understanding, ought they not to be punished, 
 when they do not make good the effect of 
 their promise, and for the temerity of their 
 imposture? 
 
 They have continual war with the nations 
 that live further within the mainland, be- 
 yond their mountains, to which they go 
 naked, and without other arms than their 
 bows and wooden swords, fashioned at one 
 end like the head of our javelins. The 
 obstinacy of their battles is wonderful, and 
 they never end without great effusion of 
 blood: for as to running away, they know not 
 what it is. Every one for a trophy brings 
 home the head of an enemy he has killed,
 
 MONTAIGNE 205 
 
 which he fixes over the door of his house. 
 After having a long time treated their pris- 
 oners very well, and given them all the 
 regales they can think of, he to whom the 
 prisoner belongs, invites a great assembly 
 of his friends. They being come, he ties a 
 rope to one of the arms of the prisoner, of 
 which, at a distance, out of his reach, he 
 holds the one end himself, and gives to the 
 friend he loves best the other arm to hold 
 after the same manner; which being done, 
 they two, in the presence of all the assembly, 
 despatch him with their swords. After that, 
 they roast him, eat him amongst them, and 
 send some chops to their absent friends. 
 They do not do this, as some think, for nour- 
 ishment, as the Scythians anciently did, but 
 as a representation of an extreme revenge ; as 
 will appear by this: that having observed the 
 Portuguese, who were in league with their 
 enemies, to inflict another sort of death upon 
 any of them they took prisoners, which was 
 to set them up to the girdle in the earth, to 
 shoot at the remaining part till it was stuck 
 full of arrows, and then to hang them, they 
 thought those people of the other world (as
 
 206 MONTAIGNE 
 
 being men who had sown the knowledge of a 
 great many vices amongst their neighbors, 
 and who were much greater masters in all 
 sorts of mischief than they) did not exercise 
 this sort of revenge without a meaning, and 
 that it must needs be more painful than 
 theirs, they began to leave their old way, and 
 to follow this. I am not sorry that we should 
 here take notice of the barbarous horror of 
 so cruel an action, but that, seeing so clearly 
 into their faults, we should be so blind to 
 our own. I conceive there is more barbarity 
 in eating a man alive, than when he is dead; 
 in tearing a body limb from limb by racks 
 and torments, that is yet in perfect sense; in 
 roasting it by degrees; in causing it to be 
 bitten and worried by dogs and swine (as we 
 have not only read, but lately seen, not 
 amongst inveterate and mortal enemies, but 
 among neighbors and fellow-citizens, and, 
 which is worse, under color of piety and re- 
 ligion), than to roast and eat him after he is 
 dead. 
 
 Chrysippus and Zeno, the two heads of the 
 Stoic sect, were of opinion that there was no 
 hurt in making use of our dead carcasses, in
 
 MONTAIGNE 207 
 
 what way soever for our necessity, and in 
 feeding upon them too ; as our own ancestors, 
 who being besieged by Caesar in the city 
 Alexia, resolved to sustain the famine of the 
 siege with the bodies of their old men, 
 women, and other persons who were in- 
 capable of bearing arms: 
 
 "Vascones, ut fama est, aliment is talibns usi 
 Produxere animas." 
 
 And the physicians make no bones of em- 
 ploying it to all sorts of use, either to apply 
 it outwardly; or to give it inwardly for the 
 health of the patient. But there never was 
 any opinion so irregular, as to excuse 
 treachery, disloyalty, tyranny, and cruelty, 
 which are our familiar vices. We may then 
 call these people barbarous, in respect to the 
 rules of reason: but not in respect to our- 
 selves, who in all sorts of barbarity exceed 
 them. Their wars are throughout noble and 
 generous, and carry as much excuse and fair 
 pretence, as that human malady is capable 
 of; having with them no other foundation 
 than the sole jealousy of valor. Their dis- 
 putes are not for the conquest of new lands,
 
 208 MONTAIGNE 
 
 for these they already possess are so fruitful 
 by nature, as to supply them without labor 
 or concern, with all things necessary, in such 
 abundance that they have no need to enlarge 
 their borders. And they are, moreover, 
 happy in this, that they only covet so much 
 as their natural necessities require: all be- 
 yond that is superfluous to them: men of the 
 same age call one another generally brothers, 
 those who are younger, children; and the old 
 men are fathers to all. These leave to their 
 heirs in common the full possession of goods, 
 without any manner of division, or other title 
 than what nature bestows upon her creatures, 
 in bringing them into the world. If their 
 neighbors pass over the mountains to as- 
 sault them, and obtain a victory, all the vic- 
 tors gain by it is glory only, and' the ad- 
 vantage of having proved themselves the bet- 
 ter in valor and virtue: for they never 
 meddle with the goods of the conquered, but 
 presently return into their own country, 
 where they have no want of anything neces- 
 sary, nor of this greatest of all goods, to 
 know happily how to enjoy their condition 
 and to be content. And those in turn do the 
 same; they demand of their prisoners no other
 
 MONTAIGNE 209 
 
 ransom, than acknowledgment that they are 
 overcome: but there is not one found in an 
 age, who will not rather choose to die than 
 make snch a confession, or either by word or 
 look recede from the entire grandeur of an 
 invincible courage. There is not a man 
 amongst them who had not rather be killed 
 and eaten, than so much as to open his mouth 
 to entreat he may not. They use them with 
 all liberality and freedom, to the end their 
 lives may be so much the dearer to them; but 
 frequently entertain them with menaces of 
 their approaching death, of the torments they 
 are to suffer, of the preparations making in 
 order to it, of the mangling their limbs, and 
 of the feast that is to be made, where their 
 carcass is to be the only dish. All which they 
 do, to no other end, but only to extort some 
 gentle or submissive word from them, or to 
 frighten them so as to make them run away, 
 to obtain this advantage that they were ter- 
 rified, and that their constancy was shaken; 
 and indeed, if rightly taken, it is in this point 
 only that a true victory consists: 
 
 "No victory is complete, which the con- 
 quered do not admit to be so."
 
 210 MONTAIGNE 
 
 The Hungarians, a very warlike people, 
 never pretend further than to reduce the 
 enemy to their discretion; for having forced 
 this confession from them, they let them go 
 without injury or ransom, excepting, at the 
 most, to make them engage their word never 
 to bear arms against them again. We have 
 sufficient advantages over our enemies that 
 are borrowed and not truly our own; it is the 
 quality of a porter, and no effect of virtue, to 
 have stronger arms and legs ; it is a dead and 
 corporeal quality to set in array; 'tis a turn 
 of fortune to make our enemy stumble, or to 
 dazzle him with the light of the sun; 'tis a 
 trick of science and art, and that may happen 
 in a mean base fellow, to be a good fencer. 
 The estimate and value of a man consist in 
 the heart and in the will: there his true 
 honor lies. Valor is stability, not of legs 
 and arms, but of the courage and the soul; it 
 does not lie in the goodness of our horse or 
 our arms: but in our own. He that falls 
 obstinate in his courage 
 
 "If he falls, he fights from his knee;" 
 
 he who, for any danger of imminent death,
 
 MONTAIGNE 211 
 
 abates nothing of his assurance; who, dying, 
 yet darts at his enemy a fierce and disdain- 
 ful look, is overcome not by us, but by for- 
 tune; he is killed, not conquered; the most 
 valiant are sometimes the most unfortunate. 
 There are defeats more triumphant than vic- 
 tories. Never could those four sister vic- 
 tories, the fairest the sun ever beheld, of 
 Salamis, Plataea, Mycale, and Sicily, venture 
 to oppose all their united glories, to the single 
 glory of the discomfiture of King Leonidas 
 and his men, at the pass of Thermopylae. 
 Whoever ran with a more glorious desire and 
 greater ambition, to the winning, than Cap- 
 tain Iscolas to the certain loss of a battle! 
 Who could have found out a more subtle in- 
 vention to secure his safety, than he did to 
 assure his destruction? He was set to de- 
 fend a certain pass of Peloponnesus against 
 the Arcadians, which, considering the nature 
 of the place and the inequality of forces, find- 
 ing it utterly impossible for him to do, and 
 seeing that all who were presented to the 
 enemy, must certainly be left upon the place; 
 and on the other side, reputing it unworthy 
 of his own virtue and magnanimity and of
 
 212 MONTAIGNE 
 
 the Lacedaemonian name to fail in any part 
 of his duty, he chose a mean betwixt these 
 two extremes after this manner; the youngest 
 and most active of his men, he preserved for 
 the service and defence of their country, and 
 sent them back; and with the rest, whose loss 
 would be of less consideration, he resolved to 
 make good the pass, and with the death of 
 them, to make the enemy buy their entry as 
 dear as possibly he could; as it fell out, for 
 being presently environed on all sides by the 
 Arcadians, after having made a great 
 slaughter of the enemy, he and his were all 
 cut in pieces. Is there any trophy dedicated to 
 the conquerors which was not much more due 
 to these who were overcome? The part that 
 true conquering is to play, lies in the en- 
 counter, not in the coming off; and the honor 
 of valor consists in fighting, not in subduing. 
 But to return to my story: these prisoners 
 are so far from discovering the least weak- 
 ness, for all the terrors that can be repre- 
 sented to them, that, on the contrary, during 
 the two or three months they are kept, they 
 always appear with a cheerful countenance; 
 importune their masters to make haste
 
 MONTAIGNE 213 
 
 to bring them to the test, defy, rail 
 at them, and reproach them with 
 cowardice, and the number of battles 
 they have lost against those of their country. 
 I have a song made by one of these prisoners, 
 wherein he bids them "come all, and dine 
 upon him, and welcome, for they shall withal 
 eat their own fathers and grandfathers, whose 
 flesh has served to feed and nourish him. 
 Those muscles," says he, "this flesh and these 
 veins, are your own; poor silly souls as you 
 are, you little think that the substance of 
 your ancestors' limbs is here yet; notice what 
 you eat, and you will find in it the taste of 
 your own flesh:" in which song there is to 
 be observed an invention that nothing relishes 
 of the barbarian. Those that paint these 
 people dying after this manner, represent the 
 prisoner spitting in the faces of his execu- 
 tioners and making wry mouths at them. 
 And 'tis most certain, that to the very last 
 gasp, they never cease to brave and defy them 
 both in word and gesture. In plain truth, 
 these men are very savage in comparison of 
 us; of necessity, they must either be abso- 
 lutely so or else we are savages; for there is
 
 214 MONTAIGNE 
 
 a vast difference betwixt their manners and 
 ours. 
 
 The men there have several wives, and so 
 mnch the greater number, by how much they 
 have the greater reputation for valor. And 
 it is one very remarkable feature in their 
 marriages, that the same jealousy our wives 
 have to hinder and divert us from the friend- 
 ship and familiarity of other women, those 
 employ to promote their husbands' desires, 
 and to procure them many spouses; for being 
 above all things solicitous of their husbands' 
 honor, 'tis their chiefest care to seek out, and 
 to bring in the most companions they can, 
 forasmuch as it is a testimony of the hus- 
 band's virtue. Most of our ladies will cry 
 out, that 'tis monstrous; whereas in truth it 
 is not so, but a truly matrimonial virtue, and 
 of the highest form. In the Bible, Sarah, 
 with Leah and Rachel, the two wives of 
 Jacob, gave the most beautiful of their hand- 
 maids to their husbands; Li via preferred the 
 passions of Augustus to her own interest; and 
 the wife of King Deiotarus, Stratonice, did 
 not only give up a fair young maid that 
 served her to her husband's embraces, but
 
 MONTAIGNE 215 
 
 moreover carefully brought up the children 
 he had by her, and assisted them in the suc- 
 cession to their father's crown. 
 
 And that it may not be supposed, that all 
 this is done by a simple and servile obliga- 
 tion to their common practice, or by any au- 
 thoritative impression of their ancient cus- 
 tom, without judgment or reasoning, and 
 from having a soul so stupid that it cannot 
 contrive what else to do, I must here give 
 you some touches of their sufficiency in point 
 of understanding. Besides what I repeated to 
 you before, which was one of their songs of 
 war, I have another, a love-song, that begins 
 thus: "Stay, adder, stay, that by thy pat- 
 tern my sister may draw the fashion and work 
 of a rich ribbon, that I may present to my be- 
 loved, by which means thy beauty and the 
 excellent order of thy scales shall for ever be 
 preferred before all other serpents." Wherein 
 the first couplet, "Stay, adder," &c, makes 
 the burden of the song. Now I have con- 
 versed enough with poetry to judge thus 
 much: that not only there is nothing bar- 
 barous in this invention, but, moreover, that 
 it is perfectly Anacreontic. To which may be
 
 216 MONTAIGNE 
 
 added, that their language is soft, of a pleas- 
 ing accent, and something bordering upon 
 the Greek termination. 
 
 Three of these people, not foreseeing how 
 dear their knowledge of the corruptions of 
 this part of the world will one day cost their 
 happiness and repose, and that the effect of 
 this commerce will be their ruin, as I pre- 
 suppose it is in a very fair way (miserable 
 men to suffer themselves to be deluded with 
 desire of novelty and to have left the serenity 
 of their own heaven to come so far to gaze 
 at ours!), were at Rouen at the time that the 
 late King Charles IX. was there. The king 
 himself talked to them a good while, and 
 they were made to see our fashions, our 
 pomp, and the form of a great city. After 
 which, some one asked their opinion, and 
 would know of them, what of all the things 
 they had seen they found most to be ad- 
 mired? To which they made answer, three 
 things, of which I have forgotten the third, 
 and am troubled at it, but two I yet remem- 
 ber. They said, that in the first place they 
 thought it very strange that so many tall men, 
 wearing beards, strong, and well armed, who
 
 MONTAIGNE 217 
 
 were about the king ('tis like they meant 
 the Swiss of the guard), should submit to 
 obey a child, and that they did not rather 
 choose out one amongst themselves to com- 
 mand. Secondly (they have a way of speak- 
 ing in their language to call men the half of 
 one another), that they had observed that 
 there were amongst us men full and crammed 
 with all manner of commodities, whilst, in 
 the meantime, their halves were begging at 
 their doors, lean and half-starved with hun- 
 ger and poverty; and they thought it strange 
 that these necessitous halves were able to 
 suffer so great an inequality and injustice, 
 and that they did not take the others by the 
 throats, or set fire to their houses. 
 
 I talked to one of them a great while to- 
 gether, but I had so ill an interpreter, and 
 one who was so perplexed by his own ignor- 
 ance to apprehend my meaning, that I could 
 get nothing out of him of any moment. Ask- 
 ing him what advantage he reaped from the 
 superiority he had amongst his own people 
 (for he was a captain, and our mariners 
 called him king), he told me, to march at 
 the head of them to war. Demanding of him
 
 218 MONTAIGNE 
 
 further how many men he had to follow him, 
 he showed me a space of ground, to signify 
 as many as could march in such a compass, 
 which might be four or five thousand men; 
 and putting the question to him whether or 
 no his authority expired with the war, he 
 told me this remained: that when he went to 
 visit the villages of his dependence, they 
 planed him paths through the thick of their 
 woods, by which he might pass at his ease. 
 All this does not sound very ill, and the last 
 was not at all amiss, for they wear no 
 breeches. 
 
 THAT IT IS MEET TO INTEEVENE DIS- 
 CREETLY IN JUDGING THE 
 DIVINE ORDINANCES 
 
 THE TRUE field and subject of imposture 
 are things unknown, forasmuch as, in the first 
 place, their very strangeness lends them 
 credit, and moreover, by not being subjected 
 to our ordinary reasons, they deprive us of 
 the means to question and dispute them. 
 For which reason, says Plato, it is much more 
 easy to satisfy the hearers, when speaking of
 
 MONTAIGNE 219 
 
 the nature of the gods than of the nature of 
 men, because the ignorance of the auditory 
 affords a fair and large career and all manner 
 of liberty in the handling of abstruse things. 
 Thence it comes to pass, that nothing is so 
 firmly believed, as what we least know; nor 
 any people so confident, as those who enter- 
 tain us with fables, such as your alchemists, 
 judicial astrologers, fortune-tellers, and 
 physicians: 
 
 "All that sort of people.' ' 
 
 To which I would willingly, if I durst, join 
 a pack of people that take upon them to in- 
 terpret and control the designs of God Him- 
 self, pretending to find out the cause of every 
 accident, and to pry into the secrets of the 
 divine will, there to discover the incompre- 
 hensible motive, of His works; and although 
 the variety, and the continual discordance of 
 events, throw them from corner to corner, and 
 toss them from east to west, yet do they still 
 persist in their vain inquisition, and with the 
 same pencil to paint black and white. 
 
 In a nation of the Indies, there is this com- 
 mendable custom, that when anything befalls
 
 220 MONTAIGNE 
 
 them amiss in any encounter or battle, they 
 publicly ask pardon of the sun, who is their 
 god, as having committed an unjust action, 
 always imputing their good or evil fortune to 
 the divine justice, and to that submitting 
 their own judgment and reason. 'Tis enough 
 for a Christian to believe that all things come 
 from God, to receive them with acknowledg- 
 ment of His divine and inscrutable wisdom, 
 and also thankfully to accept and receive 
 them, with what face soever they may present 
 themselves. But I do not approve of what I 
 see in use, that is, to seek to affirm and sup- 
 port our religion by the prosperity of our en- 
 terprises. Our belief has other foundation 
 enough, without going about to authorize it 
 by events: for the people being accustomed to 
 such plausible arguments as these and so 
 proper to their taste, it is to be feared, lest 
 when they fail of success they should also 
 stagger in their faith: as in the war wherein 
 we are now engaged upon the account of re- 
 ligion, those who had the better in the busi- 
 ness of Rochelabeille, making great brags of 
 that success as an infallible approbation of 
 their cause, when they came afterwards to
 
 MONTAIGNE 221 
 
 excuse their misfortunes of Moncontour and 
 Jarnac, by saying they were fatherly scourges 
 and corrections that they had not a people 
 wholly at their mercy, they make it mani- 
 festly enough appear, what it is to take two 
 sorts of grist out of the same sack, and with 
 the same mouth to blow hot and cold. It were 
 better to possess the vulgar with the solid and 
 real foundations of truth. 'Twas a fine naval 
 battle that was gained under the command 
 of Don John of Austria a few months since 
 against the Turks; but it has also pleased God 
 at other times to let us see as great victories 
 at our own expense. In fine, 'tis a hard mat- 
 ter to reduce divine things to our balance, 
 without waste and losing a great deal of the 
 weight. And who would take upon him to 
 give a reason that Arius and his Pope Leo, 
 the principal heads of the Arian heresy, 
 should die, at several times, of so like and 
 strange deaths (for being withdrawn from 
 the disputation by a griping in the bowels, 
 they both of them suddenly gave up the ghost 
 upon the stool), and would aggravate this 
 divine vengeance by the circumstances of the 
 place, might as well add the death of Helio-
 
 222 MONTAIGNE 
 
 gabalus, who was also slain in a house of 
 office. And, indeed, Irenaeus was involved in 
 the same fortune. God, being pleased to show 
 us, that the good have something else to hope 
 for and the wicked something else to fear, 
 than the fortunes or misfortunes of this 
 world, manages and applies these according 
 to His own occult will and pleasure, and de- 
 prives us of the means foolishly to make 
 thereof our own profit. And those people 
 abuse themselves who will pretend to dive 
 into these mysteries by the strength of human 
 reason. They never give one hit that they 
 do not receive two for it; of which St. Augus- 
 tine makes out a great proof upon his ad- 
 versaries. 'Tis a conflict that is more de- 
 cided by strength of memory than by the 
 force of reason. We are to content ourselves 
 with the light it pleases the sun to com- 
 municate to us, by virtue of his rays; and 
 who will lift up his eyes to take in a greater, 
 let him not think it strange, if for the reward 
 of his presumption, he there lose his sight. 
 
 "Who of men can know the counsel of 
 God? or who can think what the will of the 
 Lord is?"
 
 MONTAIGNE 223 
 
 TO AVOID PLEASURES AT THE 
 EXPENSE OF LIFE. 
 
 I HAD long ago observed most of the 
 opinions of the ancients to concur in this, 
 that it is high time to die when there is more 
 ill than good in living, and that to preserve 
 life to our own torment and inconvenience 
 is contrary to the very rales of nature, as 
 these old laws instruct us. 
 
 ''Either tranquil life, or happy death. It 
 is well to die when life is wearisome. It is 
 better to die than to live miserable." 
 
 But to push this contempt of death so far 
 as to employ it to the removing our thoughts 
 from the honors, riches, dignities, and other 
 favors and goods, as we call them, of for- 
 tune, as if reason were not sufficient to per- 
 suade us to avoid them, without adding this 
 new injunction, I had never seen it either 
 commanded or practised, till this passage of 
 Seneca fell into my hands; who advising 
 Lucilius, a man of great power and authority 
 about the emperor, to alter his voluptuous 
 and magnificent way of living, and to retire 
 himself from this worldly vanity and ambi-
 
 224 MONTAIGNE 
 
 tion, to some solitary, quiet, and philosophi- 
 cal life, and the other alleging some difficul- 
 ties : ' I am of opinion, ' ' says he, * l either that 
 thon leave that life of thine, or life itself! I 
 wonld, indeed, advise thee to the gentle way, 
 and to untie, rather than to break, the knot 
 thou hast indiscreetly knit, provided, that if 
 it be not otherwise to be untied, thou reso- 
 lutely break it. There is no man so great a 
 coward, that had not rather once fall than to 
 be always f ailing.' ' I should have found 
 this counsel conformable enough to the 
 Stoical roughness: but it appears the more 
 strange, for being borrowed from Epicurus, 
 who writes the same thing upon the like oc- 
 casion to Idomeneus. And I think I have 
 observed something like it, but with Christian 
 moderation, amongst our own people. 
 
 St. Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, that famous 
 enemy of the Arian heresy, being in Syria, 
 had intelligence thither sent him, that Abra, 
 his only daughter, whom he left at home 
 under the eye and tuition of her mother, was 
 sought in marriage by the greatest noble- 
 men of the country, as being a virgin virtu- 
 ously brought up, fair, rich, and in the flower
 
 MONTAIGNE 225 
 
 of her age; whereupon he wrote to her (as 
 appears upon record), that she should re- 
 move her affection from all the pleasures and 
 advantages proposed to her; for that he had 
 in his travels found out a much greater and 
 more worthy fortune for her, a husband of 
 much greater power and magnificence, who 
 would present her with robes and jewels of 
 inestimable value; wherein his design was to 
 dispossess her of the appetite and use of 
 worldly delights, to join her wholly to God; 
 but the nearest and most certain way to this, 
 being, as he conceived, the death of his 
 daughter; he never ceased, by vows, prayers, 
 and orisons, to beg of the Almighty, that He 
 would please to call her out of this world, and 
 to take her to Himself; as accordingly it came 
 to pass ; for soon after his return, she died, at 
 which he expressed a singular joy. This 
 seems to outdo the other, forasmuch as he ap- 
 plies himself to this means at the outset, 
 which they only take subsidiarily; and, be- 
 sides, it was towards his only daughter. But 
 I will not omit the latter end of this story, 
 though it be for my purpose; St. Hilary's 
 wife, having understood from him how the
 
 226 MONTAIGNE 
 
 death of their daughter was brought about 
 by his desire and design, and how much hap- 
 pier she was to be removed out of this world 
 than to have stayed in it, conceived so vivid 
 an apprehension of the eternal and heavenly 
 beatitude, that she begged of her husband, 
 with the extremest importunity, to do as 
 much for her; and God, at their joint request, 
 shortly after calling her to Him, it was a 
 death embraced with singular and mutual 
 content. 
 
 FORTUNE IS OFTENTIMES MET WITH 
 IN THE TRAIN OF REASON. 
 
 THE INCONSTANCY and various motions 
 of fortune may reasonably make us expect 
 she should present us with all sorts of faces. 
 Can there be a more express act of justice 
 than this? The Due de Valentinois, having 
 resolved to poison Adrian, Cardinal of Cor- 
 neto, with whom Pope Alexander VI., his 
 father and himself, were to sup in the Vati- 
 can, he sent before a bottle of poisoned wine, 
 and withal, strict order to the butler to keep
 
 MONTAIGNE 227 
 
 it very safe. The Pope being come before 
 his son, and calling for drink, the butler sup- 
 posing this wine had not been so strictly 
 recommended to his care, but only upon the 
 account of its excellency, presented it forth- 
 with to the Pope, and the duke himself com- 
 ing in presently after, and being confident 
 they had not meddled with his bottle, took 
 also his cup; so that the father died im- 
 mediately upon the spot, and the son, after 
 having been long tormented with sickness, 
 was reserved to another and a worse fortune. 
 Sometimes she seems to play upon us, just 
 in the nick of an affair; Monsieur d'Estrees, 
 at that time ensign to Monsieur de Vendome, 
 and Monsieur de Licques, lieutenant in the 
 company of the Due d 'Ascot, being both pre- 
 tenders to the Sieur de Fougueselles' sister, 
 though of several parties (as it oft falls out 
 amongst frontier neighbors), the Sieur de 
 Licques carried her; but on the same day he 
 was married, and which was worse, before he 
 went to bed to his wife, the bridegroom hav- 
 ing a mind to break a lance in honor of his 
 new bride, went out to skirmish near St.
 
 228 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Omer, where the Sieur d'Estrees proving the 
 stronger, took him prisoner, and the more 
 to illustrate his victory, the lady was fain 
 
 "Compelled to abstain from embracing her 
 new spouse in her arms before two winters 
 pass in succession, during their long nights 
 had satiated her eager love," 
 
 to request him of courtesy, to deliver up his 
 prisoner to her, as he accordingly did, the 
 gentlemen of France never denying anything 
 to ladies. 
 
 Does she not seem to be an artist here! 
 Constantine, son of Helena, founded the em- 
 pire of Constantinople, and so many ages 
 after, Constantine, the son of Helen, put an 
 end to it. Sometimes she is pleased to emulate 
 our miracles: we are told, that King Clovis 
 besieging Angouleme, the walls fell down of 
 themselves by divine favor! and Bouchet has 
 it from some author, that King Robert having 
 sat down before a city, and being stolen away 
 from the siege to go keep the feast of St. 
 Aignan at Orleans, as he was in devotion at 
 a certain part of the Mass, the walls of the 
 beleaguered city, without any manner of vio-
 
 MONTAIGNE 229 
 
 lence, fell down with a sudden ruin. But she 
 did quite contrary in our Milan wars; for, 
 le Capitaine Rense laying siege for us to the 
 city Arona, and having carried a mine under 
 a great part of the wall, the mine being 
 sprung, the wall was lifted from its base, but 
 dropped down again nevertheless, whole and 
 entire, and so exactly upon its foundation, 
 that the besieged suffered no inconvenience 
 by that attempt. 
 
 Sometimes she plays the physician. Jason 
 of Pheres being given over by the physicians, 
 by reason of an imposthume in his breast, 
 having a mind to rid himself of his pain, by 
 death at least, threw himself in a battle 
 desperately into the thickest of the enemy, 
 where he was so fortunately wounded quite 
 through the body, that the imposthume broke, 
 and he was perfectly cured. Did she not also 
 excel the painter Protogenes in his art! who 
 having finished the picture of a dog quite 
 tired and out of breath, in all the other parts 
 excellently well to his own liking, but not be- 
 ing able to express, as he would, the slaver 
 and foam that should come out of its mouth, 
 vexed and angry at his work, he took his
 
 230 MONTAIGNE 
 
 sponge, which by cleaning his pencils had 
 imbibed several sorts of colors, and threw 
 it in a rage against the picture, with an in- 
 tent utterly to deface it; when fortune guid- 
 ing the sponge to hit just upon the mouth of 
 the dog, it there performed what all his art 
 was not able to do. Does she not sometimes 
 direct our counsels and correct them? Isabel, 
 Queen of England, having to sail from 
 Zeeland into her own kingdom, with an army, 
 in favor of her son against her husband, 
 had been lost, had she come into the port 
 she intended, being there laid wait for by the 
 enemy; but fortune, against her will, threw 
 her into another haven, where she landed in 
 safety. And that man of old who, throwing 
 a stone at a dog, hit and killed his mother- 
 in-law, had he not reason to pronounce this 
 verse: 
 
 " Fortune has more judgment than we." 
 
 Fortune is better advised than us. Icetes had 
 contracted with two soldiers to kill Timoleon 
 at Adrana in Sicily. They took their time to 
 do it when he was assisting at a sacrifice, and 
 thrusting into the crowd, as they were mak-
 
 MONTAIGNE 231 
 
 ing signs to one another, that now was a fit 
 time to do their business, in steps a third, 
 who, with a stroke of a sword, lays him dead 
 upon the place and runs away. The com- 
 panion, concluding himself discovered and 
 lost, runs to the altar and begs for mercy, 
 promising to discover the whole truth, which 
 as he was doing, and laying open the full con- 
 spiracy, behold the third man, who being ap- 
 prehended, was, as a murderer, thrust and 
 hauled by the people through the press, 
 towards Timoleon, and the other most emi- 
 nent persons of the assembly, before whom 
 being brought, he cries out for pardon, plead- 
 ing that he had justly slain his father's mur- 
 derer; which he, also, proving upon the spot, 
 by sufficient witnesses, whom his good for- 
 tune very opportunely supplied him withal, 
 that his father was really killed in the city of 
 Leontini, by that very man on whom he had 
 taken his revenge, he was presently awarded 
 ten Attic minae, for having had the good 
 fortune, by designing to revenge the death 
 of his father, to preserve the life of the com- 
 mon father of Sicily. Fortune, truly, in her 
 conduct surpasses all the rules of human 
 prudence.
 
 232 MONTAIGNE 
 
 But to conclude: is there not a direct ap- 
 plication of her favor, bounty, and piety 
 manifestly discovered in this action? Igna- 
 tius the father and Ignatius the son being 
 proscribed by the triumvirs of Rome, re- 
 solved upon this generous act of mutual kind- 
 ness, to fall by the hands of one another, 
 and by that means to frustrate and defeat the 
 cruelty of the tyrants; and accordingly with 
 their swords drawn, ran full drive upon one 
 another, where fortune so guided the points, 
 that they made two equally mortal wounds, 
 affording withal so much honor to so 
 brave a friendship, as to leave them 
 just strength enough to draw out their 
 bloody swords, that they might have 
 liberty to embrace one another in this dying 
 condition, with so close and hearty an em- 
 brace, that the executioner cut off both their 
 heads at once, leaving the bodies still fast 
 linked together in this noble bond, and their 
 wounds joined mouth to mouth, affectionately 
 sucking in the last blood and remainder of 
 the lives of each other.
 
 MONTAIGNE 233 
 
 OF A DEFECT IN OUR GOVERNMENT 
 
 MY LATE father, a man that had no other 
 advantages than experience and his own 
 natural parts, was nevertheless of a very clear 
 judgment, formerly told me that he once had 
 thoughts of endeavoring to introduce this 
 practice; that there might be in every city a 
 certain place assigned to which such as stood 
 in need of anything might repair, and have 
 their business entered by an officer appointed 
 for that purpose. As for example: I want a 
 chapman to buy my pearls; I want one that 
 has pearls to sell; such a one wants company 
 to go to Paris; such a one seeks a servant of 
 such a quality; such a one a master; such a 
 one such an artificer; some inquiring for one 
 thing, some for another, every one according 
 to what he wants. And doubtless, these 
 mutual advertisements would be of no con- 
 temptible advantage to the public corre- 
 spondence and intelligence: for there are 
 evermore conditions that hunt after one 
 another, and for want of knowing one 
 another's occasions leave men in very great 
 necessity.
 
 234 MONTAIGNE 
 
 I have heard, to the great shame of the age 
 we live in, that in onr very sight two most 
 excellent men for learning died so poor that 
 they had scarce bread to put in their mouths : 
 Lilius Gregorius Giraldus in Italy and Sebas- 
 tianus Castalio in Germany: and I believe 
 there are a thousand men would have invited 
 them into their families, with very advan- 
 tageous conditions, or have relieved them 
 where they were, had they known their wants. 
 The world is not so generally corrupted, but 
 that I know a man that would heartily wish 
 the estate his ancestors have left him might 
 be employed, so long as it shall please for- 
 tune to give him leave to enjoy it, to secure 
 rare and remarkable persons of any kind, 
 whom misfortune sometimes persecutes to the 
 last degree, from the dangers of necessity; 
 and at least place them in such a condition 
 that they must be very hard to please, if they 
 are not contented. 
 
 My father in his domestic economy had this 
 rule (which I know how to commend, but 
 by no means to imitate), namely, that besides 
 the day-book or memorial of household af- 
 fairs, where the small accounts, payments,
 
 MONTAIGNE 235 
 
 and disbursements, which do not require a 
 secretary's hand, were entered, and which a 
 steward always had in custody, he ordered 
 him whom he employed to write for him, to 
 keep a journal, and in it to set down all the re- 
 markable occurrences, and daily memorials of 
 the history of his house: very pleasant to look 
 over, when time begins to wear things out of 
 memory, and very useful sometimes to put us 
 out of doubt when such a thing was begun, 
 when ended; what visitors came, and when 
 they went; our travels, absences, marriages, 
 and deaths; the reception of good or ill news; 
 the change of principal servants, and the like. 
 An ancient custom, which I think it would 
 not be amiss for every one to revive in his 
 own house; and I find I did very foolishly in 
 neglecting it. 
 
 OF THE CUSTOM OF CLOTHING 
 ONESELF. 
 
 WHATEVER I shall say upon this subject, 
 I am of necessity to invade some of the 
 bounds of custom, so careful has she been to 
 shut up all the avenues. I was disputing with 
 myself in this shivering season, whether the
 
 236 MONTAIGNE 
 
 fashion of going naked in those nations lately 
 discovered is imposed upon them by the hot 
 temperature of the air, as we say of the 
 Indians and Moors, or whether it be the 
 original fashion of mankind. Men of under- 
 standing, forasmuch as all things under the 
 sun, as the Holy Writ declares, are subject 
 to the same laws, were wont in such consid- 
 erations as these, where we are to distinguish 
 the natural laws from those which have been 
 imposed by man's invention, to have recourse 
 to the general polity of the world, where there 
 can be nothing counterfeit. Now, all else- 
 where being exactly furnished with needle 
 and thread for the support of existence, it is 
 incredible that we only are brought into the 
 world in a defective and indigent condition, 
 and in such a state as cannot subsist without 
 external aid. Therefore it is that I believe, 
 that as plants, trees, and animals, and all 
 things that have life, are seen to be by nature 
 sufficiently clothed and covered, to defend 
 them from the injuries of weather: 
 
 "And that for this reason nearly all things 
 are clothed with skin, or hair, or shells, or 
 bark, or some such thing."
 
 MONTAIGNE 237 
 
 bo were we: but as those who by artificial 
 light put out that of the day, so we by bor- 
 rowed forms and fashions have destroyed our 
 own. And 'tis plain enough to be seen, that 
 'tis custom only which renders that impos- 
 sible that otherwise is nothing so ; for of those 
 nations who have no manner of knowledge of 
 clothing, some are situated under the same 
 temperature that we are, and some in much 
 colder climates. And besides, our most ten- 
 der parts are always exposed to the air, as 
 the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears; and our 
 country laborers, like our ancestors in for- 
 mer times, go with their breasts and bellies 
 open. Had we been born with a necessity 
 upon us of wearing petticoats and breeches, 
 there is no doubt but nature would have for- 
 tified those parts she intended should be ex- 
 posed to the fury of the seasons with a 
 thicker skin, as she has done the finger-ends 
 and the soles of the feet. And why should 
 this seem hard to believe? I observe much 
 greater distance betwixt my habit and that 
 of one of our country boors, than betwixt 
 his and that of a man who has no other cov- 
 ering but his skin. How many men, especially
 
 238 MONTAIGNE 
 
 in Turkey, go naked upon the account of de- 
 votion? Some one asked a beggar, whom he 
 saw in his shirt in the depth of winter, as 
 brisk and frolic as he who goes muffled up 
 to the ears in furs, how he was able to endure 
 to go so ! M Why, sir, ' ' he answered, ' ' you go 
 with your face bare: I am all face." The 
 Italians have a story of the Duke of Flor- 
 ence's fool, whom his master asking how, be- 
 ing so thinly clad, he was able to support the 
 cold, when he himself, warmly wrapped up 
 as he was, was hardly able to do it ! " Why, ' ' 
 replied the fool, "use my receipt to put on 
 all your clothes you have at once, and you'll 
 feel no more cold than I." King Massinissa, 
 to an extreme old age, could never be pre- 
 vailed upon to go with his head covered, how 
 cold, stormy, or rainy soever the weather 
 might be; which also is reported of the Em- 
 peror Severus. Herodotus tells us, that in 
 the battles fought betwixt the Egyptians and 
 the Persians, it was observed both by him- 
 self and by others, that of those who were 
 left dead upon the field, the heads of the 
 Egyptians were without comparison harder 
 than those of the Persians, by reason that the
 
 MONTAIGNE 239 
 
 last had gone with their heads always cov- 
 ered from their infancy, first with biggins, 
 and then with turbans, and the others always 
 shaved and bare. King Agesilaus continued 
 to a decrepit age to wear always the same 
 clothes in winter that he did in summer. 
 Caesar, says Suetonius, marched always at 
 the head of his army, for the most part on 
 foot, with his head bare, whether it was rain 
 or sunshine, and as much is said of Hanni- 
 bal: 
 
 " Bareheaded he marched in snow, exposed 
 to pouring rain and the utmost rigor of the 
 weather.' ' 
 
 A Venetian who has long lived in Pegu, and 
 has lately returned thence, writes that the 
 men and women of that kingdom, though they 
 cover all their other parts, go always bare- 
 foot and ride so too ; and Plato very earnestly 
 advises for the health of the whole body, to 
 give the head and the feet no other clothing 
 than what nature has bestowed. He whom 
 the Poles have elected for their king, since 
 ours came thence, who is, indeed, one of the 
 greatest princes of this age, never wears any
 
 240 MONTAIGNE 
 
 gloves, and in winter or whatever weather 
 can come, never wears other cap abroad than 
 that he wears at home. "Whereas I cannot 
 endure to go unbuttoned or untied; my neigh- 
 boring laborers would think themselves in 
 chains, if they were so braced. Varro is of 
 opinion, that when it was ordained we should 
 be bare in the presence of the gods and be- 
 fore the magistrate, it was so ordered rather 
 upon the score of health, and to inure us to 
 the injuries of weather, than upon the account 
 of reverence; and since we are now talking of 
 cold, and Frenchmen used to wear variety of 
 colors (not I myself, for I seldom wear other 
 than black or white, in imitation of my 
 father), let us add another story out of Le 
 Capitaine Martin du Bellay, who affirms, that 
 in the march to Luxembourg he saw so great 
 frost, that the munition-wine was cut with 
 hatchets and wedges, and delivered out to the 
 soldiers by weight, and that they carried it 
 away in baskets: and Ovid: 
 
 1 * The wine when out of the cask retains the 
 form of the cask ; and is given out not in cups, 
 but in bits. ' '
 
 MONTAIGNE 241 
 
 At the mouth of Lake Maeotis the frosts are 
 so very sharp, that in the very same place 
 where Mithridates' lieutenant had fought the 
 enemy dry-foot and given them a notable de- 
 feat, the summer following he obtained over 
 them a naval victory. The Romans fought 
 at a very great disadvantage, in the engage- 
 ment they had with the Carthaginians near 
 Piacenza, by reason that they went to the 
 charge with their blood congealed and their 
 limbs numbed with cold, whereas Hannibal 
 had caused great fires to be dispersed quite 
 through his camp to warm his soldiers, and 
 oil to be distributed amongst them, to the end 
 that anointing themselves, they might render 
 their nerves more supple and active, and 
 fortify the pores against the violence of the 
 air and freezing wind, which raged in that 
 season. 
 
 The retreat the Greeks made from Baby- 
 lon into their own country is famous for the 
 difficulties and calamities they had to over- 
 come; of which this was one, that being en- 
 countered in the mountains of Armenia with 
 a horrible storm of snow, they lost all knowl-
 
 242 MONTAIGNE 
 
 edge of the country and of the ways, and 
 being driven up, were a day and a night with- 
 out eating or drinking; most of their cattle 
 died, many of themselves were starved to 
 death, several struck blind with the force 
 of the hail and the glare of the snow, many of 
 them maimed in their fingers and toes, and 
 many stiff and motionless with the extremity 
 of the cold, who had yet their understanding 
 entire. 
 
 Alexander saw a nation, where they bury 
 their fruit-trees in winter to protect them 
 from being destroyed by the frost, and we 
 also may see the same. 
 
 But, so far as clothes go, the King of 
 Mexico changed four times a day his apparel, 
 and never put it on again, employing that 
 he left off in his continual liberalities and 
 rewards; and neither pot, dish, nor other 
 utensil of his kitchen or table was ever served 
 twice.
 
 MONTAIGNE 243 
 
 OF CATO THE YOUNGER 
 
 I AM not guilty of the common error of 
 judging another by myself. I easily believe 
 that in another's humor which is contrary 
 to my own; and though I find myself en- 
 gaged to one certain form, I do not oblige 
 others to it, as many do; but believe and ap- 
 prehend a thousand ways of living; and, con- 
 trary to most men, more easily admit of dif- 
 ference than uniformity amongst us. I as 
 frankly as any one would have me, discharge 
 a man from my humors and principles, and 
 consider him according to his own particular 
 model. Though I am not continent myself, 
 I nevertheless sincerely approve the contin- 
 ence of the Feuillans and Capuchins, and 
 highly commend their way of living. I in- 
 sinuate myself by imagination into their 
 places, and love and honor them the more 
 for being other than I am. I very much de- 
 sire that we may be judged every man by 
 himself, and would not be drawn into the 
 consequence of common examples. My own 
 weakness nothing alters the esteem I ought
 
 244 MONTAIGNE 
 
 to have for the force and vigor of those who 
 deserve it: 
 
 1 ' There are who persuade nothing but what 
 they believe they can imitate themselves. ,, 
 
 Crawling upon the slime of the earth, I do 
 not for all that cease to observe up in the 
 clouds the inimitable height of some heroic 
 souls. 'Tis a great deal for me to have my 
 judgment regular and just, if the effects can- 
 not be so, and to maintain this sovereign part, 
 at least, free from corruption: 'tis something 
 to have my will right and good where my legs 
 fail me. This age wherein we live, in our 
 part of the world at least, is grown so stupid, 
 that not only the exercise, but the very imagi- 
 nation of virtue is defective, and seems to be 
 no other but college jargon: 
 
 "They think words virtue, as they think 
 timber a sacred grove.' ' 
 
 "Which they ought to reverence, though 
 they cannot comprehend." 
 
 'Tis a gewgaw to hang in a cabinet or at the 
 end of the tongue, as on the tip of the ear, for
 
 MONTAIGNE 245 
 
 ornament only. There are no longer virtnoua 
 actions extant; those actions that carry a 
 show of virtue have yet nothing of its es- 
 sence; by reason that profit, glory, fear, cus- 
 tom, and other suchlike foreign causes, put 
 us on the way to produce them. Our justice 
 also, valor, courtesy, may be called so too, 
 in respect to others and according to the face 
 they appear with to the public; but in the 
 doer it can by no means be virtue, because 
 there is another end proposed, another mov- 
 ing cause. Now virtue owns nothing to be 
 hers, but what is done by herself and for 
 herself alone. 
 
 In that great battle of Plataea, that the 
 Greeks under the command of Pausanias 
 gained against Mardonius and the Persians, 
 the conquerors, according to their custom, 
 coming to divide amongst them the glory of 
 the exploit, attributed to the Spartan nation 
 the pre-eminence of valor in the engagement. 
 The Spartans, great judges of virtue, when 
 they came to determine to what particular 
 man of their nation the honor was due of 
 having the best behaved himself upon this 
 occasion, found that Aristodemus had of all
 
 246 MONTAIGNE 
 
 others hazarded his person with the greatest 
 bravery; but did not, however, allow him 
 any prize, by reason that his virtue had been 
 incited by a desire to clear his reputation 
 from the reproach of his miscarriage at the 
 business of Thermopylae, and to die bravely 
 to wipe off that former blemish. 
 
 Our judgments are yet sick, and obey the 
 humor of our depraved manners. I observe 
 most of the wits of these times pretend to 
 ingenuity, by endeavoring to blemish and 
 darken the glory of the bravest and most gen- 
 erous actions of former ages, putting one vile 
 interpretation or another upon them, and 
 forging and supposing vain causes and 
 motives for the noble things they did: a 
 mighty subtlety indeed ! Give me the greatest 
 and most unblemished action that ever the 
 day beheld, and I will contrive a hundred 
 plausible drifts and ends to obscure it. God 
 knows, whoever will stretch them out to the 
 full, what diversity of images our internal 
 wills suffer under. They do not so malici- 
 ously play the censurers, as they do it ignor- 
 antly and rudely in all their detractions. 
 
 The same pains and license that others take
 
 MONTAIGNE 247 
 
 to blemish and bespatter these illustrious 
 names, I would willingly undergo to lend 
 them a shoulder to raise them higher. These 
 rare forms, that are culled out by the consent 
 of the wisest men of all ages, for the world 's 
 example, I should not stick to augment in 
 honor, as far as my invention would permit, 
 in all the circumstances of favorable inter- 
 pretation; and we may well believe that the 
 force of our invention is infinitely short of 
 their merit. 'Tis the duty of good men to 
 portray virtue as beautiful as they can, and 
 there would be nothing wrong should our 
 passion a little transport us in favor of so 
 sacred a form. What these people do, on the 
 contrary, they either do out of malice, or by 
 the vice of confining their belief to their own 
 capacity; or, which I am more inclined to 
 think, for not having their sight strong, clear, 
 and elevated enough to conceive the splen- 
 dor of virtue in her native purity: as 
 Plutarch complains, that in his time some at- 
 tributed the cause of the younger Cato's 
 death to his fear of Caesar, at which he seems 
 very angry, and with good reason; and by this 
 a man may guess how much more he would
 
 248 MONTAIGNE 
 
 have been offended with those who have at- 
 tributed it to ambition. Senseless people! He 
 would rather have performed a noble, just, 
 and generous action, and to have had 
 ignominy for his reward, than for glory. 
 That man was in truth a pattern that nature 
 chose out to show to what height human 
 virtue and constancy could arrive. 
 
 But I am not capable of handling so rich 
 an argument, and shall therefore only set 
 five Latin poets together, contending in the 
 praise of Cato; and, incidentally, for their 
 own too. Now, a well-educated child will 
 judge the two first, in comparison of the 
 others, a little flat and languid; the third 
 more vigorous, but overthrown by the ex- 
 travagance of his own force; he will then 
 think that there will be room for one or two 
 gradations of invention to come to the 
 fourth, and, mounting to the pitch of that, 
 he will lift up his hands in admiration; com- 
 ing to the last, the first by some space (but 
 a space that he will swear is not to be filled 
 up by any human wit), he will be astounded, 
 he will not know where he is. 
 
 And here is a wonder: we have far more
 
 MONTAIGNE 249 
 
 poets than judges and interpreters of poetry ; 
 it is easier to write it than to understand it. 
 There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate 
 sort of poetry, that a man may well enough 
 judge by certain rules of art; but the true, 
 supreme, and divine poesy is above all rules 
 and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty 
 of it with the most assured and most steady 
 sight, sees no more than the quick reflection 
 of a flash of lightning: it does not exercise, 
 but ravishes and overwhelms our judgment. 
 The fury that possesses him who is able to 
 penetrate into it wounds yet a third man by 
 hearing him repeat it; like a loadstone that 
 not only attracts the needle, but also infuses 
 into it the virtue to attract others. And it 
 is more evidently manifest in our theatres, 
 that the sacred inspiration of the Muses, hav- 
 ing first stirred up the poet to anger, sorrow, 
 hatred, and out of himself, to whatever they 
 will, does moreover by the poet possess the 
 actor, and by the actor consecutively all the 
 spectators. So much do our passions hang 
 and depend upon one another. 
 
 Poetry has ever had that power over me 
 from a child to transpierce and transport me;
 
 250 MONTAIGNE 
 
 but this vivid sentiment that is natural to me 
 has been variously handled by variety of 
 forms, not so much higher or lower (for they 
 were ever the highest of every kind), as dif- 
 fering in color. First, a gay and sprightly 
 fluency; afterwards, a lofty and penetrating 
 subtlety; and lastly, a mature and constant 
 vigor. Their names will better express 
 them: Ovid, Lucan, Virgil. 
 But our folks are beginning their career: 
 
 "Let Cato, whilst he live, be greater than 
 Caesar," 
 
 says one: 
 
 "And Cato invincible, death being over- 
 come," 
 
 says the second. And the third, speaking of 
 the civil wars betwixt Caesar and Pompey: 
 
 * ' The victorious cause blessed the gods, the 
 defeated one Cato. ' ' 
 
 And the fourth, upon the praises of Caesar: 
 
 "And conquered all but the indomitable 
 mind of Cato."
 
 MONTAIGNE 251 
 
 And the master of the choir, after having set 
 forth all the great names of the greatest 
 Romans, ends thns: 
 
 "Cato giving laws to all the rest." 
 
 HOW WE CRY AND LAUGH FOR THE 
 SAME THING. 
 
 WHEN WE read in history that Antigonns 
 was very mnch displeased with his son for 
 presenting him the head of King Pyrrhus his 
 enemy, but newly slain fighting against him, 
 and that seeing it, he wept; and that Rene, 
 Dnke of Lorraine, also lamented the death 
 of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, whom he had 
 himself defeated, and appeared in mourning 
 at his funeral; and that in the battle of 
 D'Auray (which Count Montfort obtained 
 over Charles de Blois, his competitor for the 
 duchy of Brittany), the conqueror meeting 
 the dead body of his enemy, was very much 
 afflicted at his death, we must not presently 
 cry out: 
 
 "And thus it happens that the mind of each
 
 252 MONTAIGNE 
 
 veils its passion under a different appear- 
 ance, sad beneath a smiling visage, gay be- 
 neath a sombre air." 
 
 When Pompey's head was presented to 
 Caesar, the histories tell us that he turned 
 away his face, as from a sad and unpleasing 
 object. There had been so long an intelli- 
 gence and society betwixt them in the man- 
 agement of the public affairs, so great a com- 
 munity of fortunes, so many mutual offices, 
 and so near an alliance, that this countenance 
 of his ought not to suffer under any misin- 
 terpretation, or to be suspected for either 
 false or counterfeit, as this other seems to 
 believe: 
 
 "And now he thought it safe to play the 
 kind father-in-law, shedding forced tears, and 
 from a joyful breast discharging sighs and 
 groans ;" 
 
 for though it be true that the greatest part 
 of our actions are no other than visor and 
 disguise, and that it may sometimes be true 
 that 
 
 "The heir's tears behind the mask are 
 smiles,"
 
 MONTAIGNE 253 
 
 yet, in judging of these accidents, we are to 
 consider how much onr souls are oftentimes 
 agitated with divers passions. And as they 
 say that in our bodies there is a congrega- 
 tion" of divers humors, of which that is the 
 sovereign which, according to the complex- 
 ion we are of, is commonly most predominant 
 in us: so, though the soul have in it divers 
 motions to give it agitation, yet must there 
 of necessity be one to overrule all the rest, 
 though not with so necessary and absolute a 
 dominion but that through the flexibility and 
 inconstancy of the soul, those of less au- 
 thority may upon occasion reassume their 
 place and make a little sally in turn. Thence 
 it is, that we see not only children, who in- 
 nocently obey and follow nature, often laugh 
 and cry at the same thing, but not one of us 
 can boast, what journey soever he may have 
 in hand that he has the most set his heart 
 upon, but when he comes to part with his 
 family and friends, he will find something 
 that troubles him within; and though he re- 
 frain his tears yet he puts foot in the stirrup 
 with a sad and cloudy countenance. And 
 what gentle flame soever may warm the heart
 
 254 MONTAIGNE 
 
 of modest and well-born virgins, yet are they 
 fain to be forced from about their mothers' 
 necks to be put to bed to their husbands, 
 whatever this boon companion is pleased to 
 say: 
 
 "Is Venus really so repugnant to newly- 
 married maids? Do they meet the smiles of 
 parents with feigned tears? They weep 
 copiously within the very threshold of the 
 nuptial chamber. No, so the gods help me, 
 they do not truly grieve." 
 
 Neither is it strange to lament a person dead 
 whom a man would by no means should be 
 alive. When I rattle my man, I do it with all 
 the mettle I have, and load him with no 
 feigned, but down right real curses; but the 
 heat being over, if he should stand in need of 
 me, I should be very ready to do him good: 
 for I instantly turn the leaf. When I call 
 him calf and coxcomb, I do not pretend to 
 entail those titles upon him for ever; neither 
 do I think I give myself the lie in calling him 
 an honest fellow presently after. No one 
 quality engrosses us purely and universally. 
 Were it not the sign of a fool to talk to one's
 
 MONTAIGNE 255 
 
 self, there would hardly be a day or hour 
 wherein I might not be heard to grumble and 
 mutter to myself and against myself, "Con- 
 found the fool!" and yet I do not think that 
 to be my definition. Who for seeing me one 
 while cold and presently very fond towards 
 my wife, believes the one or the other to be 
 counterfeited, is an ass. Nero, taking leave 
 of his mother whom he was sending to be 
 drowned, was nevertheless sensible of some 
 emotion at this farewell, and was struck with 
 horror and pity. 'Tis said, that the light of 
 the sun is not one continuous thing, but that 
 he darts new rays so thick one upon another 
 that we cannot perceive the intermission: 
 
 i 
 
 "To the wide fountain of liquid light, the 
 
 ethereal sun, steadily fertilizes the heavens 
 
 with new heat, and supplies a continuous 
 
 store of fresh light." 
 
 Just so the soul variously and imperceptibly 
 darts out her passions. 
 
 Artabanus coming by surprise once upon 
 his nephew Xerxes, chid him for the sudden 
 alteration of his countenance. He was con- 
 sidering the immeasurable greatness of his
 
 256 MONTAIGNE 
 
 forces passing over the Hellespont for the 
 Grecian expedition: he was first seized with 
 a palpitation of joy, to see so many millions 
 of men under his command, and this appeared 
 in the gaiety of his looks: but his thoughts 
 at the same instant suggesting to him that of 
 so many lives, within a century at most, there 
 would not be one left, he presently knit his 
 brows and grew sad, even to tears. 
 
 We have resolutely pursued the revenge of 
 an injury received, and been sensible of a 
 singular contentment for the victory; but we 
 shall weep notwithstanding. 'Tis not for the 
 victory, though, that we shall weep: there is 
 nothing altered in that: but the soul looks 
 upon things with another eye and represents 
 them to itself with another kind of face; for 
 everything has many faces and several 
 aspects. 
 
 Relations, old acquaintances, and friend- 
 ships, possess our imaginations and make 
 them tender for the time, according to their 
 condition; but the turn is so quick, that 'tis 
 gone in a moment: 
 
 "Nothing therefore seems to be done in so
 
 MONTAIGNE 257 
 
 swift a manner than if the mind proposes it 
 to be done, and itself begins. It is more 
 active than anything which we see in 
 nature ; ' ' 
 
 and therefore, if we would make one con- 
 tinued thing of all this succession of pas- 
 sions, we deceive ourselves. When Timoleon 
 laments the murder he had committed upon 
 so mature and generous deliberation, he does 
 not lament the liberty restored to his country, 
 he does not lament the tyrant ; but he laments 
 his brother: one part of his duty is per- 
 formed ; let us give him leave to perform the 
 other.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 
 tun29 6 ^ 
 
 
 
 
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 Book Slip-25m-9,'59(A477 
 
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 UCLA-Co W q* Library 
 
 PQ 1642 E5H3 1910 v.2 
 
 L 005 730 697 9 
 
 Library 
 
 PQ 
 
 1642 
 
 E5M3 
 
 1910 
 
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