The Complete Essays (123 page)

That tale should teach us
en passant
how bendable our reason is to all sorts of conceptions. A man of importance, great in years, in glory, in dignity and in doctrine, boasted to me that he had been led to make a most important change of faith by some monition coming to him, one so bizarre and incidentally so inconclusive that I found that it tended, rather, the opposite way. He called it a miracle. So did I – in a different sense.

The historians of the Turks say that this conviction that their days are numbered by the unbending decision of Fate is so widespread among the people that it manifestly is seen to give them assurance in danger. And I know a great Prince who may nobly draw some profit from it, if Fortune continues to give him a shove.
¹¹

[B] In living memory there has been seen no more strikingly resolute act than that of the two men who plotted the death of the Prince of Orange.
¹²
It is a marvel how anyone could have so enflamed the second of them, who brought it off, for an undertaking in which his comrade had fared so badly despite doing all that he could: to go and follow in his tracks, and with the same weapons to take on a nobleman, freshly armed with a lesson in mistrust and strong in bodily strength and in his retinue of friends, in his own hall, surrounded by his guards, and in a town devoted to him! He indeed had brought to bear a most determined hand and a mind moved by a stalwart passion. A dagger is surer to land a blow; but since it requires a bigger movement and more strength of arm than does a pistol, its blow is more susceptible to being warded off or intercepted. I have no great doubt that that man knew he was running to a certain death: for any hopes which he could have been brought to entertain could find no lodging in a settled intelligence – and the way he executed his deed shows that he had no lack of that, no more than of courage.

The motives for such a powerful conviction may well be various, since our faculty of perception does with us, and with itself, whatever it likes.

That other assassination carried out near Orleans was nothing like it:
¹³
there was far more chance in it than vigour; the blow itself would not have been fatal if chance had not rendered it so; and the design of shooting from the saddle, and at a distance, and at a man who was jogging up and down with his horse, was the plan of a man who would rather lose his chance than lose his life. What happened afterwards proves this. For the thought of having killed someone so exalted made him dazed and transfixed so that he completely lost his wits and was too disturbed to guard his escape, or his tongue under questioning. What did he have to do, beyond galloping back to his friends across a river! It is a method I have leapt to in lesser dangers and which I do not consider very hazardous, however wide the crossing, provided that your horse readily finds its footing and you can see ahead to an easy place to land on the other side, depending on the current. As for that other man,
¹⁴
when they pronounced his dreadful sentence, he replied, ‘I was ready for that: I will amaze you by my endurance.’

[C] The Assassins, who are a people dependent on Phoenicia, are considered by the Mahometans to be sovereignly devout and pure in morals. They hold that the surest way to merit paradise is to kill someone of an opposing religion. They therefore show contempt for all personal danger and are often to be found singly or in pairs, carrying out such profitable executions at the cost of their certain death, appearing before an enemy in the midst of his troops to ‘assassinate’ him – (it is from them that we have borrowed that word). Our own Count Raymond of Tripoli was killed this way in his own city.
¹⁵

30. On a monster-child

[‘Monsters’ were widely held, even by professional men of all kinds, to be ‘demonstrations’ – portents of God’s will. Montaigne personally examined two such cases: some Siamese twins and a malformed shepherd. His original chapter left all discussion to the doctors, many of whom, even the great Dr Ambrose Paré, believed that at least some ‘monsters’ are
monstra,
omens showing divine anger or approval. In his final text, [C], Montaigne explains ‘monsters’ in platonic terms as rare examples of the infinite forms existing in God’s created Nature, vast numbers of which are unknown to Man.]

[A] This tale will go its simple way, for I shall leave all the discussion to the doctors.

I saw the day before yesterday an infant child that two men and a wet-nurse (who said they were its father, uncle and aunt) were travelling about with and exhibiting for its strangeness, so as to make a penny or two out of it.

In every other way that boy was of the normal form and could stand up on his own legs, walking and warbling more or less like other children of his age: he had not yet been willing to accept any food other than from his nurse’s breasts: what they assayed putting into his mouth, in my presence, he chewed for a while then spat out without swallowing anything. There certainly seemed something peculiar about the way he cried; he was then just fourteen months old. Just below his breast he was firmly attached to another child with no head and with the spinal canal blocked, though the rest of the body was entire: one arm was in fact shorter than the other, but that was accidentally broken at birth. They were joined facing each other, looking as though a slightly smaller child were trying to put his arm round the neck of a slightly bigger one. The area joining them together was merely about four fingers wide, so that if you raised up that imperfect child you could see the other one’s navel underneath: the join was therefore found between his nipple and his navel. There was no sign of a navel in the imperfect child, though all the rest of the belly was there: the parts of that imperfect child which were not attached, such as the arms, buttocks, thighs and legs, dangled down loosely over the other one, and in length could reach down to his knees. The wet-nurse said the monster urinated through
both places: indeed the limbs of the imperfect child were as much alive, as well fed and in the same condition as the other’s, except that they were smaller and thinner.

This double body and these sundry limbs all depending on one single head could well provide us with a favourable omen that our king will maintain the sundry parties and factions of our State in unity under his laws; but for fear lest the outcome should belie it we should let that happen first, for there is no divining like divining about the past! [C]
‘Ut quum facta sunt, tum ad conjecturam aliqua interpretatione revocantur.’
[Once things have happened we can find some interpretation of them which turns them into prophecies.] [B] As was said of Epimenides: he always prophesied backwards.
¹

I have just seen a shepherd in Médoc: he is about thirty years old and has no sign of any genitals, having three holes through which he ceaselessly makes water. He wears a beard and enjoys the touch of women.

[C] What we call monsters are not so for God who sees the infinite number of forms which he has included in the immensity of his creation: it is to be believed that the figure which astonishes us relates to, and derives from, some other figure of the same genus unknown to Man. God is all-wise; nothing comes from him which is not good, general and regular: but we cannot see the disposition and relationship:
‘Quod crebro videt, non miratur, etiam si cur fiat nescit. Quod ante non vidit, id, si evenerit, ostentum esse censet.’
[What a man frequently sees never produces wonder in him, even though he does not know how it happens. But if something occurs which he has never seen before, he takes it as a portent.]
²

Whatever happens against custom we say is against Nature, yet there is nothing whatsoever which is not in harmony with her. May Nature’s universal reason chase away that deluded ecstatic amazement which novelty brings to us.

31. On anger

[Montaigne first read the
Moral Works
of Plutarch (as distinct from his
Parallel Lives
) in Amyot’s great French translation during 1573. This chapter shows how philosophy is not merely a matter of argument and abstractions but of basic practical morals affecting wives and children as much as generals and statesmen. That a true philosopher should not give way to anger was a commonplace, emphasized by the Stoics and taken over by many Christians – in
Le Tartuffe
Molière will make the servant-girl laugh at Orgon with the taunt: ‘Ah! You are devout: and you are angry!’ Anger was believed to be caused by
choler,
one of the four humours, which made a man bilious and irascible. Montaigne also associated it with
chagrin,
that grievous vexation brought on by melancholy.]

[A] Plutarch is amazing in every respect but especially where he makes judgements on men’s actions. In his parallel lives of Lycurgus and Numa we can see the beauty of what he says when treating of our great stupidity in abandoning children to the responsibility and control of their fathers. [C] The majority of our polities, as Aristotle says, are like the Cyclops, abandoning the guidance of the women and children to each individual man according to his mad and injudicious ideas: hardly any, except the polities of Sparta and of Crete, have entrusted the education of children to their laws.
¹
[A] Anyone can see that all things within a State depend upon the way it educates and brings up its children. Yet quite injudiciously that is left to the mercy of the parents, no matter how mad or wicked they may be.

How many times have I been tempted, among others things, to make a dramatic intervention so as to avenge some little boys whom I saw being bruised, knocked about and flayed alive by some frenzied father or mother beside themselves with anger. You can see fire and rage flashing from their eyes–

         [B]
rabie jecur incendente, feruntur
Præcipites, ut saxa jugis abrupta, quibus mons
Subtrahitur, clivoque latus pendente recedit

[they are carried away by burning wrath, like boulders wrenched free from the cliff crashing down the precipitous slope]

(according to Hippocrates the most dangerous of distempers are those which contort the face)
²
– [A] as with shrill wounding voices, they scream at children who are often barely weaned. Children are crippled and knocked stupid by such batterings: yet our judicial system takes no note of it, as though it were not the very limbs of our State which are thus being put out of joint and maimed.

[B]
Gratum est quod patriæ civem populoque dedisti,
Si facis ut patriæ sit idoneus, utilis agris,
Utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis
.

[It is good to have given a citizen to the people and the State – provided that you make him fit for his country, good at farming, good in war and peace.]
³

[A] No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does. No one would hesitate to punish with death a judge who was led to condemn his man as a criminal out of anger: then why is it any more permissible for fathers and schoolmasters to punish and flog children in anger? That is no longer correction, it is vengeance. For a child punishment is a medicine: would we tolerate a doctor who was animated by wrath against his patient? We ourselves, if we would act properly, should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. While our pulse is beating and we can feel the emotion, let us put off the encounter: things will really and truly look different to us once we have cooled off a bit and quietened down. Until then passion is in command, passion does all the talking, not us. [B] Faults seen through anger are like objects seen through a mist: they appear larger. If a man is hungry, then let him eat food: but he should never hunger and thirst for anger if he intends to chastise.

[A] And then punishments applied after being judiciously weighed are more acceptable and more useful to the sufferer. Otherwise he does not think that he has been justly condemned by a man shaking with anger and
fury; he cites in his own justification the inflamed face of the schoolmaster, his unaccustomed swearing, his mental disturbance and his precipitate haste.

[B]
Ora tument ira, nigrescunt sanguine venæ,
    Lumina Gorgoneo sævius igne micant
.

[His face swells with anger, the blood darkens in his veins and his eyes flash with fire more savage than a Gorgon’s.]
⁴

[A] Suetonius relates that Lucius Saturninus, after being condemned by Caesar, was helped in winning his case before the People (to whom he had appealed) above all by the bitter animus that Caesar brought to his verdict.

Saying is one thing: doing is another; we must consider the preaching apart and the preacher apart. Those who in our own time have made an assay at shaking the truth taught in our Church by citing the vices of her ministers have given themselves an easy game. Her testimonies are drawn from elsewhere. That way of arguing is stupid: it would throw everything into confusion. A man of good morals may hold false opinions: A wicked man can preach the truth – yes, even truths he does not believe. It is most certainly harmonious and beautiful when saying and doing go together; I have no wish to deny that saying has more authority and efficacity when followed by doing – as Eudamidas remarked on hearing a philosopher discoursing about war: ‘Beautiful words: but the man who spoke them cannot be believed since his ears are not used to the sound of the trumpet.’ And when Cleomenes heard a professor of rhetoric declaiming about valour he burst out laughing; the professor was scandalized but Cleomenes replied: ‘I would do the same if it were a swallow speaking: now if it were an eagle, I would willingly listen.’
⁵

It seems to me that I can perceive from the writings of the Ancients that the man who says what he really thinks drives it home in a livelier way than he who only pretends. Listen to Cicero talking about the love of liberty: then listen to Brutus! The very writings declare that Brutus was the man to purchase liberty at the cost of his life. Let Cicero, the father of eloquence, treat the theme of contempt for death; let Seneca treat it too: Cicero drags it out lifelessly and you can feel that he wants to make you resolute about something for which he himself has no resolution at all. He cannot put heart into you: he has none to give. But Seneca rouses you and inflames you.

I never read an author, especially one treating of virtue and duty, without curiously inquiring what sort of man he was. [B] The Ephors of Sparta, on seeing a dissolute man giving useful advice in a speech before the people, ordered him to stop and requested a man of honour to sponsor the new idea and to speak for it.
⁶

[A] The writings of Plutarch if you savour them well adequately reveal him – and I believe that I know Plutarch, penetrating even into his soul. Yet I could wish that we had some personal memoirs. If I have let myself go in this digression it is because of the gratitude I feel towards Aulus Gellius for having bequeathed to us in his writings the following account of his manners which touches again on my subject: anger.

One of Plutarch’s slaves, a bad, wicked man whose ears had however drunk in a few lectures in philosophy, had been stripped for some crime by order of Plutarch; at first, while he was being flogged, he snarled about its not being right and that he had not done anything wrong; but in the end he started to shout abuse at his master in good earnest, accusing him of not really being a philosopher as he boasted, since he had often heard him say that it was ugly to get angry and had even written a book on the subject; the fact that he was now immersed in anger and having him cruelly flogged completely gave the lie to his writings. To which Plutarch, quite without heat and completely calm, replied: ‘What makes you think, you ruffian, that I am angry at this time? Does my face, my voice, my colouring or my speech bear any witness to my being excited? I do not think my eyes are wild, my face distorted nor my voice terrifying. Is my face inflamed? Am I foaming at the mouth? Do words escape me which I will later regret? Am I all a-tremble? Am I shaking with wrath? Those, I can tell you, are the true symptoms of anger.’ Then turning towards the man who was doing the flogging he said, ‘Carry on with your job, while this man and I are having having a discussion.’

That is the account in Aulus Gellius.

On returning from a war in which he had served as Captain-General, Archytas of Tarentum found in his house every sign of mismanagement and his lands lying fallow through the neglect of his steward. He summoned him before him and said, ‘Go. If I were to not so angry I would give you a good going over.’ So too Plato: when he was inflamed against one of his slaves he handed him over to Speucippus for punishment, apologizing for not laying hands on him himself since he was angry. Charillus, a Spartan, said to a helot who was behaving most insolently and audaciously toward
him: ‘By the gods! If I were to not so angry I would have you put to death at once.’
⁷

Anger is a passion which delights in itself and fawns on itself. How often, if we are all worked up for some wrong reason and then offered some good defence or excuse, we are vexed against truth and innocence itself! I can recall a marvellous example of this from Antiquity. Piso, a great man in every other way, noted for his virtue, was moved to anger against one of his soldiers. Because that soldier had returned alone after foraging and could give no account of where he had left his comrade, Piso was convinced that he had murdered him and at once condemned him to death. When he was already on the gallows, along comes the lost comrade! At this the whole army was overjoyed and, after many a hug and embrace between the two men, the executioner brought both of them into the presence of Piso; all those who were there were expecting that Piso himself would be delighted. Quite the contrary: for, through embarrassment and vexation, his fury, which was still very powerful, suddenly redoubled and, by a quibble which his passion promptly furnished him with, he found three men guilty because one had just been found innocent, and had all three of them executed: the first soldier because he was already sentenced to death; the second, the one who had gone missing, because he had caused the death of his comrade; the hangman for failing to obey orders.
⁸

[B] Those who have had to deal with obstinate women may have made an assay of the raging madness that they are thrown into when you confront their agitated minds with silence and coldness and do not condescend to feed their bad temper. Celius the orator was of a marvellously choleric nature. There was, dining in his company, a man of mild and gentle manners who, so as not to provoke him, decided to approve of everything he said and always to agree with him; but Celius could not tolerate that his evil temper should thus pass unfed and exclaimed: ‘For the gods’ sake challenge something that I say, so that there can be two of us!’
⁹
Similarly women get angry only to make us angry in turn, imitating the laws of love. Phocion, when a man kept interrupting what he was saying
with bitter insults, simply stopped talking, giving him enough time to exhaust his choler; when that was over, without mentioning the disturbance, he took up his speech just where he had left off. No retort goads a man more sharply than disdain such as that.

Of the most choleric man in France (and it is always a defect, though pardonable in a fighting man since in the exercise of that profession there are certainly situations where it cannot be dispensed with) I often say that he is in fact the most long-suffering man I know in restraining his choler. It shakes him with such violence and frenzy –

magno veluti cum flamma sonore
Virgea suggeritur costis undantis aheni,
Exultantque æstu latices; furit intus aquaï
Fumidus atque alte spumis exuberat amnis;
Nec jam se capit unda; volat vapor ater ad auras

[as when, beneath a brazen cauldron, the fire roars noisily into flame and licks its sides, the water boils with the heat and, madly foaming in its prison, breaks over the edge and can contain itself no longer, sending black fumes off into the air]

– that, to moderate it, he has to keep himself under cruel restraint.
¹⁰
Personally I know of no passion of mine for which I could ever make so great an effort to hide and withstand. I would not care to rate wisdom at so high a price as that. I do not so much look at what that man does, as what it costs him not to do worse.