The Complete Essays (160 page)

[B] That is very well said. Let them pass on their histories to us according to what they find received, not according to their own estimate. I, who am monarch of the subject which I treat and not accountable for it to anyone, do not for all that believe everything I say. Sometimes my mind launches out with paradoxes which I mistrust [C] and with verbal subtleties which make me shake my head; [B] but I let them take their chance. [C] I know that some men gain a reputation from such things. It is not for me alone to judge them. I describe myself standing up and lying down, from front and back, from right and left and with all my inborn complexities. [B] Even [C] minds
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[B] of sustained power are not always sustained in their application and discernment.

That is,
grosso modo
, the Tacitus which is presented to me, vaguely enough, by my memory. [C] All
grosso-modo
judgements are lax and defective.
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9. On vanity

[Montaigne justifies his digressions and expresses his admiration for the ‘motley’ style of Plato’s dialogue
Phaedrus,
with its varied themes, its ‘party-coloured’ subject-matter; there is the suggestion that such a style is particularly appropriate to Man who is (in the final words) ‘the jester of the farce’. ‘On vanity’ is just such a motley, with abrupt changes of subject from vanity (in general and particular) to travel and to political morality. Although philosophy aims at ‘re-forming’ a man (that is, at improving and remoulding his soul as Socrates did) it hardly ever succeeds in its aim. Montaigne’s own soul is unreformed (in that sense) and so never content. Wisdom consists in learning how to accept that fact and to welcome such palliatives as inquiry and travel.]

[B] Perhaps there is no more manifest vanity than writing so vainly about it. That which the Godhead has made so godly manifest should be meditated upon by men of intelligence anxiously and continuously.
¹
Anyone can see that I have set out on a road along which I shall travel without toil and without ceasing as long as the world has ink and paper. I cannot give an account of my life by my actions: Fortune has placed them too low for that; so I do so by my thoughts. Thus did a nobleman I once knew reveal his life only by the workings of his bowels: at home he paraded before you a series of seven or eight days’ chamber-pots. He thought about them, talked about them: for him any other topic stank. Here (a little more decorously) you have the droppings of an old mind, sometimes hard, sometimes squittery, but always ill-digested. And when shall I ever have done describing some commotion and revolution of my thoughts, no matter what subject they happen upon, when Diomedes wrote six thousand books on the sole subject of philology?
²
What can babble produce when the stammering of an untied tongue smothered the world under such a dreadful weight of volumes? So many words about
nothing but words! O Pythagoras! Why couldest thou not conjure such turbulence!
³

A certain Galba in days gone by was criticized for living in idleness. He replied that everyone should have to account for his actions but not for his free time. He was deceiving himself: for justice also takes note and cognizance of those who are not employed. The Law ought to impose restraints on silly useless writers as it does on vagabonds and loafers. Then my own book and a hundred others would be banished from the hands of our people. I am not joking. Scribbling seems to be one of the symptoms of an age of excess. When did we ever write so much as since the beginning of our Civil Wars? And whenever did the Romans do so as just before their collapse? Apart from the fact that to make minds more refined does not mean that a polity is made more wise, such busy idleness arises from everyone slacking over the duties of his vocation and being enticed away. Each individual one of us contributes to the corrupting of our time: some contribute treachery, other (since they are powerful) injustice, irreligion, tyranny, cupidity, cruelty: the weaker ones like me contribute silliness, vanity and idleness. When harmful things are compelling then, it seems, is the season for vain ones; in an age when so many behave wickedly it is almost praiseworthy merely to be useless. I console myself with the thought that I shall be one of the last they will have to lay hands on. While they are dealing with the more urgent cases I shall have time to improve, for to me it seems contrary to reason to punish minor offences while we are ravished by great ones. Philotimus, a doctor, recognized the symptoms of an ulcerated lung from the features and breath of a patient who brought him his finger to be dressed. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘this is no time to be worrying about fingernails!’
⁴

While on this subject, a few years ago a great man, whom I recall with particular esteem, in the midst of our great ills, when there was no justice, law or magistrate functioning properly any more than today, went and published edicts covering some wretched reform or other of our clothing, eating and legal chicanery.
⁵
Such things are tidbits on which we feed an ill-
governed people to show that we have not entirely forgotten them. Others do the same when they issue detailed prohibitions of swear-words, dances and sports for a people sunk in detestable vices of every kind.
⁶
It is not the time to wash and to get the dirt off once you have caught a good fever. [C] It is right only for Spartans about to rush into some extreme mortal danger to start combing and dressing their hair.
⁷

[B] I have a worse habit myself: if one of my shoes is askew then I let my shirt and my cloak lie askew as well: I am too proud to amend my ways by halves. When my condition is bad I cling violently to my illness: I abandon myself to despair and let myself go towards catastrophe, [C] casting as they say the haft after the axe-head; [B] stubbornly, I want to get worse and think myself no longer worth curing. Either totally well or totally ill.

It is a boon for me that the forlorn State of France should correspond to the forlorn age I have reached. It is easier for me to accept that my ills should be augmented by it than that such good things as I have should be troubled by it. The words I utter when wretched are words of defiance: instead of lying low my mind bristles up. Contrary to others I find I am more prayerful in good fortune than in bad. Following Xenophon’s precept, though not his reasoning, I am more ready to make sheep’s eyes at Heaven in thanksgiving than in supplication.
⁸
I am more anxious to improve my health when it beams upon me than to restore it when I have lost it; prosperous times serve to discipline me and instruct me, as rods and adversities do to others. [C] As though good fortune were incompatible with a good conscience, men never become moral except when fortune is bad. For me good luck
⁹
[B] is a unique spur to measure and moderation. Entreaties win me over: menaces I despise; [C] good-will makes me bow: fear makes me unbending.

[B] Among men’s characteristics this one is common enough: to delight
more in what belongs to others than to ourselves and to love variation and change:

Ipsa dies ideo nos grato perluit haustu
Quod permutatis hora recurrit equis
.

[Even the daylight only pleases us because the hours run by on changing steeds.]
¹⁰

I have my share of that.

Those who go to the other extreme, who are happy with themselves, who esteem above all else whatever they possess and who recognize no form more beautiful than the one they behold, may not be wise as we are but they are truly happier. I do not envy them their wisdom but I do envy them their good fortune.

My avid humour for things new and unknown helps to foster in me my yearning to travel, though plenty of other circumstances contribute to it as well. I am most willing to turn aside from ruling my house. There is some pleasure in being in charge, if only of a barn, and in being obeyed in one’s household, but it is too uniform and listless a pleasure; it also necessarily involves you in many troublesome thoughts. You are distressed when your tenants suffer from famine, when your neighbours quarrel among themselves or encroach on you.

Aut verberatæ grandine vineæ,
Fundusque mendax, arbore nunc aquas
Culpante, nunc torrentia agros
Sidera, nunc hyemes iniquas
.

[Either the hail has ravaged your vineyards, or the soil deceives your hopes, or your fruit trees are lashed by the rain, or the sun scorches your fields. And there are the rigours of winter.]
¹¹

Then there is the fact that barely once in six months will God send you weather which totally satisfies your steward: if it is good for the vines it is bad for the pastures:

Aut nimiis torret fervoribus ætherius sol,
Aut subiti perimunt imbres, gelidæque pruinæ,
Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant
.

[Either the blazing sun shrivels your harvests or else they are ruined by sudden rainstorms or frosts, or ravaged by violent whirlwinds.]

Then there is that shoe of the man of yore: new and shapely but pinching the foot;
¹²
no outsider ever understands how much it costs you, and how much it takes out of you, to keep up that appearance of order to be seen in your household and which perhaps is bought too dearly.

I came late to managing my estates. Those whom Nature had given birth to before me long relieved me of that burden. I had already acquired a different bent, one more in keeping with my complexion. Nevertheless, from what I have seen of it, it is an occupation more time-consuming than difficult: if a man has the ability to do other things, then he can do it easily. If I were to seeking to get rich, that way would have seemed too long; I would have served kings – a business which produces better crops than any other. Since I [C] aim only to acquire the reputation for having acquired nothing, and squandered nothing either (in conformity with the rest of my life, which is as ill-suited to doing evil as good) and [B] seek only to get by, I can do it without paying much attention.

‘If the worst comes to worst, forestall poverty by cutting down expenses.’ That is what I try to do, changing my ways before poverty compels me to. Meanwhile I have established enough gradations in my soul to allow me to do with less than I have – and I mean contentedly. [C]
‘Non æstimatione census, verum victu atque cultu, terminator pecuniæ modus.’
[Your degree of wealth is not measured against your income but against your expenditure on food and luxuries.]
¹³
[B] My real need does not so exactly take up all my income as to leave nothing for Fortune to get her teeth into without biting me to the quick. My presence, ignorant and disdainful though it be, does give a strong shove to the business of my home-estates. I do work at it, albeit grudgingly. And you can say this for me at home: while I do burn my end of the candle on my own, the other end does not have to cut down on anything.

[C] My travels only hurt me by their expense, which is considerable and exceeds my resources. Used as I am to travel not merely with an adequate retinue but an honourable one, I have to make my journeys shorter and less frequent, spending only the froth of my savings, putting things off and spinning them out as the money comes in. I have no wish that the pleasure of roaming should mar the pleasure of repose; on the contrary, I intend that each should nourish and encourage the other. Fortune has helped me in that; my chief aim in life being to live it lazily
and leisurely rather than busily, she has taken from me the need to proliferate in wealth to provide for a proliferation of heirs. For a single heir, if what has been plenty enough for me is not enough for him, that is just too bad. His foolishness would not justify my wishing him more.
¹⁴
Following the example of Phocion, every man provides enough for his children insofar as he provides for characters not dissimilar to his.
¹⁵
I would in no wise favour what Crates did: he left his money with a banker to give to his children if they turned out to be fools, but to share between the simpletons among the people if they turned out to be clever. As if fools are better able to use money because they are less able to do without it!

[B] Anyhow such harm as may be done by my absence does not seem to me to merit my refusing to accept, while I can afford it, such occasions as come along to withdraw my irksome presence. Something is always going awry there. You are always tugged at by business concerning this house or that. You survey everything at too close quarters: there your sharp-sightedness is harmful to you, as often enough elsewhere. I shun all occasions for annoyance and keep myself from learning about things going wrong, yet not so successfully as to avoid stumbling at home upon things which displease me. [C] And the mean tricks they hide from me are the ones I know best: you have to help to conceal some of them yourself so that they hurt you the less! [B] Vain little jabs – [C] well, vain sometimes – [B] but jabs all the same.
¹⁶
It is the smallest, finest cuts which are the most piercing; just as the smallest print tires and hurts your eyes so do the smallest concerns stab you most. [C] A multitude of petty ills beset you more than the violence of a single one, no matter how big. [B] The finer and more frequent those domestic thorns the more sharply and unexpectedly they bite into us, easily taking us by surprise.
¹⁷