The Complete Essays (32 page)

In Xenophon, Astiages asked Cyrus for an account of his last lesson.
³⁷
‘In our school,’ he said, ‘a big boy had a tight coat; he took a coat away from a classmate of slighter build, because it was on the big side, and gave” him his. Teacher made me judge of their quarrel and I judged that things
were best left as they were, since both of them were better off by what had been done. He then showed me that I had judged badly, since I had confined myself to considering what seemed better, whereas I should first have dealt with justice, which requires that no one should be subjected to force over things which belonged to him.’ He then said he was beaten, just as we are in our village schools for forgetting the first aorist of
tuptō
[‘I thrash’]. (A dominie would have to treat me to a fine harangue in the demonstrative mode before he would convince me that his school was worth that one!) Those Persians wanted to shorten the journey, and since it is true that study, even when done properly, can only teach us what wisdom, right conduct and determination consist in, they wanted to put their children directly in touch with actual cases, teaching them not by hearsay but by actively assaying them, vigorously moulding and forming them not merely by word and precept but chiefly by deeds and examples, so that wisdom should not be something which the soul knows but the soul’s very essence and temperament, not something acquired but a natural property.

While on this subject, when Agesilaus was asked what he thought should be taught to children he replied, ‘What they should do when they are grown up.’
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No wonder that education such as that should have produced such astonishing results. They used to go to other Grecian cities in search of rhetoricians, painters and musicians: the others came to Sparta for lawgivers, statesmen and generals. In Athens they learned to talk well: here, to act well; there, to unravel sophistries and set at nought the hypocrisy of words craftily intertwined; here, to free themselves from the snares of pleasure and to set at nought great-heartedly the menaces of fortune and of death; the Athenians were occupied with words: the Spartans with things; there, it was the tongue which was kept in continuous training; here, there was a continuous training of the soul. That is why it was not odd that when Antipater demanded fifty of their sons as hostages they replied (quite the opposite to what we would) that they preferred to give twice as many grown-up men, so high a value did they place on depriving the boys of their national education.
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When Agesilaus urged Xenophon to send his sons to be brought up in Sparta, it was not to learn rhetoric there nor dialectic but, he said, to learn the finest subject of all: namely how to obey and how to command.
⁴⁰

[C] It is most pleasing to see Socrates in his own way poking fun at Hippias, who was telling him how he had earned a great sum of money as a schoolmaster in some little towns in Sicily whereas he could not earn a penny in Sparta since Spartans are stupid people who cannot measure or count, who do not esteem grammar or prosody, merely spending their time learning by heart the list of their kings, stories about the founding and decline of states and similar nonsense. When he had finished Socrates, by bringing him to admit in detail the excellence of the Spartans’ political constitution and the happiness and virtue of their lives, let him anticipate his conclusion: that it was his own arts which were quite useless.
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Both in that martial government and in all others like it examples show that studying the arts and sciences makes hearts soft and womanish rather than teaching them to be firm and ready for war. The strongest State to make an appearance in our time is that of the Turks; and the Turkish peoples are equally taught to respect arms and to despise learning. I find that Rome was more valiant in the days before she became learned. In our time the most warlike nations are the most rude and ignorant: the Scythians, the Parthians and Tamburlane serve to prove that. When the Goths sacked Greece, what saved their libraries from being burned was the idea spread by one of the marauders that such goods should be left intact for their enemies: they had the property of deflecting them from military exercises while making them spend time on occupations which were sedentary and idle.

When our own King Charles V found himself master of the kingdom of Naples and of a large part of Tuscany without even drawing his sword, he attributed such unhoped for ease of conquest to the fact that the Italian princes and nobility spent more time becoming clever and learned than vigorous and soldierly.
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26. On educating children

[The previous chapter, ‘On schoolmasters’ learning’, was read in manuscript by visitors. Montaigne was encouraged to write at greater length on how to bring up boys. He had no son of his own but wrote partly for his friend and admirer Diane de Foix (who married in 1579 and was pregnant, hoping for a son and heir). Montaigne tells of his own upbringing by the best of fathers. Emphasizing the importance of
things
over
words
brings him to write of his own ‘brain-child’: the
Essays,
a matter of words. Thinking of his father’s gentle methods based on exciting a child’s love and enthusiasm for learning and good morals, he makes a diversion on kings and magistrates, who as ‘fathers of the people’, ought to use similar methods. The additions marked [C] show his new and growing respect for Plato (for whom books were indeed the preferred ‘children’ of superior minds). Montaigne launches a frontal attack (without naming him) on Hesiod, who made the path to virtue sweaty, painful and rough. For Montaigne, even children can find the paths to virtue lovely and delightful.]

For Madame Diane de Foix, Countess of Gurson

[A] I have never known a father fail to acknowledge his son as his own, no matter how [C] scurvy or crook-backed [A] he may be.
¹
It is not that he fails to see his infirmities (unless he is quite besotted by his affection): but the thing is his, for all that! The same applies to me: I can see – better than anyone else – that these writings of mine are no more than the ravings of a man who has never done more than taste the outer crust of knowledge – even that was during his childhood – and who has retained only an ill-formed generic notion of it: a little about everything and nothing about anything, in the French style. For, in brief, I do know that there is such a thing as medicine and jurisprudence; that there are four parts to mathematics: and I know more or less what they cover. [C] (Perhaps I do also know how the sciences in general claim to serve us in our lives.) [A] But what I have definitely not done is to delve deeply into them, biting my nails over the study of Aristotle,
²
[C] that monarch of
the doctrine of the Modernists,
³
[A] or stubbornly persevering in any field
⁴
of learning. [C] I could not sketch even the mere outlines of any art whatsoever; there is no boy even in the junior forms who cannot say be is more learned than I am: I could not even test him on his first lesson, at least not in detail. When forced to do so, I am constrained to extract (rather ineptly) something concerning universals, against which I test his inborn judgement – a subject as unknown to the boys as theirs is to me.
⁵

I have fashioned no sustained intercourse with any solid book except Plutarch and Seneca; like the Danaïdes I am constantly dipping into them and then pouring out: I spill some of it on to this paper but next to nothing on to me.
⁶

[A] My game-bag is made for history [C] rather, [A] or poetry, which I love, being particularly inclined towards it;
⁷
for (as Cleanthes said) just as the voice of the trumpet rings out clearer and stronger for being forced through a narrow tube so too a saying leaps forth much more vigorously when compressed into the rhythms of poetry, striking me then with a livelier shock. As for my own natural faculties which are being assayed here, I can feel them bending beneath their burden. My concepts and judgement can only fumble their way forward, swaying, stumbling, tripping over; even when I have advanced as far as I can, I never feel satisfied, for I have a troubled cloudy vision of lands beyond, which I cannot make out. I undertake to write without preconceptions on any subject which comes to mind, employing nothing but my own natural resources: then if (as happens often) I chance to come across in excellent authors the very same topics I have undertaken to treat (as I have just done recently in Plutarch about the power of the imagination) I acknowledge myself to be so weak, so paltry, so lumbering and so dull compared with such men, that I feel scorn and pity for myself. I do congratulate myself,
however, that my opinions frequently coincide with theirs [C] and on the fact that I do at least trail far behind them murmuring ‘Hear, hear’. [A] And again, I do know (what many do not) the vast difference there is between them and me. What I myself have thought up and produced is poor feeble stuff, but I let it go on, without plastering over the cracks or stitching up the rents which have been revealed by such comparisons.
⁸
[C] You need a strong backbone if you undertake to march shoulder to shoulder with fellows like that.

[A] Those rash authors of our own century who scatter whole passages from ancient writers throughout their own worthless works, seeking to acquire credit [C] thereby,
⁹
[A] achieve the reverse; between them and the Ancients there is an infinite difference of lustre, which gives such a pale sallow ugly face to their own contributions that they lose far more than they gain.

– [C] There were two opposing concepts. Chrysippus the philosopher intermingled not merely passages from other authors into his writings but entire books: in one he cited the whole of the
Medea
of Euripides! Apollodorus said that if you cut out his borrowings his paper would remain blank. Epicurus on the other hand left three hundred tomes behind him: not one quotation from anyone else was planted in any of them.
¹⁰
–

[A] The other day I chanced upon such a borrowing. I had languished along behind some French words, words so bloodless, so fleshless and so empty of matter that indeed they were nothing but French and nothing but words. At the end of a long and boring road I came upon a paragraph which was high, rich, soaring to the clouds. If I had found a long gentle slope leading up to it, that would have been pardonable: what I came across was a cliff surging up so straight and so steep that I knew I was winging my way to another world after the first half-a-dozen words. That was how I realized what a slough I had been floundering through beforehand, so base and so deep that I did not have the heart to sink back into it.

If I [C] were to stuff one of my chapters with such rich spoils, that chapter [A] would reveal
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all too clearly the silliness of the others.
[C] Reproaching other people for my own faults does not seem to me to be any more odd than reproaching myself for other people’s (as I often do). We must condemn faults anywhere and everywhere, allowing them no sanctuary whatsoever. Yet I myself know how valiantly I strive to measure up to my stolen wares and to match myself to them equal to equal, not without some rash hope of throwing dust in the eyes of critics who would pick them out (though more thanks to the skill with which I apply them than to my skill in discovering them or to any strengths of my own). Moreover I do not take on those old champions all at once, wrestling with them body to body: It is a matter of slight, repeated, tiny encounters. I do not cling on: I merely try them out, going less far than I intended when haggling with myself over them. If I should prove merely up to sparring with them it would be a worthy match, for I only take them on when they are toughest.

But what about the things I have caught others doing? They bedeck themselves in other men’s armour, with not even their fingertips showing. As it is easy for the learned to do on some commonplace subject, they carry through their projected work with bits of what was written in ancient times, patched together higgledy-piggledy. In the case of those who wish to hide their borrowings and pass them off as their own, their action is, first and foremost, unjust and mean: they have nothing worthwhile of their own to show off so they try to recommend themselves with someone else’s goods; secondly it is stupid to be satisfied with winning, by cheating, the ignorant approbation of the crowd while losing all credit among men of understanding: their praise alone has any weight, but they look down their noses at our borrowed plasterwork. For my part there is nothing that I would want to do less: I only quote others the better to quote myself.

None of this applies to
centos
published as such; I have seen some very ingenious ones in my time, including one under the name of Capilupi, not to mention those of the ancients. Their authors show their wits in both this and other ways, as did Justus Lipsius in his
Politics
, with its industriously interwoven erudition.
¹²

[A] Be that as it may; I mean that whatever these futilities of mine may be, I have no intention of hiding them, any more than I would a bald and grizzled portrait of myself just because the artist had painted not a perfect face but my own. Anyway these are
my
humours,
my
opinions: I give them as things which
I
believe, not as things to be believed. My aim is to reveal my own self, which may well be different tomorrow if I am initiated into some new business which changes me. I have not, nor do I desire, enough authority to be believed. I feel too badly taught to teach others.

Now in my home the other day somebody read the previous chapter and told me that I ought to spread myself a bit more on the subject of children’s education. If, My Lady, I did have some competence in this matter I could not put it to better use than to make a present of it to that little man who is giving signs that he is soon to make a gallant sortie out of you. (You are too great-souled to begin other than with a boy.) Having played so large a part in arranging your marriage I have a rightful concern for the greatness and prosperity of all that springs from it, quite apart from that long enjoyment you have had of my service to you, by which I am indeed bound to desire honour, wealth and success to anything that touches on you. But in truth I know nothing about education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.

[C] It is just as in farming: the ploughing which precedes the planting is easy and sure; so is the planting itself: but as soon as what is planted springs to life, the raising of it is marked by a great variety of methods and by difficulty. So too with human beings; it is not much trouble to plant them, but as soon as they are born we take on in order to form them and bring them up a diversity of cares, full of bustle and worry. [A] When they are young they give such slight and obscure signs of their inclinations, while their promises are so false and unreliable, that it is hard to base any solid judgement upon them. [B] Look at Cimon, Themistocles and hundreds of others; think how unlike themselves they used to be! Bear-cubs and puppies manifest their natural inclinations but humans immediately acquire habits, laws and opinions; they easily change or adopt disguises.
¹³

[A] Yet it is so hard to force a child’s natural bent. That explains why, having chosen the wrong route, we toil to no avail and often waste years training children for occupations in which they never achieve anything. All
the same my opinion is that, faced by this difficulty, we should always guide them towards the best and most rewarding goals, and that we should attach little importance to those trivial prognostications and foretellings we base on their childish actions. [C] Even Plato seems to me to give too much weight to them in his
Republic
.

[A] Learning, My Lady, is a great ornament and a useful instrument of wondrous service, especially in those who are fortunate to live in so high an estate as yours. And in truth she does not find her true employment in hands base and vile. She is far more proud to deploy her resources for the conducting of a war, the, the commanding of a nation and the winning of the affection of a prince or of a foreign people than for drawing up dialectical arguments, pleading in a court of appeal or prescribing a mass of pills. And, therefore, My Lady, since I believe you will not overlook this aspect of the education of your children, you who have yourself tasted its sweetness and who belong to a family of authors – for we still possess the writings of those early de Foix, Counts from whom both the present Count, your husband, is descended and you yourself, while your uncle François, the Sieur de Candale, gives birth every day to new ones, which will spread an awareness of this family trait to many later centuries
¹⁴
– I want to tell you of one thought of mine which runs contrary to normal practice. That is all I am able to contribute to your service in this matter.

The responsibilities of the tutor you give your son (and the results of the education he provides depend on your choice of him) comprise many other elements which I do not touch upon since I have nothing worthwhile to contribute; as for the one subject on which I do undertake to give him my advice, he will only accept what I say insofar as it seems convincing to him. The son of the house is seeking book-learning
¹⁵
not to make money (for so abject an end is unworthy of the grace and favour of the Muses and anyway has other aims and depends on others) nor for external advantages, but rather for those which are truly his own, those which inwardly enrich and adorn him. Since I would prefer that he turned out to be an able man not an erudite one, I would wish you to be careful to select as guide for him a tutor with a well-formed rather than a well-filled brain. Let both be looked for, but place character and intelligence before knowledge; and let him carry out his responsibilities in a new way.