The Complete Essays (50 page)

I find it particularly bad grace to load them on to the title page and frontispieces of any books we send to be printed.

41. On not sharing one’s fame

[A series of
exempla
showing rare examples of selflessness over fame and amusing examples of casuistry.]

[A] Of all the lunacies in this world the most accepted and the most universal is concern for reputation and glory, which we espouse even to the extent of abandoning wealth, rest, life and repose (which are goods of substance and consequence) in order to follow after that image of vanity and that mere word which had no body, nothing, to hold on to.

a fama, ch’ invaghisce a un dolce dolce suono
Gli superbi mortali, & par si bella,
E un echo, un sogno, anzi d’un sogno un ombra
Ch’ ad ogni vento si dilegua et sgombra
.

[That fame, which enchants proud mortals with its fair words and which seems so beautiful, is but an echo, a dream, nay, the shadows of a dream, dissolved and scattered by each breath of wind.]

And among all the irrational humours of men, it seems that even philosophers free themselves from this one later and more reluctantly than from all others. [B] It is the most tetchy and stubborn lunacy of them all: [C]
‘Quia etiam bene proficientes animos tentare non cessat’
[since it never ceases to tempt even those souls who are advancing in virtue].
¹
[B] None of the others is more clearly accused of vanity by reason, but its roots are so active within us that I doubt if anyone has managed to cast it clean off. When you have said everything to disavow it, and believed all of it, it still marshals such an inner persuasion against your arguments that you have scant means of holding out against it.

[A] For, as Cicero says, even those who fight it still want their books against it to bear their name in the title and hope to become famous for despising fame.
²
Everything else is subject to barter: we will let our friends
have our goods and our lives if needs be: but a case of sharing our fame and making someone else the gift of our reputation is hardly to be found.

In the war against the Cimbrians, Catulus Luctatius made every effort to stop his soldiers who were fleeing before their enemies: he then joined the rout and pretended to be a coward himself so that they might appear to be following their commander rather than fleeing from the enemy.

When the Emperor Charles V invaded Provence in 1537, it is believed that Antonio de Leyva, seeing that his monarch was quite determined on this expedition and believing that it would wonderfully add to his fame, spoke against it and counselled him not to do it; his sole aim was that all the fame and honour of the decision should be attributed to his monarch, with everyone saying that his judgement and his foresight had been such as to carry through so fair an enterprise against everybody’s opinion. That was to honour his master to his own detriment.

When the Thracian ambassadors were consoling Argelionidis over the death of her son Brasidas and praising him so highly as to lament that there was no one like him left, she rejected such private praise of one individual and rendered it general: ‘Do not say that to me,’ she replied. ‘I know that the city of Sparta has many a citizen greater and more valiant than my son was.’

In the battle of Crécy the Prince of Wales, a youngster still, was leading the vanguard; the main thrust of the battle was concentrated against it. The lords who accompanied him, finding the fighting tough, sent a dispatch asking King Edward to come to their aid: he inquired how his son was doing: when he was told that he was alive and in the saddle, he said, ‘I would do him wrong to come and rob him now of the honour of the victory in this battle where he has held out so well; whatever the risk, that honour will be his alone.’ And he would not go himself nor would he send help, well aware that if he did so men would say that without his succour all had been lost, and that the credit for this exploit would have been attributed to himself: [C]
‘semper enim quod postremum adjectum est, id remtotam videtur traxisse’
[the last forces to be thrown in always seem to have done it all themselves].
³

[B] Several people in Rome thought, as was commonly said, that the chief of Scipio’s fine achievements were [C] partly [B] due to Laelius who nevertheless was ever moving and seconding the honour and greatness of Scipio, taking no care of his own.

To the man who told Theopompus King of Sparta that the citizens were at his feet because he was so good at giving orders he replied, ‘It is rather because they are so good at obeying them.’
⁴

[C] Just as, despite their sex, women who succeeded to peerages had the right to attend and give their opinion in cases falling within the jurisdiction of the peers of the realm, so too the lords spiritual, despite their calling, were required to assist our kings in their wars not only with their allies and retainers but also in person. The Bishop of Beauvais was with Philip Augustus at the battle of Bouvines and fought very bravely in that encounter; but it did not seem right to him to win gain or glory from such a violent and bloody action. He personally took several of his enemies that day, but gave them to the first gentleman he came across, who was allowed to do what he liked with them, either cut their throats or keep them prisoner; in this way he handed Count William of Salisbury over to Messire Jean de Nesle. By a refinement of conscience similar to the above he was prepared to knock a man senseless but not to slash at him: that is why he fought only with a club.
⁵
Somebody in my own time was criticized by the King for ‘laying hands on a clergyman’; he strongly and firmly denied it: all he had done was to thrash him and to trample on him.

42. On the inequality there is between us

[Wisdom not rank constitutes the only inequality that matters. The changes and additions made to this chapter show Montaigne’s growing sympathy for the common peasant.]

[A] Plutarch says somewhere that he finds less distance between beast and beast than between man and man. He was talking of mental powers and inner qualities.
¹
Truly, I find Epaminondas, as I conceive him to be, so far above some men I know – I mean men in their right mind
²
– that I would go farther and say that there is a greater distance between this man and that one than between this man and that beast:

[C]
Hem vir viro quid praestat
.

[Hmm! How far one man excels another.]
³

There are as many degrees of intelligence as there are fathoms ’twixt heaven and earth.

[A] While on the subject of men it is astonishing that everything except ourselves is judged by its own properties: we praise a horse for its vigour and dexterity –

[B]
volucrem
Sic laudamus equum, facili cui plurima palma
Fervet, et exultat rauco victoria circo
,

[it is the swift horse that we praise, the one which, to the noisy shouts of the spectators, easily wins the prize;]
⁴

– we do not praise it for its harness. We praise a greyhound for its speed not for its neck-band; a hawk, for its wing not for its bells and its leg-straps. So why do we not similarly value a man for qualities which are really his? He may have a great suite of attendants, a beautiful palace, great influence and a large income: all that may surround him but it is not
in
him. You would never buy a cat in a bag. If you are haggling over a horse, you strip off its trappings and examine it naked and bare – or if it does wear an ornamental cover as used to be the case for horses offered for sale to royalty, it was only spread over the inessentials, so that you should not waste time over its handsome coat or its broad crupper but mainly concentrate on its legs, eyes and hooves – the parts which really matter:

Regibus hic mos est: ubi equos mercantur, opertos
Inspiciunt, ne, si facies, ut sæpe, decora
Molli fulta pede est, emptorem inducat hiantem,
Quod pulchræ clunes, breve quod caput, ardua cervix
.

[This is how kings do it: when they buy horses they inspect them in their caparisons lest they as buyers may be tempted (as often happens with lame horses with a fine mane) to gape at their broad cruppers, their neat heads or their proud necks.]
⁵

Why do you judge a man when he is all wrapped up like a parcel? He is letting us see only such attributes as do not belong to him while hiding the only ones which enable us to judge his real worth. You are trying to find out the quality of the sword not of the scabbard: strip it of its sheath and perhaps you would not give twopence for it. You must judge him not by his finery but by his own self. As one of the old writers amusingly put it: ‘Do you know why you think he is so tall? You are including his high-heels!’ The plinth is no part of the statue.
⁶
Measure his height with his stilts off: let him lay aside his wealth and his decorations and show us himself in his shimmy. Is his body functioning properly? Is it quick and healthy? What sort of soul does he have? Is his soul a beautiful one, able, happily endowed with all her functions? Are her riches her own or are they borrowed? Has luck had nothing to do with it? Does she face drawn
swords with steady gaze? Does it not bother her whether she expires with a sigh or a slit throat? Is she calm, unruffled and contented? That is what we need to know; that is what the immense distances between us men should be judged by.

Is he,

sapiens, sibique imperiosus
,
Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent.
Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores
Fortis, et in seipso totus teres atque rotundus,
Externi ne quid valeat per læve morari,
In quem manca ruit semper fortuna?

[wise, lord of himself, not terrified of death, poverty or shackles? Is he a man who stoutly defies his passions, who scorns ambition? Is he entirely self-sufficient? Is he like a smooth round sphere which no foreign object can adhere to and which maims Fortune herself if she attacks him?]

That kind of man is miles above kingdoms and dukedoms. He is an empire unto himself.
⁷

[C]
Sapiens pol ipse fingit fortunam sibi
.

[Why, the wise man shapes his own destiny.]

What more can he desire?

[A]
Non ne videmus
Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut quoi
Corpore sejunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur,
Jucundo sensu cura semotus metuque?

[Can we not see that Nature demands nothing for herself except a body free from pain and a mind rejoicing in a happy disposition, remote from fear and worry?]
⁸

Compare with him the mass of men nowadays, senseless, base, servile, unstable, continually bobbing about in a storm of conflicting passions which drive them hither and thither, men totally dependent upon others: they are farther apart than earth and sky. But so blind are our habitual
ways that we take little or no account of such things; when we come to consider a peasant or a monarch, [C] a nobleman or a commoner, a statesman or a private citizen, a rich man or a poor man, [A] we find therefore an immense disparity between men who, it could be said, differ only by their breeches.

[C] (In Thrace, the king was distinguished from his people in a most amusing and extravagant manner: he had his own separate religion, a god all to himself whom his subjects had no right to adore – Mercury it was; Mars, Bacchus and Diana were the people’s gods, whom he despised.)
⁹

Such things are only so much paint: they do not make for differences of essence. [A] For as you see actors in plays imitating on the trestles dukes or emperors, only to return suddenly to their original natural position of wretched valets and drudges: so too with that Emperor whose pomp in public dazzles you –

[B]
Scilicet et grandes viridi cum luce smaragdi
Auro includuntur, teriturque Thalassina vestis
Assidue, et Veneris sudorem exercita potat;

[Because his huge green emeralds are set in gold, and he assiduously dresses in sea-green garments drenched in the sweat of Venus’ games;]
¹⁰
–

[A] draw back the bed-curtains and look at him: he is but a commonplace man, baser perhaps than the least of his subjects. [C]
‘Ille beatus introrsumest. Istius bracteata felicitas est’
[That man is inwardly blessed; the other’s happiness is merely gold-plated]:
¹¹
[A] he is wracked like another man by cowardice, wavering, ambition, anger and envy;

Non enim gazæ neque consularis
Summovet lictor miseros tumultus
Mentis et curas laqueata circum
Tecta volantes
.

[For it is not treasures nor even the consul’s lictor that can banish wretched storms of passion from our minds nor banish those anguished cares which flutter about beneath fretted ceilings.]

[B] Even when surrounded by his armies, anxiety and fear can have him by the throat.

Re veraque metus hominum, curæque sequaces,
Nec metuunt sonitus armorum, nec fera tela;
Audacterque inter reges, rerumque potentes
Versantur, neque fulgorem reverentur ab auro
.

[The fears and dogging cares of men are not themselves afraid of fierce swords nor the sounds of war: they boldly come to kings and powerful men and have no reverence for the gleam of gold.]
¹²

[A] Do fever, headache or gout spare him any more than us? When old age is on his back, will the archers of his guard carry it for him? When he is paralysed by dread of dying, will he be calmed by the presence of the gentleman-in-waiting of his bedchamber? When he is jealous and jumpy, will our doffed hats cure him? The roof of his four-poster may be stuffed with gold and pearls but it has no virtue to assuage the anguished paroxysms of a lively attack of the stone.

Nec calidæ citius decedunt corpore febres,
Textilibus si in picturis ostroque rubenti
Jacteris, quam si plebeia in veste cubandum est
.

[Nor do burning fevers quit your body sooner if you lie under embroidered bedclothes in your purple than if you are covered by plebeian sheets.]

Flatterers were bringing Alexander the Great to believe that he was the Son of Jove; but when he was wounded one day and saw the blood pour out of the gash he said, ‘What do you say about this, then? Is this blood not red and thoroughly human? It is not the same colour as the blood which Homer has flowing from the wounds of gods!’
¹³

Hermodorus the poet wrote verses in honour of Antigonus in which he called him Offspring of the Sun; he retorted, ‘The man who slops out my chamber-pot knows nothing about that!’
¹⁴
After all what we have is a man; and if he himself is born awry then ruling the world will not put him right.

[B]
Puellæ
Hunc rapiant; quicquid calcaverit hic, rosa fiat;

[Let girls fight over him; let roses grow where’er his feet have trod;]

but what does that amount to if his soul is coarse and doltish? Even joy and sensual pleasure are not perceptible without vigour and wit:

hæc perinde sunt, ut illius animus qui ea possidet,
Qui uti scit, ei bona; illi qui non utitur recte, mala
.

[Such things are like the mind which possesses them; good for the mind which knows how to use them rightly, but for the mind which knows not, bad.]

[A] The goods of Fortune (all of them, such as they are) cannot be savoured without tasting them: what makes us happy is not possessing them but enjoying them:

Non domus et fundus, non æris acervus et auri
Ægroto domini deduxit corpore febres
,
Non animo curas: valeat possessor oportet
,
Qui comportais rebus bene cogitat uti
.
Qui cupit aut metuit juvat ilium sic domus aut res
,
Ut lippum pictæ tabulæ, fomenta podagram
.

[It is not house and lands nor piles of bronze and gold which banish fevers from their owner’s sickly body nor anxieties from his sickly mind. Their owner must be well if he wants to enjoy his acquisitions. When a man is full of fears or cravings, house and goods are as enjoyable as paintings are to blear eyes or hot fomentations to the gout.]
¹⁵

He is a fool: then his taste is flat and dull; he no more enjoys the sweet savour of Greek wine than a man with the snuffles, or than a horse enjoys the rich harness with which men bedeck it; [C] exactly as Plato says that health, beauty, strength, riches and all other things termed ‘good’ are bad to the unjust but, equally, are good to the just; and vice versa for ‘bad’ things.
¹⁶

[A] And then, when your body and mind are in a bad state, what is the use of those external advantages, seeing that the merest pinprick or a passion of the soul are enough to take away the pleasure of being ruler of the world? At the first anguished pain of the gout [B] it is no help to be called Sire and Majesty,