The Complete Essays (67 page)

If any man knows himself to be thus, let him boldly reveal himself by his own mouth.

7. On rewards for honour

[The historic Order of St Michael, of which Montaigne was a knight, had become debased, partly as the result of an inflation of awards during the Wars of Religion. The new Order of the Holy Ghost was instituted by Henry III of France in 1578, ceremonies creating the new knights taking place in December 1578 and January 1579. Montaigne’s reflections lead him to thoughts on the origin of inequality among men.]

[A] The biographers of Augustus Caesar picked out this point to emphasize in his military discipline: he was wonderfully free with his gifts to those who deserved it; but where rewarding honour itself was concerned he was equally sparing. Yet before he had ever gone to war himself he had had bestowed on him by his uncle all the military awards.

It was a fine innovation practised by most of the systems of government in the world to establish certain vain and, in themselves, valueless decorations, in order to honour and reward virtue, such as crowns of laurel oak or myrtle Laves, certain forms of dress, the privilege of riding through the city in a coach or with torch-bearers by night, a special seat at public meetings, the prerogative to certain special names and titles, to certain symbols on their coats-of-arms and such-like things; this system was operated differently according to each nation’s set of values, and still is.

For our part, like many of our neighbours, we have Orders of Chivalry which were instituted for this express purpose. It is, in truth, a very good and beneficial custom to have found a way of recognizing the worth of rare outstanding men and to please and to satisfy them with rewards which are no charge on the people and which cost the monarch nothing. It was always recognized by the experience of the Ancients – and was formerly seen to be so among us French – that men of distinction were more zealous for such rewards than for those which brought gain and profit: that was not unreasonable nor without evident justification. If you introduce other advantages and riches into a prize which should be for honour alone, instead of increasing the prestige you prune it back and degrade it.

The Order of Saint Michael, which was so long held in high esteem among us, had no greater advantage than its being in no ways associated
with any other advantage. As a result there used to be no office or estate whatsoever to which the nobility aspired with so much longing and yearning as they did to that Order, nor was there any rank which comported more respect and dignity, since Virtue more readily aspires to embrace such recompense as is truly her own, more glorious than useful. The other rewards which are bestowed do not have the same dignity; they are
¹
employed on all sorts of occasions: money rewards the services of a manservant, the diligence of a messenger, dancing, vaulting, talking and the meanest services done for us; yes, and we use it to reward vice, flattery, pimping and treachery. No marvel
²
then if Virtue desires and accepts that sort of common currency less willingly than the one which is proper and peculiar to herself. Augustus was right to be much more niggardly and sparing over this one than the other, especially since honour is a privilege, the main essence of which is its rarity. So, too, for Virtue.

Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?

[For him who thinks no man is bad, can any man be good?]
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We do not pick out for praise a man who takes trouble over the education of his children, since however right that is it is not unusual, [C] no more than we pick out a tall tree in a forest where all the trees are tall. [A] I do not think that any citizen of Sparta boasted of his valour, for it was the virtue of all the people of their nation; nor did he boast of his reliability or of his contempt for riches. No matter how great it may be, no recompense is allotted to any virtue which has passed into custom: I doubt if we would ever call it great once it was usual.

Since such distinctions have no other value or prestige than the fact that few men enjoy them, to make them worthless you simply have to be generous with them. Even if there were more men nowadays who merited our Order it still ought not to have its prestige debased.

And it could easily happen that more deserve it since not one of the virtues can spread so easily as military valour. There is valour of another kind, true, perfect, philosophical (I am not speaking of it here: I use the word
valour
in accordance with our own usage); it is greater than our kind, it is more ample: it consists in fortitude and assurance of soul, despising all hostile accidents equally; it is calm, uniform and constant; our own kind is
but a glimmer of it. Habit, education, example and custom are all-powerful in establishing the valour I am talking about, and can easily make it common, as can be readily seen from our experience in our Civil Wars. [B] If anyone could unite us now and arouse our whole people for some common emprise we would make our ancient [C] military [B] reputation flower again.

[A] It is certain that in former times this Order was not concerned with valour by itself: it looked much further. It was never earned by a brave soldier but by a famous
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leader: knowing how to obey orders never deserved so honourable a reward then. In former times they were looking out for a more general expert knowledge of warfare, embracing the greater part of the greatest parts of the fighting man – [C]
‘Neque enim eædem militares et imperatoriæ artes sunt’
[For the skills of a soldier and those of a commander are not the same]
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– [A] they sought a man whose circumstances also were worthy of such an honour. But, as I was saying, even if more men were judged worthy than were found in former times, we still must not be more liberal with it, and it would have been better to fail to bestow it on everyone to whom it was due than for ever to lose in practice so useful an innovation. No great-minded man deigns to see any advantage in what he holds in common with many others; and today those who merit it least are the first to affect to despise it in order to range themselves with those who were wronged when a decoration which was peculiarly theirs was unworthily extended and debased.

Now to wipe out this Order, to abolish it with the expectation of giving a new and sudden prestige to some similar decoration, is an undertaking inappropriate to so licentious and diseased a period as our own present one; what will happen is that the latest Order will, from its inception, incur the same disadvantages which have just ruined the other. To give it authority, the rules governing the awarding of this new Order would need to be extremely tight and restrictive, whereas our troubled times are not susceptible to a short governing-rein. Apart from that, before it could be given any prestige we should need to have lost all memory of the former Order and of the contempt into which it has fallen.

My topic could lend itself to a discussion of Valiance and of its differences from other virtues. But since Plutarch has often touched on that theme
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I would be wasting my time, repeating here what he has already said about it.
⁷
But it is worth considering that our own nation gives the first place among the virtues to valiance as its name shows,
vaillance
deriving from
valeur
, worth. By our usage, in the language of the Court and of the nobility, when we say that a man
vaut beaucoup
(‘has great worth’) or is an
homme de bien
(‘a good man’) we mean he is a valiant one. The custom of the Romans was similar: they derived their general term for virtue (
virtus
) from the word for strength (
vis
).
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The only, essential, proper form of nobility in France is the profession of arms. It is probable that the first of the virtues to appear among men, giving some of them superiority over others, was the one by which the stronger and the more courageous made themselves masters of the weaker and so acquired individual rank and reputation, from which derive our terms of honour and dignity; or else those nations, being most warlike, gave the prize and the title highest in dignity to the virtue which they were most familiar with. So too our passion, our feverish concern, for the chastity of women results in
une bonne femme
(‘a good woman’), and
une femme d’honneur, ou de vertu
(‘a woman of honour’ or ‘of virtue’) in reality meaning for us a chaste woman – as though, in order to bind them to that duty, we neglected all the rest and gave them free rein for any other fault, striking a bargain to get them to give up that one.

8. On the affection of fathers for their children

[This is one of the most moving and revealing of the chapters: it starts with the bout of melancholy which upset Montaigne’s complexion and led him to write his
Essays;
it ends with thoughts of the mad frenzy which can lead fathers to fall in love with their own children or brain-children. Some of the examples he cites of strange behaviour concern
chagrin (
manic-depression) and melancholy itself. The shift from real children to brain-children (a vital platonic commonplace) is given greater urgency by the fact that Montaigne’s children all died in infancy, one daughter excepted. His final examples emphasize that great deeds and books can be not only a man’s ‘sons’ but his ‘daughters’ too
.

    The irritability which transpires through his discussion of wills and inheritances reminds us of tensions between him and his mother over the dispositions in Pierre de Montaigne’s last will and testament. An earlier will (1560–61) had left great financial authority to the mother; the last will simply followed the relevant practices of the customary law of Bordeaux, which treated widows generously, though less so than some other legal systems within France. The widow (who died in 1601) harboured resentment until the end, in her own will bitterly accusing Michel de Montaigne’s only daughter, her own granddaughter, of enjoying wealth which ought to have been hers. (See R. M. Calder, ‘Montaigne and Customary Law’, in
Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance,
XLV1I, 1985, pp. 79–85). In this chapter we are far from that balanced serenity which Montaigne often achieves. There are deletions in the Bordeaux manuscript probably not made by the author himself. Two have been reinserted here
.

    Incidentally, Michel de Montaigne’s own marriage-settlement, doubtless principally drawn up by his father, Pierre, did
not
follow the customary law of Bordeaux and was less generous in its provisions for his widow than customary law allowed.]

For Madame d’Estissac

[A] Madame: unless I am saved by oddness or novelty (qualities which usually give value to anything) I shall never extricate myself with honour from this daft undertaking; but it is so fantastical and presents an aspect so totally unlike normal practice that it may just get by.

It was a melancholy humour (and therefore a humour most inimical to my natural complexion) brought on by the chagrin caused by the solitary retreat I plunged myself into a few years ago, which first put into my head this raving concern with writing.
¹
Finding myself quite empty, with nothing to write about, I offered myself to myself as theme and subject matter. It is [C] the only book of its kind in the world, [A] in its conception wild and [C] fantastically eccentric.
²
[A] Nothing in this work of mine is worthy of notice except that bizarre quality, for the best craftsman in the world would not know how to fashion anything remarkable out of material so vacuous and base.

Now, Madame, having decided to draw a portrait of myself from life, I would have overlooked an important feature if I had failed to portray the honour which I have always shown you for your great merits.
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I particularly wanted to do so at the head of this chapter, since of all your fine qualities one of the first in rank is the love you show your children.

Anyone who knows how young you were when your husband Monsieur d’Estissac left you a widow; the proposals which have been made to you by such great and honourable men (as many as to any lady of your condition in France); the constancy and firmness of purpose with which you have, for so many years and through so many difficulties, carried the weight of responsibility for your children’s affairs (which have kept you busy in so many corners of France and still besiege you); and the happy prosperity which your wisdom or good fortune have brought to those affairs: he will readily agree with me that we have not one single example of maternal love today more striking than your own.

I praise God, Madame, that your love has been so well employed. For the great hopes of himself raised by your boy, Monsieur d’Estissac, amply assure us that when he comes of age you will be rewarded by the duty and gratitude of an excellent son.
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But he is still a child, unable to appreciate the innumerable acts of devotion he has received from you: so I should like him, if this book should fall into his hands one day, to be able to learn something from me at a time when I shall not even have a mouth to tell it
to him – something I can vouch for quite truthfully and which will be made even more vigorously evident, God willing, by the good effects he will be aware of in himself: namely, that there is no nobleman in France who owes more to his mother than he does, and that in the future he will be able to give no more certain proof of his goodness and virtue than by acknowledging your qualities.

If there truly is Law of Nature – that is to say, an instinct which can be seen to be universally and permanently stamped on the beasts and on ourselves (which is not beyond dispute) – I would say that, in my opinion, following hard on the concern for self-preservation and the avoidance of whatever is harmful, there would come second the love which the begetter feels for the begotten. And since Nature seems to have committed this love to us out of a concern for the effective propagation of the successive parts of the world which she has contrived, it is not surprising if love is not so great when we go backwards, from children to fathers. [C] To which we may add a consideration taken from Aristotle,
⁵
that anyone who does a kindness to another loves him more than he is loved in return; that anyone to whom a debt is owed feels greater love than the one by whom the debt is owed; and that every creator loves what he has made more than it would love him if it were capable of emotions. This is especially true because each holds his
being
dear: and
being
consists in motion and activity; in a sense, therefore, everyone is, to some degree, within anything he does: the benefactor has performed an action both fair and noble: the recipient, on the other hand, has only performed a useful one, and mere usefulness is less lovable than nobility. Nobility is stable and lasting, furnishing the one who has practised it with a constant satisfaction. Usefulness, however, can easily disappear or diminish, and the memory of it is neither so refreshing nor so sweet. The things which have cost us most are dearest to us – and it costs us more to give than to receive.

[A] Since it has pleased God to bestow some slight capacity for discursive reasoning on us so that we should not be slavishly subject to the laws of Nature as the beasts are but should conform to them by our free-will and judgement, we should indeed make some concessions to the simple authority of the common laws of Nature but not allow ourselves to be swept tyrannously away by her: Reason alone must govern our inclinations.

For my part, those propensities which are produced in us without the command and mediation of our judgement taste strangely flat. In the case
of the subject under discussion, I am incapable of finding a place for that emotion which leads people to cuddle new-born infants while they are still without movements of soul or recognizable features of body to make themselves lovable. [C] And I have never willingly allowed them to be nursed in my presence. [A] A true and well-regulated affection should be born, and then increase, as children enable us to get to know them; if they show they deserve it, we should cherish them with a truly fatherly love, since our natural propensity is then progressing side by side with reason; if they turn out differently, the same applies,
mutatis mutandis:
we should, despite the force of Nature, always yield to reason.

In fact, the very reverse often applies; we feel ourselves more moved by the skippings and jumpings and babyish tricks of our children than by their activities when they are fully formed, as though we had loved them not as human beings but only as playthings [C] or as pet monkeys. [A] Some fathers will give them plenty of toys when they are children but will resent the slightest expenditure on their needs once they have come of age. It even looks, in fact, as if we are jealous of seeing them cut a figure in the world, able to enjoy it just when we are on the point of leaving it, and that this makes us miserly and close-fisted towards them: it irritates us that they should come treading on our heels, [C] as if to summon us to take our leave. [A] Since in sober truth things are so ordered that children can only have their being and live their lives at the expense of our being and of our lives, we ought not to undertake to be fathers if that frightens us.

For my part, I find it cruel and unjust not to welcome them to a share and fellow-interest in our property – giving them full knowledge of our domestic affairs as co-partners when they are capable of it – and not to cut back on our own interests, economizing on them so as to provide for theirs, since we gave them birth for just such a purpose. It is unjust to see an aged father, [B] broken [A] and only half alive,
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stuck in his chimney-corner with the absolute possession of enough wealth to help and maintain several children, allowing them all this time to waste their best years without means of advancement in the public service and of making themselves better known. They are driven by despair to find some way, however unjust, of providing for their needs: I have seen in my time several young men of good family so addicted to larceny that no punishment could turn them from it. I know one young man, very well connected, with whom I had a word about just such a matter at the earnest
request of his brother, a brave and most honourable nobleman. In reply the young man admitted quite openly that he had been brought to such vile conduct by the unbending meanness of his father, adding that he had now grown so used to it that he could not stop himself. He had just been caught stealing rings from a lady whose morning reception he was attending with several others. It reminded me of a story I had heard about another nobleman who had so adapted himself to the exigencies of that fine profession that when he did become master of his inheritance and decided to give up this practice he nevertheless could not stop himself from stealing anything he needed when he passed by a stall, despite the bother of having to send somebody to pay for it later. I have known several people so trained and adapted to thieving that they regularly steal from their close companions things which they intend to return.

[B] I may be a Gascon but there is no vice I can understand less. My complexion makes me loathe it rather more than my reason condemns it: I have never even wanted to steal anything from anyone. [A] It is true that my part of the world is rather more infamous for theft than the rest of our French nation: yet we have all seen in our time, on several occasions, men of good family from other provinces convicted of many dreadful robberies. I am afraid that we must partly attribute such depravity to the fault of their fathers.

If anyone then tells me, as a very intelligent nobleman once did, that the only practical advantage he wanted to get from saving up all his money was to be honoured and courted by his children (since now that age had deprived him of strength that was the only remedy he had left against being treated with neglect and contempt by everybody, and so maintaining his authority over his family – [C] and truly, not only old age but all forms of weakness are, according to Aristotle, great encouragements to miserliness)
⁷
– [A] then there is something in that. But it is medicine to cure an illness the birth of which ought to have been prevented. A father is wretched indeed if he can only hold the love of his children – if you can call it love – by making them depend on his help.

We should make ourselves respected for our virtues and our abilities and loved for our goodness and gentlemanliness. The very ashes of a rare timber have their value, and we are accustomed to hold in respect and reverence the very bones and remains of honourable people. In the case of someone who has lived his life honourably, no old age can be so decrepit and smelly that it ceases to be venerable – especially to the children, whose
souls should have been instructed in their duty not by need and want, nor by harshness nor force, but by reason:

et errat longe, mea quidem sententia,
Qui imperium credat esse gravius aut stabilius
Vi quod fit, quam illud quod amicitia adjungitur
.

[if you ask my opinion, it is quite untrue that authority is firmer or more stable when it relies on force than when it is associated with affection.]
⁸