In this formidable collection of essays, Montaigne dissects every minute aspect of his own life, from the nitty-gritty of his kidney stones and sleep habits to larger philosophical themes, such as parental obligation, religious duty, and metaphysics. Each essay has an ostensible title, but Montaigne wanders freely and fruitfully with digressions that sometimes never return to their source. He also shows the breath of his reading, quoting extensively from classical authors to reinforce his points—most frequently Cicero, Seneca, Horace, Lucretius, and Virgil. Montaigne also delves into the current events of his day, obliquely relating how his practical advice might help ameliorate the bitter divide engulfing his country, the French civil war of religion during the sixteenth century. As a landed aristocrat, he had a vested interest in keeping the peace and his property.
Montaigne’s inquiry is, at heart, on how to live the good life: both in virtue and in pleasantness. He begins by addressing his reader directly, “Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.” In his writings, Montaigne returns to a few choice subjects again and again. One is the nature of philosophy. He writes, “Cicero says that to philosophize is nothing else but to prepare for death. This is because study and contemplation draw our soul out of us to some extent and keep it busy outside the body; which is a sort of apprenticeship and semblance of death. Or else it is because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world boils down finally to this point: to teach us not to be afraid to die.” Montaigne also connects the first philosophers with the poets. “And indeed philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do these ancient authors derive all their authority, but from the poets? And the first ones were themselves poets, and treat of philosophy in their style. Plato is but a disconnected poet.” One is not so sure if Plato, given his own opinion of poets, would agree. Montaigne, much later, continues, “Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its progress, ignorance its end.”
Montaigne is a cultural pluralist. He believes strongly in the powers of tradition and custom. He states, “The laws of conscience, which we say are born of nature, are born of custom. Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-satisfaction.” To wit, Montaigne states, “Everything that seems strange to us we condemn, and everything that we do not understand.” We always are prone to judge the foreign as falsely inferior. He cautions humility. “A soul guaranteed against prejudice is marvelously advanced towards tranquility.”
Montaigne also believes in the natural inequality of man. He quotes, “Plutarch says somewhere that he does not find so much difference between one animal and another as he does between one man and another.” Montaigne has much disdain for the mob. “The common herd, not having the faculty of judging things in themselves, let themselves be carried away by chance and by appearances, when once they have been given the temerity to despise and judge the opinions that they had held in extreme reverence, such as those in which their salvation is concerned.” Montaigne cautions to be careful in the quest for knowledge. “From obeying and yielding spring all other virtues, as from presumption all sin. And on the contrary, the first temptation that came to human nature from the devil, its first poison, insinuated itself into us through promises he made us of knowledge and intelligence: Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil [Genesis]. And the sirens, in Homer, to trick Ulysses and lure him into their dangerous and ruinous snares, offer him the gift of knowledge.”
Montaigne is humble in his thoughts. He is complicated and nuanced. He is not one for categorical absolutes and sweeping statements of truth. “I am attached to the general and just cause only with moderation and without feverishness…. All legitimate and equitable intentions are of themselves equable and temperate.” What he states on one page he might refute or, at least, quibble with on another. He makes the distinction between legislation and morality. “There are lawful vices, as there are many either good or excusable actions that are unlawful…. Now laws remain in credit not because they are just, but because they are laws. That is the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other…. To be disciplined within, in his own bosom, where all is permissible, where all is concealed—that’s the point.” Men might have a public persona, but also a private character. “Men have seemed miraculous to the world, in whom their wives and valets have never seen anything even worth noticing. Few men have been admired by their own households.” He willingly admits to this inconsistency of mind. “I have nothing to say about myself absolutely, simply, and solidly, without confusion and without mixture, or in one word.” Montaigne’s quest is one for self-knowledge. “And he who understands nothing of himself, what can he understand?” He continues, “The world always looks straight ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him; as for me, I look inside of me; I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself.” Montaigne has matured and changed, but will not judge if it is for the good. “Myself now and myself a while ago are indeed two; but when better, I simply cannot say.”
Montaigne trusts only in himself. “We have no wish to be good men according to God; we cannot be so according to ourselves.” He sets greatest store in the independence of his own mind. “I set little value on my own opinions, but I set just as little on those of others…. If I do not take advice, I give still less.” Montaigne lives above the fray and is content in his modest fortune and public obligations. “Extremely idle, extremely independent, both by nature and by art. I would as soon lend my blood as my pains. I have a soul all its own, accustomed to conducting itself in its own way. Having had neither governor nor master forced on me to this day, I have gone just so far as I pleased, and at my own pace. This has made me soft and useless for serving others, and no good to anyone but myself…. The only ability I have needed is the ability to content myself with my lot, which, however, if you take it rightly, requires a well-ordered state of mind, equally difficult in every kind of fortune, and which we see by experience is more readily found in want than in abundance; perhaps because, as with our other passions, hunger for riches is sharpened more by the use of them than by the lack of them, and because the virtue of moderation is rarer than that of patience.” Montaigne urges caution in wearing a public mask, most especially if hiding from oneself. “Those who have a false opinion of themselves can feed on false appropriations; not I…. I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.”
Montaigne constantly returns to the theme of preparing for his own death. He quotes, “Lucius Aruntius killed himself, he said, to escape both his future and his past.” Montaigne states, “My trade and my art is living.” His sole aim in life is to learn how to best live the good life. But that is fundamentally intertwined in preparing for a good death. “We are great fools. “He has spent his life in idleness,” we say; “I have done nothing today.” What, have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. “If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I can do.” Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all…. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.” Finally, Montaigne admits, “I talk about everything by way of conversation, and about nothing by way of advice…. Truly, I have not only a great number of propensities but also plenty of opinions which I would be glad to make my son dislike, if I had one. What if the truest opinions are not always the most suitable to man, so wild is his composition!”
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