Montaigne: Selected Essays

Socrates uses simple words and everyday concepts to reveal profound truths about the world. Intellectuals, on the other hand, greedy for more and more knowledge, search deeply into complex things and get themselves in to trouble: “Some of it only obstructs and burdens us instead of nourishing us, and indeed some, while claiming to cure us, poisons us” (201). Peasants, who have none of the advantages of education, possess a great natural wisdom: “Nature draws from them every day acts of perseverance and endurance purer and more courageous than those we study so carefully in school” (203).

Religious fighting comes to Montaigne’s neighborhood. More than ordinary wars, this one tramples the very principles it espouses: “It comes to cure sedition and is full of it; it wishes to punish disobedience and shows its example; and employed to defend the laws, it does its share of rebellion against its own” (204). Soldiers become undisciplined and licentious; even the best of them are tainted. Montaigne has trouble understanding how a soldier can believe that religious warfare is beneficial, “that he was drawing nearer to salvation through the most specific causes we have of certain damnation” (206).

Montaigne finds himself caught between the Catholics and Protestants, each side suspicious of him. His habit of haughty disdain for false accusations does not served him well with the authorities. He is not so worried about fines and penalties, as “[t]he affront is immeasurably more bitter than the loss” (208).

He once wondered how he would care for himself in old age, and searched around for someone he could trust, but “found [him]self defenseless” (208). Montaigne long since has opted to rely on his own support, “the only sure, powerful one when you know how to summon it up” (208). This decision girds him against the vagaries of war around him.

On the other hand, Montaigne rather likes having “the tragic play of human fortune” at his doorstep so he can study it, even if it costs him: “Nothing tickles that does not pinch” (209). War also teaches him that he has resourcefulness and fortitude, and that “it would take a strong jolt to knock [him] out of the saddle” (210).

Plague sweeps the region, and Montaigne must evacuate his estate, leaving it open to marauders; meanwhile, his idle workers need to be fed. They become resigned to imminent death and often act bravely. Being merely learned pales against the power of these hard and simple lessons: “We have abandoned Nature and want to teach her a lesson, when it was she who used to guide us so happily and so surely” (212).

Bad things do happen, but there’s no sense in being anguished twice over one misfortune. People fret too much about how to meet death, when “Nature will teach you fully and sufficiently at the time” (213). He adds, “If we have known how to live in constancy and tranquility, we will be able to die the same way” (214).

When accused of the crime of sedition against the state, Socrates does not plead for his life, on two grounds: first, that it would be unseemly and would contradict his teachings. Second, he does not know what happens at death and beyond, and that it might be better than this life. His end ought to be honorable: “He owed his life not to himself but to the world as an example” (217). Indeed, his judges are thereafter shunned by the public and finally kill themselves.

People complain that Montaigne simply spouts other writers’ stories, that he has “merely assembled a collection of others’ flowers” (219). He replies that whatever he writes or quotes must reflect his own qualities and attributes. It would be easy for him to seek reflected glory by doing what so many other writers do, mindlessly quoting the great authorities: “In reality that is buying or borrowing a book, not writing one” (219). Montaigne finds it “greatly, incomparably preferable to have the honor of invention than the honor of citation” (220).

Beauty takes pride of place in society, and it seems to Montaigne an injustice that his two favorite people, Socrates and La Boétie, should have ugly faces and bodies, which belie the nobility within the two men. Beauty and goodness tend to go hand-in-hand, but there are many exceptions: “I have felt at times some threat of a malign, dangerous nature between two beautiful eyes” (222). One’s manner and bearing can overcome a lack of attractiveness: “[W]hen abroad I have received rare, unexpected favors from this” (224).

An acquaintance comes to Montaigne’s house begging sanctuary for himself and his soldiers, who, he claims, had lately been set upon by an enemy. Montaigne becomes suspicious but lets the man in while his troops wait outside on horseback, awaiting his signal. Montaigne, realizing he is about to be robbed, becomes stern in his bearing: “He has often said since—as he was not afraid to tell this story—that my expression and my candor had torn the treachery from his hands” (225). The group leaves without taking anything.

On another occasion, Montaigne’s traveling group is set upon by bandits, who begin to divide up his possessions and horses, only to return them suddenly. The leader “told me several times that I owed this release to my face, my openness and the resoluteness of my speech, which made me undeserving of such a misadventure” (226).

Montaigne dislikes severity toward wrongdoers. As a judge and in private life, he hangs back from issuing harsh punishments: “I hate no one; and I am so reluctant to offend that I cannot even do it in the service of reason” (226). Like Aristotle, he is “merciful toward the man, not toward his badness” (226). 

Experience, says Montaigne, is inferior to reason but still necessary. A chief complication of experience is that “Nature obliged herself to make no two things that did not differ” (227), and that “[e]ach foot has its own shoe” (229). Even a simple set of legal rules is subject to varying interpretation by judges: “Nothing is so broadly, grossly faulty, nor so usually so, as the laws” (236).

The sciences try to explain the world, but Montaigne relies on his intuition: “I will know it well enough when I feel it” (237). Great knowledge pales in comparison with the simple wisdom of Nature. We learn better by studying our own mistakes than by reading books. Only fools issue pronouncements and assert beliefs without first consulting their own experience: “Assertiveness and obstinacy are clear signs of stupidity” (239).

Montaigne believes that someone should warn those in high positions when they are being arbitrary, but few will tolerate such a critique, and few courtiers would be willing to so risk their careers. The result is kings fawned over and never criticized, and thus prone to foolish error.

The art of medicine purports to cure ills, but its practitioners have little knowledge of the diseases they are supposed to cure. Plato says a physician “ought to have gone through all the illnesses he wants to cure and all the events and circumstances he has to judge” (243). By 20 years old, a man should know at once what is good or bad for him in food and exercise. Experience is the best judge.

What are Montaigne’s health habits? He writes that his “style of life is the same in sickness as in health: I make use of the same bed, the same hours, the same foods, and the same drink” (244), though amounts vary when he is sick. Most peoples’ health habits come from arbitrary beliefs, and “every nation has several customs and uses that are not only unknown but barbarous and astonishing to some other nation” (245).

Montaigne doubts that books contain wisdom superior to what we hear in daily life: “I know that men write just as frivolously as they speak”, adding that “[w]e give our nonsense dignity when we set it in stone” (245).

It’s not wise to become too locked into habits: “A young man must break his own rules to arouse his vigor and keep it from growing moldy and soft” (247). Montaigne admits that some of his long-standing habits are arbitrary. It’s hard for him, for example, to “drink pure water or pure wine, or go bareheaded for long, or get my hair cut after dinner; and I would have as hard a time doing without my gloves as my shirt” (248). Overall, “Anything I find disagreeable harms me; nothing harms me that I do with appetite and joy” (251).

He suggests we not fight our illnesses but instead let them take their course: “I have gotten over some that are considered most stubborn and obstinate, that just died away with no help from medicine and against its rules. Let Nature have her way a little: she knows her business better than we do” (253).

That aside, “[w]e have to learn that what cannot be cured must be endured” (254). Montaigne extols the virtues of standing up to unavoidable pain; he recites his history of kidney stones and their excruciating symptoms, pains he has learned to accept with equanimity: “If you do not embrace death, at least you shake hands with it once a month” (257). He finds that kidney stones have somehow prevented other illnesses, so that, aside from bouts of pain from the stones, he is otherwise quite healthy. He sleeps eight to nine hours a day and thereafter is capable of long days of steady work.

Montaigne mentions several minor attributes: he admires military life, likes to scratch an itch (especially in the ears), and is in good health for age 56, “an age that some nations, not without reason, had prescribed as such a fitting limit to life that they did not allow it to be exceeded” (262). Illness appears on him first in his face and eyes, so that friends sometimes know of it before he does. His health thrives because his soul “is in a calm, rested state” (263). When he dreams, “it is of fantastic things and nonsense generally stemming from droll thoughts, more absurd than sad” (263), and, unlike the Ancients, he finds in them no prophecies for his life ahead.

As a child, Montaigne had little taste for sweets; he shuns elaborate feasts, preferring simple meals and good company. Though he enjoys debate, he does not care for it while eating. His father had him raised from early childhood in a small, humble town so that he could appreciate simple things and common folk. He admires figures from history who comfort the downtrodden regardless of affiliation.

Montaigne ages slowly and gracefully: “God is gracious to those whose life He takes little by little; that is the only benefit of old age” (267). He is skeptical of people who take on strict regimens: their bodies become used to the routine and they must tack on yet more procedures for the same effect.

Some people prefer spiritual to physical pleasures; Montaigne believes both should have their due but in their own time: “I hate being told to have our mind in the clouds while our body is at [the] table” (273). He admires great leaders who, surrounded by crisis, still find time to enjoy dinner: “Our duty is to compose ourselves, not to compose books; to win not battles and provinces but order and tranquility in our conduct” (273). Many believe life is to be endured and gotten through; Montaigne prefers to savor the good parts, especially as he ages: “I accept heartily, gratefully, what Nature has done for me, and I approve and I glory in it” (279).