menu_book Chapter 20

for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox dot org book by cynthia moyer essays book three by michel de montaigne translated by charles cotton of vanity part three permit reader this essay its course also and this third sitting to finish the rest of my picture i add but i correct not first because i conceive that a man having once parted with his labours to the world he has no further right to them let him do better if he can in some new undertaking but not adulterate what he has already sold of such dealers nothing should be bought till after they are dead let them well consider what they do before they produce it to the light

who hastens them my book is always the same saving that upon every new edition that the buyer may not go away quite empty i take the liberty to add as tis but an ill-jointed marquetry some supernumerary emblem it is but overweight that does not disfigure the primitive form of the essays but by a little artful subtlety gives a kind of particular value to every one of those that follow thence however will easily happen some transposition of chronology my stories taking place according to their opportuneness not always according to their age secondly because as to what concerns myself i fear to lose by change my understanding does not always go forward it goes backward too

i do not much less suspect my fancies for being the second or the third than for being the first or present or past we often correct ourselves as foolishly as we do others i am grown older by a great many years since my first publications which were in the year fifteen eighty but i very much doubt whether i am grown an inch the wiser i now and i anon are two several persons but whether better i cannot determine it were a fine thing to be old if we only travelled towards improvement but tis a drunken stumbling reeling in firm motion like that of reeds which the air casually waves to and fro at pleasure antiochus had in his youth strongly written in favour of the academy in his old age he wrote as much against it

would not which of these two soever i should follow be still antiochus after having established the uncertainty to go about to establish the certainty of human opinions was it not to establish doubt and not certainty and to promise that had he had yet another age to live he would be always upon terms of altering his judgment not so much for the better as for something else the public favour has given me a little more confidence than i expected but what i most fear is lest i should glut the world with my writings i had rather of the two pique my reader than tire him as a learned man of my time has done praise is always pleasing let it come from whom or upon what account it will yet ought a man to understand why he is commended that he may know how to keep up the same reputation still imperfections themselves may get commendation

the vulgar and common estimation is seldom happy in hitting and i am much mistaken if amongst the writings of my time the worst are not those which have gained the popular applause for my part i return my thanks to those good-natured men who are pleased to take my weak endeavours in good part the faults of the workmanship are nowhere so apparent as in a matter which of itself has no recommendation blame not me reader for those that slip in here by the fancy or inadvertency of others every hand every artisan contribute their own materials i neither concern myself with orthography and only care to have it after the old way nor pointing being very inexpert both in the one and the other where they wholly break the sense i am very little concerned for they at least discharge me

but where they substitute a false one as they so often do and rest me to their conception they ruin me when the sentence nevertheless is not strong enough for my proportion a civil person ought to reject it as spurious and none of mine whoever shall know how lazy i am and how indulgent to my own humour will easily believe that i had rather write as many more essays than betide to revise these over again for so childish a correction i said elsewhere that being planted in the very centre of this new religion i am not only deprived of any great familiarity with men of other kind of manners than my own and of other opinions by which they hold together as by a tie that supersedes all other obligations

but moreover i do not live without danger amongst men to whom all things are equally lawful and of whom the most part cannot offend the laws more than they have already done from which the extremest degree of licence proceeds all the particular being summed up together i do not find one man of my country who pays so dear for the defence of our laws both in loss and damages as the lawyers say as myself and some there are who vapour and brag of their zeal and constancy that if things were justly weighed do much less than i my house as one that has ever been open and free to all comers and civil to all for i could never persuade myself to make it a garrison of war war being a thing that i prefer to see as remote as may be

has sufficiently merited popular kindness and so that it would be a hard matter justly to insult over me upon my own dunghill and i look upon it as a wonderful and exemplary thing that it yet continues a virgin from blood and plunder during so long a storm and so many neighbouring revolutions and tumults for to confess the truth it had been possible enough for a man of my complexion to have shaken hands with any one constant and continued form whatever but the contrary invasions and incursions alternations and vicissitudes of fortune round about me have hitherto more exasperated than calmed and mollified the temper of the country and involved me over and over again with invincible difficulties and dangers i escape tis true but am troubled that it is more by chance and something of my own prudence than by justice

and am not satisfied to be out of the protection of the laws and under any other safeguard than theirs as matters stand i live above one-half by the favour of others which is an untoward obligation i do not like to owe my safety either to the generosity or affection of great persons who allow me my legality and my liberty or to the obliging manners of my predecessors or my own for what if i were another kind of man if my deportment and the frankness of my conversation or relationship oblige my neighbours tis that that they should acquit themselves of obligation in only permitting me to live and they may say we allow him the free liberty of having divine service read in his own private chapel when it is interdicted in all churches round about and allow him the use of his goods and his life as one who protects our wives and cattle in time of need

for my house has for many dissents shared in the reputation of lycurgus the athenian who was the general depository and guardian of the purses of his fellow-citizens now i am clearly of opinion that a man should live by right and by authority and not either by recompense or favour how many gallant men have rather chosen to lose their lives than to be debtors for them i hate to subject myself to any sort of obligation but above all to that which binds me by the duty of honour i think nothing so dear as what has been given me and this because my will lies at pawn under the title of gratitude and more willingly accept of services that are to be sold i feel that for the last i give nothing but money but for the other i give myself the knot that binds me by the laws of courtesy binds me more than that of civil constraint

i am much more at ease when bound by a scrivener than by myself is it not reason that my conscience should be much more engaged when men simply rely upon it in a bond my faith owes nothing because it has nothing lent it let them trust to the security they have taken without me i had much rather break the wall of a prison and the laws themselves than my own word i am nice even to superstition in keeping my promises and therefore upon all occasions have a care to make them uncertain and conditional to those of no great moment i add the jealousy of my own rule to make them wait it racks and oppresses me with its own interest even in actions wholly my own and free if i once say a thing i conceive that i have bound myself and that delivering it to the knowledge of another i have positively enjoined it my own performance

methinks i promise it if i but say it and therefore am not apt to say much of that kind the sentence that i pass upon myself is more severe than that of a judge who only considers the common obligation but my conscience looks upon it with a more severe and penetrating eye i lag in those duties to which i should be compelled if i did not go hoc ipsum ita justum est quod recte fit si est voluntarium this itself is so far just that it is rightly done if it is voluntary cicero de one nine if the action has not some splendour of liberty it has neither grace nor honour quod vos ius cogit vix voluntate that which the laws compel us to do we scarcely do with a will terence ad three three forty four where necessity draws me i love to let my will take its own course

quia quisquid imperio cogitur exigenti magis quam praestanti aceptum refertur for whatever is compelled by power is more imputed to him that exacts than to him that performs valerius maximus two two six i know some who follow this rule even to injustice who will sooner give than restore sooner lend than pay and will do them the least good to whom they are most obliged i don't go so far as that but i'm not far off i so much love to disengage and disobligate myself that i have sometimes looked upon ingratitudes affronts and indignities which i have received from those to whom either by nature or accident i was bound in some way of friendship as an advantage to me taking this occasion of their ill-usage for an acquaintance and discharge of so much of my debt

and though i still continue to pay them all the external offices of public reason i notwithstanding find a great saving in doing that upon the account of justice which i did upon the score of affection and am a little eased of the attention and solicitude of my inward will est prudentis sustinere ut curum sic impetum benevolentia tis the part of a wise man to keep a curbing hand upon the impetus of friendship as upon that of his horse cicero de amacitia chapter seventeen tis in me to urging and pressing where i take at least for a man who loves not to be strained at all and this husbanding my friendship serves me for a sort of consolation in the imperfections of those in whom i am concerned

i am very sorry they are not such as i could wish they were but then i also am spared somewhat of my application and engagement towards them i approve of a man who is the less fond of his child for having a scald head or for being crooked and not only when he is ill-conditioned but also when he is of unhappy disposition and imperfect in his limbs god himself has abated so much from his value and natural estimation provided he carry himself in this coldness of affection with moderation and exact justice proximity with me lessens not defects but rather aggravates them after all according to what i understand in the science of benefit and acknowledgment which is a subtle science and of great use i know no person whatever more free and less indebted than i am at this hour what i do owe is simply to foreign obligations and benefits

as to anything else no man is more absolutely clear nexunt mihi nota potentum munera the gifts of great men are unknown to me aeneid twelve five hundred twenty nine princes give me a great deal if they take nothing from me and do me good enough if they do me no harm that's all i ask from them oh how am i obliged to god that he has been pleased i should immediately receive from his bounty all i have and specially reserved all my obligation to himself how earnestly do i beg of his holy compassion that i may never owe essential thanks to any one o happy liberty wherein i have thus far lived may it continue with me to the last i endeavour to have no express need of any one in me omnis space est mehi all my hope is in myself terence ad three five nine

tis what every one may do in himself but more easily they whom god has placed in a condition exempt from natural and urgent necessities it is a wretched and dangerous thing to depend upon others we ourselves in whom is ever the most just and safest dependence are not sufficiently sure i have nothing mine but myself and yet the possession is in part defective and borrowed i fortify myself both in courage which is the strongest assistant and also in fortune therein wherewith to satisfy myself though everything else should forsake me hippias of elis not only furnished himself with knowledge that he might at need cheerfully retire from all other company to enjoy the muses nor only with the knowledge of philosophy

to teach his soul to be contented with itself and bravely to subsist without outward conveniences when fate would have it so he was moreover so careful as to learn to cook to shave himself to make his own clothes his own shoes and drawers to provide for all his necessities in himself and to wean himself from the assistance of others a man more freely and cheerfully enjoys borrowed conveniences when it is not an enjoyment forced and constrained by need and when he has in his own will and fortune the means to live without them i know myself very well but tis hard for me to imagine any so pure liberality of any one towards me any so frank and free hospitality that would not appear to me discreditable tyrannical and tainted with reproach

if necessity had reduced me to it as giving is an ambitious and authoritative quality so is accepting a quality of submission witness the insulting and quarrelsome refusal that bajazette made of the presents that tamerlane sent him and those that were offered on the part of the emperor soliman to the emperor of calicut so angered him that he not only rudely rejected them saying that neither he nor any of his predecessors had ever been wont to take and that it was their office to give but moreover caused the ambassadors sent with the gifts to be put into a dungeon when thetis says aristotle flatters jupiter when the lacedaemonians flatter the athenians they do not put them in mind of the good they have done them which is always odious but of the benefits they have received from them such as i see so frequently employ every one in their affairs and thrust themselves into so much obligation

would never do it did they but relish as i do the sweetness of a pure liberty and did they but weigh as wise men should the burden of obligation tis sometimes peradventure fully paid but tis never dissolved tis a miserable slavery to a man who loves to be at full liberty in all respects such as know me both above and below me in station are able to say whether they have ever known a man less importuning soliciting entreating and pressing upon others than i if i am so and a degree beyond all modern example tis no great wonder so many parts of my manners contributing to it a little natural pride an impatience at being refused the moderation of my desires and designs my incapacity for business and my most beloved qualities idleness and freedom

by all these together i have conceived a mortal hatred to being obliged to any other or by any other than myself i leave no stone unturned to do without it rather than employ the bounty of another in any light or important occasion or necessity whatever my friends strangely trouble me when they ask me to ask a third person and i think it costs me little less to disengage him who is indebted to me by making use of him than to engage myself to him who owes me nothing these conditions being removed and provided they require of me nothing of any great trouble or care for i have declared mortal war against all care i am very ready to do every one the best service i can i have been very willing to seek occasion to do people a good turn and to attach them to me

and methinks there is no more agreeable employment for our means but i have yet more avoided receiving than sought occasions of giving and moreover according to aristotle it is more easy my fortune has allowed me but little to do others good withal and the little it can afford is put into a pretty close hand had i been born a great person i should have been ambitious to have made myself beloved not to make myself feared or admired shall i more plainly express it i should more have endeavoured to please than to profit others cyrus very wisely and by the mouth of a great captain and still greater philosopher prefers his bounty and benefits much before his valour and warlike conquests and the elder scipio wherever he would raise himself in esteem sets a higher value upon his affability and humanity

than on his prowess and victories and has always this glorious saying in his mouth that he has given his enemies as much occasion to love him as his friends i will then say that if a man must of necessity owe something it ought to be by a more legitimate title than that whereof i am speaking to which the necessity of this miserable war compels me and not in so great a debt as that of my total preservation both of life and fortune it overwhelms me i have a thousand times gone to bed in my own house with an apprehension that i should be betrayed and murdered that very night compounding with fortune that it might be without terror and with quick despatch and after my paternoster i have cried out impius haec tam culta novalia miles

shall impious soldiers have these new ploughed grounds virgil eclogues one seventy one what remedy tis the place of my birth and that of most of my ancestors they have here fixed their affection and name we inure ourselves to whatever we are accustomed to and in so miserable a condition as ours is custom is a great bounty of nature which benumbs our senses to the sufferance of many evils a civil war has this with it worse than other wars have to make us stand sentinels in our own houses quam miserum portavitam moroque tueri vixque suae tutum viribus esse domus tis miserable to protect one's life by doors and walls and to be scarcely safe in one's own house ovid tristia four one sixty nine tis a grievous extremity for a man to be jostled even in his own house and domestic repose

the country where i live is always the first in arms and the last that lays them down and where there is never an absolute peace tunc quoque cum pax est trepidant formidine belli quoties pacem fortuna lacesit hac iter est belis melius fortuna dedices orbe sob eo o sedem gelidaque sub arcdo erantesque domos even when there's peace there is here still the fear of war when fortune troubles peace this is ever the way by which war passes ovid trystia three ten sixty seven we might have lived happier in the remote east or in the icy north or among the wandering tribes

lukhan one two hundred fifty five i sometimes extract the means to fortify myself against these considerations from indifference and indolence which in some sort bring us on to resolution it often befalls me to imagine and expect mortal dangers with a kind of delight i stupidly plunge myself headlong into death without considering or taking a view of it as into a deep and obscure abyss which swallows me up at one leap and involves me in an instant in a profound sleep without any sense of pain and in these short and violent deaths the consequence that i foresee administers more consolation to me than the effect does fear they say that as life is not better for being long so death is better for being not long i do not so much evade being dead as i enter into confidence with dying

i wrap and shroud myself into the storm that is to blind and carry me away with the fury of a sudden and insensible attack moreover if it should fall out that as some gardeners say roses and violets spring more odoriferous near garlic and onions by reason that the last suck and imbibe all the ill odour of the earth so if these depraved natures should also attract all the malignity of my air and climate and render it so much better and purer by their vicinity i should not lose all that cannot be but there may be something in this that goodness is more beautiful and attractive when it is rare and that contrariety and diversity fortify and consolidate well-doing within itself and inflame it by the jealousy of opposition and by glory

thieves and robbers of their special favour have no particular spite at me no more have i to them i should have my hands too full like consciences are lodged under several sorts of robes like cruelty disloyalty rapine and so much the worse and more falsely when the more secure and concealed under colour of the laws i less hate an open professed injury than one that is treacherous an enemy in arms than an enemy in a gown our fever has seized upon a body that is not much the worse for it there was fire before and now tis broken out into a flame the noise is greater not the evil i ordinarily answer such as ask me the reason of my travels that i know very well what i fly from but not what i seek

if they tell me that there may be as little soundness amongst foreigners and that their manners are no better than ours i first reply that it is hard to be believed tam multae scelerum facies there are so many forms of crime virgil georgicon one five hundred six secondly that it is always gain to change an ill condition for one that is uncertain and that the ills of others ought not to afflict us so much as our own i will not here omit that i never mutiny so much against france that i am not perfectly friends with paris that city has ever had my heart from my infancy and it has fallen out as of excellent things that the more beautiful cities i have seen since the more the beauty of this still wins upon my affection i love her for herself and more in her own native being than in all the pomp of foreign and acquired embellishments

i love her tenderly even to her warts and blemishes i am a frenchman only through this great city great in people great in the felicity of her situation but above all great and incomparable in variety and diversity of commodities the glory of france and one of the most noble ornaments of the world may god drive our divisions far from her entire and united i think her sufficiently defended from all other violences i give her caution that of all sorts of people those will be the worst that shall set her in discord i have no fear for her but of herself and certainly i have as much fear for her as for any other part of the kingdom whilst she shall continue i shall never want a retreat where i may stand at bay sufficient to make me amends for parting with any other retreat

not because socrates has said so but because it is in truth my own humour and peradventure not without some excess i look upon all men as my compatriots and embrace a polander as a frenchman preferring the universal and common tie to all national ties whatever i am not much taken with the sweetness of a native air acquaintance wholly new and wholly my own appear to me full as good as the other common and fortuitous ones with our neighbours friendships that are purely of our own acquiring ordinarily carry it above those to which the communication of climate or of blood oblige us nature has placed us in the world free and unbound we imprison ourselves in certain straits like the kings of persia who obliged themselves to drink no other water but that of the river

foolishly quitted claim to their right in all other streams and so far as concerned themselves dried up all the other rivers of the world what socrates did towards his end to look upon a sentence of banishment as worse than a sentence of death against him i shall i think never be either so decrepid or so strictly habituated to my own country to be of that opinion these celestial lives have images enough that i embrace more by esteem than affection and they have some also so elevated and extraordinary that i cannot embrace them so much as by esteem forasmuch as i cannot conceive them that fancy was singular in a man who thought the whole world his city

it is true that he disdained travel and had hardly ever set his foot out of the attic territories what say you to his complaint of the money his friends offered to save his life and that he refused to come out of prison by the mediation of others in order not to disobey the laws in a time when they were otherwise so corrupt these examples are of the first kind for me of the second there are others that i could find out in the same person many of these rare examples surpass the force of my action but some of them moreover surpass the force of my judgment end of section twenty