Essays – Michel de Montaigne
Notes:
Montaigne invented using the word essai, which means “trial,” as a literary term.
Socrates held that procreation is a divine act, and love a desire for immortality as well as an immortal spirit.
Discussion of historiographers: How can they pledge their word on a popular belief? How can they advance their own conjectures as valid coin? History requires narrativization.
Montaigne: who cares about plagiarism? Would endorse a broad interpretation of fair use. “Truth and reason are common to all men, and no more belong to the man who first uttered them than to him that repeated them after him. … The pupil will transform and fuse together the passages that he borrows from others, to make of them something entirely his own; that is to say, his own judgement.”
The student only “owes the pedagogues” the first 15-16 years of life. The rest is owed to action. That said, “philosophy has teachings for man at his birth as well as in his decrepitude.”
Montaigne believed schools of the day were too filled with switches and negative reinforcement. He would fill his classroom with joyful art.
The Athenians once had to decide between two architects for a big project. The first came forward with a finely prepared speech on the projected work and swung the opinion in his favor. But the second used no more than three words: ‘Noble Athenians, what this man has said I will do.’
Identity encompasses all actions: “One judges a horse not only by seeing it ridden at a gallop, but also by its walk, and even by the sight of it resting in its stable.”
Montaigne thought chess a “stupid and puerile game,” an “absurd pastime.” “It is too serious for amusement, and I am ashamed to give it an attention that might be employed on some good action.”
Montaigne probably sucked at chess.
Montaigne suggests men marry at 35, which Aristotle apparently endorsed, as well. And Plato “would have no one marry before 30.”
Apparently in the 1500s women who couldn’t breastfeed would bring in goats who were “quickly trained to come and suckle the little ones; they recognize their voices when they cry, and run up to them.”
Pygmalion made a statue of a woman so beautiful that he fell in love with her, and the gods, in pity for his frenzy, endowed the statue with life.
Certain stoic philosophers advocated not only for a strong and peaceful soul, but also for opportunities to put it to the test. “Virtue assailed is greatly strengthened.” -Cicero.
Romans were given to watching the slaughter of animals, which, Montaigne argues, led them to their interest in gladiator sports. Humans have some natural instinct toward cruelty and inhumanity, and it should not be nurtured.
Egyptians worshipped cats because of their “activity, or an impatience at being confined,” which they saw as a symbol of liberty, a divine attribute.
The Romans made the feeding of geese a public charge because apparently geese had alerted the Roman people to an attack on their capital and thus saved it.
Alexander the Great had a unique tilt to his head. Montaigne attributed this to “an affectation which chimed with his beauty,” the editor to “an arrow wound.”
Aristotle believed it the duty of a great soul to hate and love openly, to judge and speak with entire freedom, and to take no account of other’s approval or disapproval.
As a public speaker, Montaigne was “reduced to the miserable necessity of learning by heart, word for word, what I am going to say.”
Montaigne advocates self-judgment. We “should have a fixed pattern within us by which to test our actions and, according to this, sometimes hug and sometimes correct ourselves.”
Ben Franklin nods along.
You should judge a soul in its settled state—”nearest to repose and to their true situation.” You should not judge a soul by its actions when its actions result from external impulses.
Our conscience must amend itself by the strengthening of our reason, not by the weakening of our appetites. Sensual pleasures have their place, but temperance is rightly regarded as virtuous.
Walking aids thinking. “My mind does not work if my legs do not shake it up.”
Montaigne did not appreciate signs of excessive wealth on monarchs. They already have the highest degree of dignity by virtue of their station. It’s superfluous and a waste of public funds to also dress and spend lavishly.
Montaigne more of a stealth-wealth guy.
Conversation is “pleasanter than anything else in life.”
Superstition is “a little heavier than nothing,” and those who dismiss superstition risk the vice of obstinacy in avoiding that of superstition.
Wisdom “forbids” self-satisfaction and confidence in one’s ideas, but opinionated boldness fills its possessor with joy and assurance.
It’s hard to judge something you create yourself.
Montaigne loved Socrates. Socrates rescued human wisdom from the skies and restored it to man, with whom “its most useful business lies.” “He has done human nature a great kindness by showing it how much it can do of itself.” Socrates also did the world a service in dying the way he did. “He owed his life not to himself, but to the world, as an example.” Montaigne also admired that Socrates, in his old age, took lessons in dancing and instruments and thought this time well spent.
Contrary to many stoics, Montaigne did not believe in the suffering-oriented, memento mori brand of preparing for the worst, steeling oneself for life’s disasters, etc. He also rejected philosophy’s constant focus on death and preparing for death. “Philosophy commands us to have death always before our eyes, to foresee it and to reflect upon it in advance; and it then gives us rules and precautions to prevent this foresight and reflection from harming us. This is what physicians do who bring diseases upon us, so that they may have occasion to use their drugs and their art.”
The Athenians so thoroughly despised and excommunicated the people who convicted and killed Socrates that those people eventually hanged themselves.
Montaigne believed humans have a natural fear of pain, but not of death. (Not sure I agree.) But he makes a good point: what reason would nature have to engender in us a fear of the very function that maintains the “succession and alternation of its works.”
Beauty as a quality gives power and advantage. Socrates called it a “brief tyranny;” Plato, “nature’s privilege.”
When King Ferdinand sent colonists to the Indies, he told them not to bring legal scholars with them. Jurisprudence by nature was thought to create altercation and division.
Montaigne: people should trust themselves more than they trust physicians in deciding what foods are good or bad for them.
“There is no service more justifiable or more universal than the defence of one’s country’s peace and greatness.” Military service = good hanging out.
Work-life balance: “It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.”
Quotes:
The mind that has no fixed aim loses itself, for, as they say, to be everywhere is to be nowhere.
Leisure always breeds an inconstant mind. -Lucan
The Pythagoreans regard good as certain and finite, and evil as boundless and uncertain. There are a thousand ways of missing the bull’s eye, only one of hitting it.
Some deaths are brave and fortunate. I have seen death cut the thread of a man’s days when he was on the point of magnificent achievement. In the flower of his age, he made so fine an end that I do not believe even his most ambitious and courageous designs attained a splendour equal to that of the moment that cut them short. Without moving towards it, he obtained his goal more grandly and more gloriously that he can have hoped or desired. And he gained by his fall a more ample power and fame than he had aspired to in his whole career. In judging another man’s life, I always inquire how he behaved at the last; and one of the principal aims of my life is to conduct myself well when it ends – peacefully, I mean, and with a calm mind.
I note and draw profit from these anecdotes, whether they are shadowy or substantial. Of the various readings that the histories often provide, I make use of the most unusual and memorable.
Some part of my reading sticks to this paper, but to myself little or nothing sticks.
Just as the voice, confined in the narrow channel of a trumpet, comes out sharper and stronger, so, in my opinion, a thought, compressed in the strict metres of verse, springs out more briskly and strikes me with a livelier impact.
The most difficult and important problem confronting human knowledge seems to be that of the right rearing and education of children.
[The student] must sound every man’s capacity. A herdsman, a mason, a passing stranger, he must draw upon them all and borrow from each according to his wares, for everything has some household use.
Mixing with the world has a marvellously clarifying effect on a man’s judgement. We are all confined and pent up within ourselves, and our sight has contracted to the length of our own noses. When someone asked Socrates of what country he was he did not reply, ‘of Athens,’ but ‘of the world.’ His was a fuller and wider imagination; he embraced the whole world as his city, and extended his acquaintance, his society, and his affections to all mankind.
For it seems to me that the first ideas which [the student’s] mind should be made to absorb must be those that regulate his behaviour and morals, that teach him to know himself, and to know how to die well and live well.
Everyone should ask himself this question: ‘Beset as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, and superstition, and having so many other enemies of life within me, shall I start speculating about the motions of the world?’
The mind that harbours philosophy should, by its soundness, make the body sound also. It should make its tranquility and joy shine forth; it should mould the outward bearing to its shape, and arm it therefore with a gracious pride, with an active and sprightly bearing, with a happy and gracious countenance. The most manifest sign of wisdom is a constant happiness.
Philosophy’s aim is virtue, which does not, as the schoolmen allege, stand on the top of a sheer mountain, rugged and inaccessible. Those who have approached it have found it, on the contrary, dwelling on a fair, fertile plateau, from which it can clearly see all things below it. But anyone who knows the way can get there by shady, grassy, and sweetly flowering paths, pleasantly and up an easy and smooth incline, like that of the vault of heaven.
The conduct of our lives is the true reflection of our thoughts.
The speech that I love is a simple and natural speech, the same on paper as on a man’s lips: a pithy, sinewy, short, and concise speech, sharp and forcible rather than mincing and delicate.
Just as in dress, any attempt to make oneself conspicuous by adopting some peculiar and unusual fashion is the sign of a small mind, so in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words springs from a puerile and pedantic pretension.
We must bring more reverence and a greater recognition of our ignorance and weakness to our judgement of nature’s infinite power.
There is nothing for which nature seems to have given us such a bent as for society.
I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.
Emerson nods along.
Our good and our evil depend only on ourselves. Let us make our offerings and our vows to ourselves and not to fortune, which has no power over our moral nature. On the contrary character drags fortune in its train, and moulds it to its own form.
There is, in my opinion, not so much misery in us as emptiness, not so much malice as folly. We are not so full of evil as of inanity, nor so wretched as we are base.
The most sensible disposition of our property at death is, in my opinion, to let it be divided according to the custom of the country. … Although we have some liberty to vary this, I hold that we should not, without a great and most manifest reason, deprive anyone of what is his by fortune, and what common justice entitles him to receive. And it is an unreasonable abuse of this liberty to make it serve our frivolous and personal whims.
There can be no doubt that it is finer by a lofty and divine resolution to prevent the birth of temptations, and so to shape oneself to virtue that the very seeds of vice are rooted out, that to arrest their growth by main force and, after being surprised by the first onset of the passions, to arm and brace oneself to stay their advance and conquer them.
James Clear nods along.
We are all convention; convention carries us away, and we neglect the substance of things. We hold on to the branches, and let go of the trunk and the body. We have taught ladies to blush at the mere mention of things they are not in the least afraid to do. We dare not call our parts by their right names, but are not afraid to use them for every sort of debauchery. Convention forbids us to express in words things that are lawful and natural; and we obey it.
Good looks are a possession of great value in human relations; they are the first means of establishing goodwill between men, and no one can be so barbarous or so surly as not to feel their attraction in some degree. The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it. Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.
Dubia plus torquent mala. “Uncertain evils torture us more.”
I am quite capable of defending an opinion, but I cannot choose one.
It is indeed the only comfort I find in my old age, that it deadens in me many desires and preoccupations that are disturbers of life: care for how the world goes, care for riches, rank, knowledge, and health, and for myself. Here is a man learning to talk, when he should be learning to be silent for ever.
Malice sucks up the greater part of its venom, and so poisons itself. Vice leaves in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, a remorse which is always scratching itself and drawing blood.
The worth of a soul does not consist in soaring to a height, but in a steady movement. Its greatness is not exercised in a mighty, but in an intermediate state.
Our chief talent is the power of suiting ourselves to different ways of life. To be tied and bound of necessity to one single way is not to live but to exist. The best minds are those that are most various and most supple.
God sends the cold according to the cloak, and gives me passions proportionate to my means of resistance.
These times are not fitted to reform us except by reaction, by disagreement more than by agreement, by difference rather than by accord. Having learnt little from good examples, I make use of bad ones, which offer me everyday lessons. I have endeavored to make myself as agreeable as I find others rude, as firm as I find others pliable, as mild as I have seen them harsh.
Obstinacy and heated argument are the surest proofs of stupidity.
True freedom is to have complete power over one’s own activities.
If you do not know how to die, never mind. Nature will give you full and adequate instruction on the spot.
If we have known how to live steadfastly and calmly, we shall know how to die in the same way.
Common minds are incited to vengeance by their horror of the crime.
One needs very strong ears to hear oneself freely criticized; and since there are few who can stand it without being stung, those who venture to perform this service for us give us a remarkable proof of their friendship. For it is a healthy affection that dares to wound and offend us for our own good.
I am sorry for a number of gentlemen who, though still young and sound, have made themselves into prisoners through the folly of their physicians. It would, after all, be much better to put up with a chill than to lose for ever, by disuse, the ordinary pleasures of social life, by giving up so usual a habit as that of going out late. How mischievous is the science that discredits the pleasantest hours of the day!
Huberman is shaking.
Example is an uncertain mirror that reflects all things and from all angles.
He who is afraid of suffering already suffers from his own fears.
There is nothing that should be so recommended to young people as activity and alertness.
I do not complain of the natural decay that has taken hold of me any more than I regret that my life is not as long or as sound as an oak’s.
‘Liberty consists, in great part, in a well-ordered stomach.’ -Seneca
Nature has with maternal care provided that the actions she has enjoined on us for our need shall give us pleasure; and she uses not only reason but appetite to attract us to them. It is wrong to infringe her rules.
Our duty is to compose our character, not to compose books, to win not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live properly. All other things – to reign, to lay up treasure, to build – are at the best but little aids and additions.
It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.
In this gift that God has made to us, there is no part that is unworthy of our care; we stand accountable for it even to the last hair.