Montaigne
Once at Bar-le-Duc Montaigne saw a portrait which René, King of Sicily,
had painted of himself, and asked, “Why is it not, in like manner,
lawful for every one to draw himself with a pen, as he did with a
crayon?” Off-hand one might reply, Not only is it lawful, but nothing
could be easier. Other people may evade us, but our own features are
almost too familiar. Let us begin. And then, when we attempt the task,
the pen falls from our fingers; it is a matter of profound, mysterious,
and overwhelming difficulty.
After all, in the whole of literature, how many people have succeeded in
drawing themselves with a pen? Only Montaigne and Pepys and Rousseau
perhaps. The Religio Medici is a coloured glass through which darkly
one sees racing stars and a strange and turbulent soul. A bright
polished mirror reflects the face of Boswell peeping between other
people’s shoulders in the famous biography. But this talking of oneself,
following one’s own vagaries, giving the whole map, weight, colour, and
circumference of the soul in its confusion, its variety, its
imperfection—this art belonged to one man only: to Montaigne. As the
centuries go by, there is always a crowd before that picture, gazing
into its depths, seeing their own faces reflected in it, seeing more the
longer they look, never being able to say quite what it is that they
see. New editions testify to the perennial fascination. Here is the
Navarre Society in England reprinting in five fine volumes[3] Cotton’s
translation; while in France the firm of Louis Conard is issuing the
complete works of Montaigne with the various readings in an edition to
which Dr. Armaingaud has devoted a long lifetime of research.
To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is
not easy.
We hear of but two or three of the ancients who have beaten this road
[said Montaigne]. No one since has followed the track; ’tis a rugged
road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain,
as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate
internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble
motions; ’tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us
from the common and most recommended employments of the world.
There is, in the first place, the difficulty of expression. We all
indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it
comes to saying, even to some one opposite, what we think, then how
little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of
the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and
returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with
a wandering light. Face, voice, and accent eke out our words and impress
their feebleness with character in speech. But the pen is a rigid
instrument; it can say very little; it has all kinds of habits and
ceremonies of its own. It is dictatorial too: it is always making
ordinary men into prophets, and changing the natural stumbling trip of
human speech into the solemn and stately march of pens. It is for this
reason that Montaigne stands out from the legions of the dead with such
irrepressible vivacity. We can never doubt for an instant that his book
was himself. He refused to teach; he refused to preach; he kept on
saying that he was just like other people. All his effort was to write
himself down, to communicate, to tell the truth, and that is a “rugged
road, more than it seems”.
For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme
difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means
agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what
she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people
say. Other people, for instance, long ago made up their minds that old
invalidish gentlemen ought to stay at home and edify the rest of us by
the spectacle of their connubial fidelity. The soul of Montaigne said,
on the contrary, that it is in old age that one ought to travel, and
marriage, which, rightly, is very seldom founded on love, is apt to
become, towards the end of life, a formal tie better broken up. Again
with politics, statesmen are always praising the greatness of Empire,
and preaching the moral duty of civilising the savage. But look at the
Spanish in Mexico, cried Montaigne in a burst of rage. “So many cities
levelled with the ground, so many nations exterminated . . . and the
richest and most beautiful part of the world turned upside down for the
traffic of pearl and pepper! Mechanic victories!” And then when the
peasants came and told him that they had found a man dying of wounds and
deserted him for fear lest justice might incriminate them, Montaigne
asked:
What could I have said to these people? ’Tis certain that this office of
humanity would have brought them into trouble. . . . There is nothing so
much, nor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty as the laws.
Here the soul, getting restive, is lashing out at the more palpable
forms of Montaigne’s great bugbears, convention and ceremony. But watch
her as she broods over the fire in the inner room of that tower which,
though detached from the main building, has so wide a view over the
estate. Really she is the strangest creature in the world, far from
heroic, variable as a weathercock, “bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful;
prating, silent; laborious, delicate; ingenious, heavy; melancholic,
pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant; liberal, covetous, and
prodigal”—in short, so complex, so indefinite, corresponding so little
to the version which does duty for her in public, that a man might spend
his life merely in trying to run her to earth. The pleasure of the
pursuit more than rewards one for any damage that it may inflict upon
one’s worldly prospects. The man who is aware of himself is henceforward
independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he
is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.
He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip
past them in a kind of dream. Once conform, once do what other people do
because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and
faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness;
dull, callous, and indifferent.
Surely then, if we ask this great master of the art of life to tell us
his secret, he will advise us to withdraw to the inner room of our tower
and there turn the pages of books, pursue fancy after fancy as they
chase each other up the chimney, and leave the government of the world
to others. Retirement and contemplation—these must be the main elements
of his prescription. But no; Montaigne is by no means explicit. It is
impossible to extract a plain answer from that subtle, half smiling,
half melancholy man, with the heavy-lidded eyes and the dreamy,
quizzical expression. The truth is that life in the country, with one’s
books and vegetables and flowers, is often extremely dull. He could
never see that his own green peas were so much better than other
people’s. Paris was the place he loved best in the whole world—“jusques
à ses verrues et à ses tâches”. As for reading, he could seldom read
any book for more than an hour at a time, and his memory was so bad that
he forgot what was in his mind as he walked from one room to another.
Book learning is nothing to be proud of, and as for the achievements of
science, what do they amount to? He had always mixed with clever men,
and his father had a positive veneration for them, but he had observed
that, though they have their fine moments, their rhapsodies, their
visions, the cleverest tremble on the verge of folly. Observe yourself:
one moment you are exalted; the next a broken glass puts your nerves on
edge. All extremes are dangerous. It is best to keep in the middle of
the road, in the common ruts, however muddy. In writing choose the
common words; avoid rhapsody and eloquence—yet, it is true, poetry is
delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.
It appears, then, that we are to aim at a democratic simplicity. We may
enjoy our room in the tower, with the painted walls and the commodious
bookcases, but down in the garden there is a man digging who buried his
father this morning, and it is he and his like who live the real life
and speak the real language. There is certainly an element of truth in
that. Things are said very finely at the lower end of the table. There
are perhaps more of the qualities that matter among the ignorant than
among the learned. But again, what a vile thing the rabble is! “the
mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it reasonable that
the life of a wise man should depend upon the judgment of fools?” Their
minds are weak, soft and without power of resistance. They must be told
what it is expedient for them to know. It is not for them to face facts
as they are. The truth can only be known by the well-born soul—“l’âme
bien née”. Who, then, are these well-born souls, whom we would imitate,
if only Montaigne would enlighten us more precisely?
But no. “Je n’enseigne poinct; je raconte.” After all, how could he
explain other people’s souls when he could say nothing “entirely simply
and solidly, without confusion or mixture, in one word”, about his own,
when indeed it became daily more and more in the dark to him? One
quality or principle there is perhaps—that one must not lay down rules.
The souls whom one would wish to resemble, like Étienne de La Boétie,
for example, are always the supplest. “C’est estre, mais ce n’est pas
vivre, que de se tenir attaché et obligé par nécessité à un seul
train.” The laws are mere conventions, utterly unable to keep touch with
the vast variety and turmoil of human impulses; habits and customs are a
convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow
their souls free play. But we, who have a private life and hold it
infinitely the dearest of our possessions, suspect nothing so much as an
attitude. Directly we begin to protest, to attitudinise, to lay down
laws, we perish. We are living for others, not for ourselves. We must
respect those who sacrifice themselves in the public service, load them
with honours, and pity them for allowing, as they must, the inevitable
compromise; but for ourselves let us fly fame, honour, and all offices
that put us under an obligation to others. Let us simmer over our
incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotch-potch of
impulses, our perpetual miracle—for the soul throws up wonders every
second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is
death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat
ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and
follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or
thinks or says. For nothing matters except life; and, of course, order.
This freedom, then, which is the essence of our being, has to be
controlled. But it is difficult to see what power we are to invoke to
help us, since every restraint of private opinion or public law has been
derided, and Montaigne never ceases to pour scorn upon the misery, the
weakness, the vanity of human nature. Perhaps, then, it will be well to
turn to religion to guide us? “Perhaps” is one of his favourite
expressions; “perhaps” and “I think” and all those words which qualify
the rash assumptions of human ignorance. Such words help one to muffle
up opinions which it would be highly impolitic to speak outright. For
one does not say everything; there are some things which at present it
is advisable only to hint. One writes for a very few people, who
understand. Certainly, seek the Divine guidance by all means, but
meanwhile there is, for those who live a private life, another monitor,
an invisible censor within, “un patron au dedans”, whose blame is much
more to be dreaded than any other because he knows the truth; nor is
there anything sweeter than the chime of his approval. This is the judge
to whom we must submit; this is the censor who will help us to achieve
that order which is the grace of a well-born soul. For “C’est une vie
exquise, celle qui se maintient en ordre jusques en son privé”. But he
will act by his own light; by some internal balance will achieve that
precarious and everchanging poise which, while it controls, in no way
impedes the soul’s freedom to explore and experiment. Without other
guide, and without precedent, undoubtedly it is far more difficult to
live well the private life than the public. It is an art which each must
learn separately, though there are, perhaps, two or three men, like
Homer, Alexander the Great, and Epaminondas among the ancients, and
Étienne de La Boétie among the moderns, whose example may help us. But
it is an art; and the very material in which it works is variable and
complex and infinitely mysterious—human nature. To human nature we must
keep close. “. . . il faut vivre entre les vivants”. We must dread any
eccentricity or refinement which cuts us off from our fellow-beings.
Blessed are those who chat easily with their neighbours about their
sport or their buildings or their quarrels, and honestly enjoy the talk
of carpenters and gardeners. To communicate is our chief business;
society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire
knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond
our own time and province. Such wonders there are in the world; halcyons
and undiscovered lands, men with dogs’ heads and eyes in their chests,
and laws and customs, it may well be, far superior to our own. Possibly
we are asleep in this world; possibly there is some other which is
apparent to beings with a sense which we now lack.
Here then, in spite of all contradictions and of all qualifications, is
something definite. These essays are an attempt to communicate a soul.
On this point at least he is explicit. It is not fame that he wants; it
is not that men shall quote him in years to come; he is setting up no
statue in the market-place; he wishes only to communicate his soul.
Communication is health; communication is truth; communication is
happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light
those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing;
to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends
to let them know it.
“. . . car, comme je scay par une trop certaine expérience, il n’est
aucune si douce consolation en la perte de nos amis que celle que nous
aporte la science de n’avoir rien oublié à leur dire et d’avoir eu
avec eux une parfaite et entière communication.”
There are people who, when they travel, wrap themselves up “se
défendans de la contagion d’un air incogneu” in silence and suspicion.
When they dine they must have the same food they get at home. Every
sight and custom is bad unless it resembles those of their own village.
They travel only to return. That is entirely the wrong way to set about
it. We should start without any fixed idea where we are going to spend
the night, or when we propose to come back; the journey is everything.
Most necessary of all, but rarest good fortune, we should try to find
before we start some man of our own sort who will go with us and to whom
we can say the first thing that comes into our heads. For pleasure has
no relish unless we share it. As for the risks—that we may catch cold
or get a headache—it is always worth while to risk a little illness for
the sake of pleasure. “Le plaisir est des principales espèces du
profit.” Besides if we do what we like, we always do what is good for
us. Doctors and wise men may object, but let us leave doctors and wise
men to their own dismal philosophy. For ourselves, who are ordinary men
and women, let us return thanks to Nature for her bounty by using every
one of the senses she has given us; vary our state as much as possible;
turn now this side, now that, to the warmth, and relish to the full
before the sun goes down the kisses of youth and the echoes of a
beautiful voice singing Catullus. Every season is likeable, and wet days
and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that
deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and
the most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own
orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind.
Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two fingers’ breadth from
goodness. So, in the name of health and sanity, let us not dwell on the
end of the journey. Let death come upon us planting our cabbages, or on
horseback, or let us steal away to some cottage and there let strangers
close our eyes, for a servant sobbing or the touch of a hand would break
us down. Best of all, let death find us at our usual occupations, among
girls and good fellows who make no protests, no lamentations; let him
find us “parmy les jeux, les festins, faceties, entretiens communs et
populaires, et la musique, et des vers amoureux”. But enough of death;
it is life that matters.
It is life that emerges more and more clearly as these essays reach not
their end, but their suspension in full career. It is life that becomes
more and more absorbing as death draws near, one’s self, one’s soul,
every fact of existence: that one wears silk stockings summer and
winter; puts water in one’s wine; has one’s hair cut after dinner; must
have glass to drink from; has never worn spectacles; has a loud voice;
carries a switch in one’s hand; bites one’s tongue; fidgets with one’s
feet; is apt to scratch one’s ears; likes meat to be high; rubs one’s
teeth with a napkin (thank God, they are good!); must have curtains to
one’s bed; and, what is rather curious, began by liking radishes, then
disliked them, and now likes them again. No fact is too little to let it
slip through one’s fingers and besides the interest of facts themselves,
there is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the
imagination. Observe how the soul is always casting her own lights and
shadows; makes the substantial hollow and the frail substantial; fills
broad daylight with dreams; is as much excited by phantoms as by
reality; and in the moment of death sports with a trifle. Observe, too,
her duplicity, her complexity. She hears of a friend’s loss and
sympathises, and yet has a bitter-sweet malicious pleasure in the
sorrows of others. She believes; at the same time she does not believe.
Observe her extraordinary susceptibility to impressions, especially in
youth. A rich man steals because his father kept him short of money as a
boy. This wall one builds not for oneself, but because one’s father
loved building. In short the soul is all laced about with nerves and
sympathies which affect her every action, and yet, even now in 1580, no
one has any clear knowledge—such cowards we are, such lovers of the
smooth conventional ways—how she works or what she is except that of
all things she is the most mysterious, and one’s self the greatest
monster and miracle in the world. “. . . plus je me hante et connois,
plus ma difformité m’estonne, moins je m’entens en moy.” Observe,
observe perpetually, and, so long as ink and paper exist, “sans cesse et
sans travail” Montaigne will write.
But there remains one final question which, if we could make him look up
from his enthralling occupation, we should like to put to this great
master of the art of life. In these extraordinary volumes of short and
broken, long and learned, logical and contradictory statements, we have
heard the very pulse and rhythm of the soul, beating day after day, year
after year through a veil which, as time goes on, fines itself almost to
transparency. Here is some one who succeeded in the hazardous enterprise
of living; who served his country and lived retired; was landlord,
husband, father; entertained kings, loved women, and mused for hours
alone over old books. By means of perpetual experiment and observation
of the subtlest he achieved at last a miraculous adjustment of all these
wayward parts that constitute the human soul. He laid hold of the beauty
of the world with all his fingers. He achieved happiness. If he had had
to live again, he said, he would have lived the same life over. But, as
we watch with absorbed interest the enthralling spectacle of a soul
living openly beneath our eyes, the question frames itself, Is pleasure
the end of all? Whence this overwhelming interest in the nature of the
soul? Why this overmastering desire to communicate with others? Is the
beauty of this world enough, or is there, elsewhere, some explanation of
the mystery? To this what answer can there be? There is none. There is
only one more question: “Que scais-je?”
[Footnote 3: _Essays of Montaigne_, translated by Charles Cotton,
5 vols. The Navarre Society, £6: 6s. net]