“A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure,” he states in the essay “Of Truth.” “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark.” “Revenge is a kind of wild justice.” The essay “Of Parents and Children” begins with this cryptic remark: “The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears.” Parents who have been forbidden by the rules of common politeness to boast of the achievements of their children and who have had to resist the temptation to bore others with an account of their children’s troubles know well the truth of that aphorism; its truth, in fact, is confirmed by the fact that the parent who disobeys these rules may be shunned and ridiculed.
“He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.” So begins the essay “Of Marriage and Single Life,” whereas the essay “Of Love” begins: “The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in love,” which is, I believe, the closest to a smile that Bacon ever takes us. The essay “Of Seditions and Troubles” offers this down-to-earth advice: “Money is like muck [manure], not good except it be spread.” “Of Innovations,” which Bacon feared less than most men of his time—and most people of any time, perhaps—he had this to say: “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.” “Of Friendship” contains this observation: “A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures.” The essay begins with a profound comment upon a famous statement of Aristotle’s: “It had been hard for him that spake it,” says Bacon, “to have put more truth and untruth together, in few words, than in that speech: “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.” “Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set,” begins the essay “Of Beauty,” and—to conclude this litany—“Of Gardens” begins thus: “God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.” What gardener will disagree?
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
1533–1592
Essays
Michel de Montaigne had a wonderful upbringing. Born near Bordeaux, France, in 1533, he was never beaten or treated severely, as was the custom in his time; his father waked him each morning with music. To reveal to him more clearly the character of the humble people of his country he was given peasants for godfather, godmother, and nurse. He learned Latin from a German tutor who knew no French; Montaigne did not speak his own language until he was six. The Latin authors remained his closest literary friends throughout his life.
That life was exciting and full of incident. One of his closest friends was Henry, King of Navarre from 1572, who became Henry IV of France in 1589. Only at the end of his life (he died in 1592), when he was suffering from kidney stones, was Montaigne permitted to retire from business and political affairs. He had been writing his book of Essays off and on for years; now he devoted himself to it.
The book is about himself. “I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without pose or artifice; for it is myself that I portray … . I am myself the matter of my book.” What does he mean by that famous statement? And was Montaigne such a great man that a book about him should be great, too?
We know different things in different ways and with different degrees of certitude. We do not know very well what happened yesterday in Bangkok even if we have seen a news show about Bangkok. We know better, but still not very well, our own city or town. Better still, the news of our own family. We know best what we ourselves did, felt, suffered, feared.
That is a truism, except that most of us do not take advantage of the opportunity afforded by our closeness to our own selves. We live with ourselves with a unique intimacy, yet we do not know ourselves. Socrates, who was Montaigne’s hero and exemplar, insisted that to know oneself was the hardest thing to do, as well as the most important.
Why do we resist knowing ourselves? It must be because we don’t want to. We are unwilling to admit that we are no more beautiful, no wiser, no richer, no more successful than we actually are. Concerning ourselves we are steeped in a brew of illusions; what we wish we were is more important than what we are, and in fact we don’t want to face what we are because that would mean accepting that we are not what we would like to be. Such illusions are well nigh universal. Very few men or women have ever been able to escape them, to look at themselves, in a mirror on the wall or in the mirror of the mind, truly and frankly face to face.
Montaigne was one of those few. Perhaps it was in some way because of his strange education, perhaps it was just because he was a genius, but he did not care to be anything other than what he was. This did not mean he did not strive to be better, to be more moderate, prudent, kind. No one should ever stop striving for those qualities. But he was able to forgive himself for his failures, to accept himself.
Most of all he could forgive himself for being human. This is much harder than it seems. As human beings, we are animals as well as spiritual creatures; but we deny the animal in us. Or deny the spiritual—which is equally foolish. Most of all we find it difficult simply to live. We think we must always be busy at something in order to justify ourselves, to validate our existence. But life itself is sufficient justification.
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 could do.” Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all … Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.
What does it mean to live “appropriately”? As a man should, says Montaigne; that is, moderately, sanely, wisely, enjoying all things but nothing too much, eating, drinking, making love, but also conversing, reading, and thinking well. These are the appropriate things to do, and a few more. Actually, we all know what they are, but we do not do them. Montaigne did.
He first began writing his Essays—they were the first “essays” ever written—when he was about forty. He did not know how to write them at the outset, so the book grew and changed as he worked on it. At first he tried to be clever and “interesting” and to show off his learning. But he soon realized that he himself was the most interesting of subjects if he could only manage to present himself honestly to his reader, and so he more and more concentrated on that. The last of the essays, coming at the end of Book III, is called “Of Experience.” It is entirely about Montaigne, what he is, what he thinks, what he feels, what he knows to be true.
Many of the essays are well worth reading; most are much more than that. “Of Idleness,” “Of the Education of Children,” “Of Cannibals,” “Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions,” “Of Giving the Lie,” “Of Repentance,” “Of Vanity,” “Of Experience”—that is just the beginning of a list of recommended selections. Read those first, perhaps, or start with Book I and read all the way through to the end of Book III.