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Authors: Michel de Montaigne
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well chosen, for it is drawn from a section in which Augustine censures the Manichees (who condemned matter, and hence the body, as evil). St Augustine also, as Montaigne does, draws support at this point from Cicero, whose treatises
On the ends of good and evil
and
On duties
, as well as the
Tusculan Disputations
, are alluded to here in Renaissance editions of the
City of God
. Those are specifically the treatises of Cicero on which Montaigne came to draw. Montaigne might not like Cicero’s chatter, but he owed a great deal to his wisdom.
An elect group of Christian mystics are vouchsafed the gift of rapture. That gift of grace segregates them from all the rest of humanity, including philosophers and sages. Montaigne’s conclusion is that all other human beings should acknowledge their humanity; acknowledge that even their greatest thoughts and discoveries are not all that important; acknowledge that there is ample time for the soul to enjoy its pabulum once the body has been fed and its few necessities wisely catered for. After all, even when a man is perched high on a lofty throne, what part of his body is he seated upon? Everything for mankind is
‘selon’
, an expression still current in popular French but strangely technical nowadays in English. Everything is
secundum quid
, ‘according to something’. Montaigne wishes to be judged, he says,
‘selon moy’
, that is
‘secundum me’
, ‘in accordance with myself’, ‘according to my standards’. If a man insists upon living in court he will have to dodge about and use his elbows, living ‘according to this, accordingto that and according to something else’. The wiser man will live (in harmony with creation, of which he knows he forms a part)
secundum naturam
, ‘according to nature’. All schools of philosophy tell him to do so, but none now tells him how to do so, having obscured Nature’s footsteps with their artifice. As always art or artifice is the antithesis of nature.
Classical philosophy, not least among the Latins, had taught men how to die. Yet the body and soul will know how to separate well enough when the time comes. Man needs to learn how to live! Meanwhile old age can be indulged and the Muses can bring joy and comfort. But the very last words of the
Essays
convey a warning: old men may go gaga. (Even the wisdom of Socrates, we were told, is at the mercy of the saliva of some slavering rabid cur.) At the end of his quest Montaigne gave, as a philosopher well might, the last word to Latin poetry, to Horace evoking the patron deity of health and the Muses. Montaigne had learned how to come to terms with ill-health and was grateful for pain-free interludes. He had schooled his soul to help its body over its bouts of anguish. He had gratefully discovered in old age that the Muses continued to make life worth living. The Muses, for a sick old man, meant mainly books and such social intercourse as still came his way, now that he had learned detachment and so prepared himself to part from those he loved. But Horace’s words evoke the fear of fears for a man of Montaigne’s turn of mind: senile dementia: and his last word of all encapsulates the dread of old folk throughout the ages: want – not in his case want of food or money or position but of what the Muses bring:
‘nec cythera carentem’
.
ALL SOULS COLLEGE
OXFORD
ALL SOULS DAY, 1989
Note on the Text
There is no such thing as a definitive edition of the
Essays of Michel de Montaigne
. One has to choose. The
Essays
are a prime example of the expanding book.
The text translated here is an eclectic one, deriving mainly from the corpus of editions clustering round the impressive
Edition municipale
of Bordeaux (1906–20) edited by a team led by Fortunat Strowski. This was further edited and adapted by Pierre Villey (1924); V.-L. Saulnier of the Sorbonne again revised, re-edited and adapted the work for the Presses Universitaires de France (1965). Useful editions were also
On the ends of good and evil
and
On duties
, as well as the
Tusculan Disputations
, are alluded to here in Renaissance editions of the
City of God
. Those are specifically the treatises of Cicero on which Montaigne came to draw. Montaigne might not like Cicero’s chatter, but he owed a great deal to his wisdom.
An elect group of Christian mystics are vouchsafed the gift of rapture. That gift of grace segregates them from all the rest of humanity, including philosophers and sages. Montaigne’s conclusion is that all other human beings should acknowledge their humanity; acknowledge that even their greatest thoughts and discoveries are not all that important; acknowledge that there is ample time for the soul to enjoy its pabulum once the body has been fed and its few necessities wisely catered for. After all, even when a man is perched high on a lofty throne, what part of his body is he seated upon? Everything for mankind is
‘selon’
, an expression still current in popular French but strangely technical nowadays in English. Everything is
secundum quid
, ‘according to something’. Montaigne wishes to be judged, he says,
‘selon moy’
, that is
‘secundum me’
, ‘in accordance with myself’, ‘according to my standards’. If a man insists upon living in court he will have to dodge about and use his elbows, living ‘according to this, accordingto that and according to something else’. The wiser man will live (in harmony with creation, of which he knows he forms a part)
secundum naturam
, ‘according to nature’. All schools of philosophy tell him to do so, but none now tells him how to do so, having obscured Nature’s footsteps with their artifice. As always art or artifice is the antithesis of nature.
Classical philosophy, not least among the Latins, had taught men how to die. Yet the body and soul will know how to separate well enough when the time comes. Man needs to learn how to live! Meanwhile old age can be indulged and the Muses can bring joy and comfort. But the very last words of the
Essays
convey a warning: old men may go gaga. (Even the wisdom of Socrates, we were told, is at the mercy of the saliva of some slavering rabid cur.) At the end of his quest Montaigne gave, as a philosopher well might, the last word to Latin poetry, to Horace evoking the patron deity of health and the Muses. Montaigne had learned how to come to terms with ill-health and was grateful for pain-free interludes. He had schooled his soul to help its body over its bouts of anguish. He had gratefully discovered in old age that the Muses continued to make life worth living. The Muses, for a sick old man, meant mainly books and such social intercourse as still came his way, now that he had learned detachment and so prepared himself to part from those he loved. But Horace’s words evoke the fear of fears for a man of Montaigne’s turn of mind: senile dementia: and his last word of all encapsulates the dread of old folk throughout the ages: want – not in his case want of food or money or position but of what the Muses bring:
‘nec cythera carentem’
.
ALL SOULS COLLEGE
OXFORD
ALL SOULS DAY, 1989
Note on the Text
There is no such thing as a definitive edition of the
Essays of Michel de Montaigne
. One has to choose. The
Essays
are a prime example of the expanding book.
The text translated here is an eclectic one, deriving mainly from the corpus of editions clustering round the impressive
Edition municipale
of Bordeaux (1906–20) edited by a team led by Fortunat Strowski. This was further edited and adapted by Pierre Villey (1924); V.-L. Saulnier of the Sorbonne again revised, re-edited and adapted the work for the Presses Universitaires de France (1965). Useful editions were also
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