MONTAIGNE 
 
" PIONEERS IN EDUCATION" 
 
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 to every student of pedagogy 
 
 By GABRIEL COMPAYRE 
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 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
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 MONTAIGNE 
 
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MONTAIGNE. 
 From a portrait in the "Depot Des Archives du Royaume" at Paris. 
 
PIONEERS IN EDUCATION 
 
 MONTAIGNE 
 
 AND EDUCATION OF THE JUDGMENT 
 
 BY 
 
 GABRIEL COMPAYRE 
 
 CORRESPONDENT OF THE INSTITUTE ; DIRECTOR OF THE ACADEMY 
 
 OF LYONS; AUTHOR OF "PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO 
 
 EDUCATION," "LECTURES ON PEDAGOGY," 
 
 "A HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY," ETC. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 J. E. MANSION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
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 ' Two Copies Kecejr .. 
 
 APR 8 1908 
 
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 Copyright, 1908, 
 By THOMAS T. CROWELL & COMPANY. 
 
 Published, April, 1908. 
 
CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface xi 
 
 I. Montaigne's Character 
 
 The character and general ideas of Montaigne. — That 
 by his ideas, taken as a whole, he was one of the edu- 
 cators of the French mind. — Sketch of his life. — 
 History of his mind. — Contrasts and contradic- 
 tions. — Nothing exemplary about him, either as a 
 husband or as a father. — On the other hand, he was 
 a devoted son and a loving friend. — Montaigne and 
 Etienne de la Boetie. — Montaigne's friendly piety. 
 — What we are to think of his heart. — Motives for 
 which he withdrew within his castle (1570). — His 
 public life. — Montaigne mayor of Bordeaux (1581- 
 1585). — His "languid fondness" for business. — 
 The plague in Bordeaux (1585). — He does not 
 wash his hands of contemporary events. — His atti- 
 tude amidst factions. — His dealings with the po- 
 litical men of his time. — Relative neutrality and 
 absolute independence. — His political loyalty. — 
 His relations with the king of Navarre. — His pro- 
 fessed contempt for human nature. — Judgments 
 on his contemporaries. — His narrow views on the 
 moral and intellectual worth of women. — He con- 
 tradicts himself, and does them justice. — Mile, de 
 Gournay, his "daughter of alliance." — Montaigne 
 lived chiefly in the society of books. — His abun- 
 
vi CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 
 
 dant reading. — His preference for poets, historians, 
 and moralists. — Curiosity one of the distinctive 
 characteristics of his mind. — The Diary of his Ital- 
 ian journey. — Montaigne's alleged laziness. — 
 Wherein he was an egotist. — Extreme need of inde- 
 pendence. — Some little vanity. — Why he spoke of 
 himself at such length. — He studies mankind while 
 he studies himself. — Montaigne's moderation. — 
 He spares his will. — And yet is not unacquainted 
 with vigorous hatred. — His invectives against 
 medicine and doctors. — Indecision of his fluctuat- 
 ing and ever varying thought. — Inconsistency of 
 his character. — A certain frivolity. — His lessons 
 to old age. — He has no fear of death. — Montaigne 
 and Pascal. — Did he believe in immortality ? — 
 Montaigne's religion. — Outward submission to the 
 dogmas and practices of the Roman Catholic church. 
 — At heart, little faith, and a kind of scepticism. — 
 The Genius of Paganism. — Montaigne is a ration- 
 alist. — His ethical doctrine is based on conscience 
 and reason. — His motto : "What do I know?" 
 
 k II. Montaigne's Pedagogy. 
 
 His pedagogy was not for the people. — The " Institu- 
 tion of Children," a plan of castle education, with 
 a few general views. — The potency of education is 
 limited. — Action of heredity and of natural incli- 
 nations. — Criticism of the education of his day. — 
 Campaign against pedantry, — against scholasti- 
 cism. —""Reaction against the Middle Ages. — Edu- 
 cation should be broad, and human. — Neither a 
 grammarian nor a logician, but a man. — The culti- 
 vation of judgment. — In what different senses 
 Montaigne takes the word "judgment." — To judge 
 
CONTENTS AND SUMMARY vii 
 
 is to think for oneself: it is to think rightly; 
 it is to be fit to act rightly. — Criticism of instruc- 
 tion based purely on memory. — Knowledge should 
 be assimilated. — Rectitude of the mind. — A head 
 well trained rather than well filled. — Judgment 
 the possession of a critical mind. — Moral judgment. 
 
 — All studies subordinated to the teaching of ethics. 
 
 — What profit did Montaigne himself derive from 
 the cultivation of judgment? — Montaigne's prac- 
 tical pedagogy. — By what means should judgment 
 be cultivated ? — Initiative left to the child. — 
 Appeal to personal reflection. — Few formal lessons. 
 Observation and experience. — The frequentation 
 of men. — Observation of things. — Books. — How 
 they should be read. — That they should busy, not 
 the memory, but the judgment. — Study of moral 
 philosophy. — It is accessible to the youngest chil- 
 dren. — Practical apprenticeship to virtue. — Medita- 
 tion and self-communion. — "Hold on to yourself." 
 
 — Contradictions of Montaigne on the defini- 
 tion of moral conduct and of virtue. — Epicurean- 
 ism and stoicism. — Of pleasant and easy virtue, 
 along roads easy to tread. — Of stern virtue, along 
 rugged paths. — No well-defined plan of studies. — 
 We must wait until the judgment is formed, to be- 
 gin to study on special lines. — Montaigne is apt to 
 somewhat undervalue science. — He shakes off the 
 yoke of Latinism. — Latin had been his mother 
 tongue. — And yet he concludes that it is better to 
 begin by studying French, and even foreign modern 
 languages. — Little grammar. — Montaigne's rheto- 
 ric. — Physical education. — Health is the most 
 valuable of man's assets. — Hardening of the body. 
 
 — What school discipline ought to be. — No cor- 
 
viii CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 
 
 poral punishment. — A mild severity. — The edu- 
 cation of women. — His mean and narrow views. — 
 What Montaigne lacked : love for children. — He 
 does not love them until they have grown up. — 
 Montaigne lacking in feeling for the beauties of 
 nature. — His attitude towards art. — The educa- 
 tion he advocates is rather superficial, strikes an aver- 
 age, "a la francaise" 60 
 
 III. Montaigne's Influence. 
 
 What is modern in his ideas. — Extraordinary success 
 of the Essays. — Montaigne founded a pedagogical £, 
 school : Locke, Rousseau, etc. — Sainte-Beuve, and 
 Montaigne's funeral train. — We must include some 
 foreigners, Byron, Emerson, Nietzsche. — The ideas 
 of Montaigne forestalled those of Pascal, Fenelon, 
 etc. — His style one of the elements of his success. 
 
 — Montaigne is original, in spite of his borrowings 
 from the ancients. — He had little faith in progress. 
 
 — And yet he prepared it. — His prophetic views. — 
 He is interested in mechanical arts. — Other novel- 
 ties. — Enlightened patriotism. — He sings the 
 praises of Paris. — His method of reasoning. — He 
 is the promoter of introspective psychology and of 
 the observation of the conscious self. — He touched 
 on most pedagogical questions with a modern out- 
 look. — Though an innovator in pedagogy, he is a 
 conservative in politics. — And yet occasionally 
 speaks a revolutionary language. — Interview with 
 notable Americans. — What he thinks of the Span- 
 ish methods of conquest. — Shakespeare copies him 
 in a passage of The Tempest. — His tendency to 
 praise primitive life and natural law. — His admira- 
 tion for the sturdy souls of the people. — Peasants. 
 
CONTENTS AND SUMMARY ix 
 
 — He ascribes too much to "fortune," i.e. to exte- 
 rior circumstances. — He does not allow enough for 
 the exercise of the human will. — What he would 
 have thought of the success of his book, and of 
 his critics. — Guizot and Guillaume Guizot. — Dr. 
 Payen. — Mr Griin. — Mr. Edme Champion. — 
 Mr. Emile Faguet 104 
 
 Bibliography 137 
 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 « Everything has been said regarding Montaigne, 
 and to wish to speak of him again requires some 
 boldness. Yet it is impossible to deny him, in our 
 gallery of " Pioneers in Education," the place to 
 which he has a right. 
 
 No doubt he gave us only a sketch. He did not 
 go deeply into the problem of education; but he 
 was full of its importance, and reverts to it con- 
 tinually in many a chapter of the Essays. 
 
 He is in no way a dogmatic theorist. In all 
 things he is a dilettante. He idled along through 
 the world of ideas, with the marvellous resources 
 of his erudition, with the impulsive raciness of a 
 keen and original mind. He " tickled" himself, 
 as he says, with his imaginings. But in the matter 
 of education he shows unaccustomed gravity, and 
 this is certainly the subject on which he varied 
 least.- On how many pedagogical questions has he 
 not left some deep or epigrammatic utterance, and 
 of quite modern tendency? 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 He founded a school of pedagogy to which belong, 
 whatever evil they may have spoken of him, the 
 Recluses of Port-Royal, the mild Fenelon, the wise 
 Locke, and even the revolutionist Rousseau. And 
 that school is the school of common sense, the school 
 which subordinates instruction to education, mem- 
 ory to judgment, science to conscience, and all 
 studies to ethical teaching. "If the child's soul is 
 not put into better trim, I would as soon see him 
 playing tennis as studying." 
 
 The Essays, explored though they have been by 
 a host of commentators, are an inexhaustible mine 
 of impressions and ideas. The task of extracting 
 the marrow therefrom is an endless one. We have 
 drawn from them with full hands, and it is by quo- 
 tations especially that we shall attempt to reproduce 
 the features of Montaigne's moral physiognomy, 
 and to define his views on education. Some of these 
 may appear commonplace; they were not so in 
 his day. Wrapt in an enchanting style, they have 
 not aged; "they still smile to the reader in their 
 fresh novelty." 
 
 Besides, there is some interest in opposing the 
 ideas of a sixteenth-century educator to those which 
 are current to-day. Lastly, let us add that, as time 
 flows on and opinions change, the same book is 
 interpreted in different ways by those who read it. 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 In a certain sense it becomes new and different 
 when consciences animated by a new spirit cast 
 their light upon it. The Essays are like a landscape, 
 the aspect of which changes with the different 
 hours of the day, according to the light which falls 
 upon it, but which is ever pleasant to look upon, 
 in the variety of its successive and ever changing 
 appearances. 
 
MONTAIGNE 
 
 Montaigne's Character 
 
 Montaigne is not an educationist solely because 
 he has sketched offhand a plan for the education 
 of children. He is one also — and perhaps most 
 of all — by the action which his ideas taken as a 
 whole have exercised for three centuries on his in- 
 numerable readers. There is no book the influence 
 of which has made so deep a mark, for better or for 
 worse, on the French mind, as that of the Essays. 
 How many precepts of Montaigne's have passed 
 into our everyday wisdom, and form a part of our 
 moral inheritance ! " Should not the Essays, that 
 moral biography in which a man of extraordinary 
 intelligence lays himself bare in all the variety of 
 his feelings, be considered as a book for the educa- 
 tion of all men? While he draws his own likeness 
 with absolute sincerity, "from head to foot," with 
 a directness at times shameless, in his " hunger" 
 to reveal himself, "probing the inner man to the 
 very bowels," no more discreet regarding his faults 
 
 l 
 
2 MONTAIGNE 
 
 than regarding his qualities, Montaigne, on many 
 a point, offers us examples, and gives us rules of 
 conduct by which the man of the world of all times 
 may profit. And this moralist has all the more in- 
 fluence on men's minds in that he lays no claim to 
 impose his thought upon them. He does not preach ; 
 he does not even give advice ; but he works his way 
 into the imagination of all those that study him ; he 
 envelops them by his vigour and strength, and also 
 by the happy grace of his deep or witty utterances. 
 He by no means poses as a model of virtue, be 
 it either Christian or pagan: "I am neither an 
 angel nor a Cato." He has escaped neither the 
 passions nor the weaknesses of common men. But, 
 through the very acknowledgment of his moral 
 backslidings, which he owns to so frequently in a 
 book a large part of which might just as well have 
 for title the Memoirs or Confessions of Montaigne, 
 he believes that he is accomplishing a useful work. 
 By showing how not to do it, so to speak, he hopes 
 to cure the faults of his fellow-men, as he lays bare 
 his own. "It will profit others," he says, "to avoid 
 imitating me. . . ." — "There is more instruction 
 to be had from the avoidance of evil examples than 
 from the imitation of those that are good." And 
 again: "Wise men can learn more from fools than 
 fools from wise men. . . ." 
 
MONTAIGNE 3 
 
 He studiously disclaims any pretensions to dog- 
 matize: "This is no doctrine, but merely my own 
 fancies, shapeless and tentative," — elsewhere he 
 will call them "the bees in my bonnet." And yet 
 he occasionally hints that his writings are imme- 
 diately concerned with the amelioration of man- 
 kind, and that by some of his reflections at least he 
 is working for the amelioration of his fellows. 
 "How many times, when angry at some action 
 which civility prohibited me from reproving openly, 
 I have given vent to my feelings in these pages, not 
 without some purpose of educating the public!" 
 
 Before expounding Montaigne's special views on 
 education properly so-called, let us then read the Es- 
 says through again ; let us renew acquaintance with 
 the man, such as he has painted himself, and with the 
 general tendencies of his mind. Let us tell what 
 he was, and what he thought. In short, let us give a 
 sketch of his character, and glance at his philosophy. 
 
 It is unnecessary to review in detail his unevent- 
 ful life. 1 It would take too long to collect in this 
 
 1 Montaigne was born at the castle of Montaigne, in Pengord, 
 on the 28th of February, 1533. He died there on the 13th of 
 September, 1592, of the quinsy. He entered the "College de 
 Guyenne" in 1539, at the age of six, and left it in 1546. In 1555, 
 at the age of twenty-two, he was appointed councillor at the Cour 
 des Aides of Perigueux; then, in 1557, councillor at the Parliament 
 of Bordeaux. He resigned this office in 1570, and spent the 
 
4 MONTAIGNE 
 
 place the results of the researches which the curious 
 have directed to every nook and cranny of his 
 existence, — to his ancestry, his friendships, his castle 
 of Montaigne, and even the nature of his physical 
 infirmities; in a word, to everything relating ever 
 so remotely to this interesting personality. Every- 
 thing has been rummaged and ferreted out. And 
 yet one of the men who in our day has made the 
 closest study and acquired the most intimate know- 
 ledge of the circumstances of Montaigne's life, who 
 spent thirty years in gathering material for a com- 
 prehensive work which remained unfinished, Dr. 
 Payen, wrote, in 1851, that 'Ho write his biography 
 was as yet an impossible task." * 
 
 There still remain, indeed, some obscure points 
 in his life, in particular what became of him when 
 in 1546, at the age of thirteen, he had ended his 
 school studies at the College de Guyenne, at Bor- 
 deaux. It is supposed that he then studied law, 
 probably at Toulouse, but this is not certain. 
 
 If the external history of Montaigne's life raises 
 
 remainder of his life in retirement in his castle, leaving his retreat 
 only to be mayor of Bordeaux from 1581 to 1585, and to visit 
 Italy (1580-1581). — The first two books of the Essays appeared 
 in 1580, and the third book in 1588. 
 
 1 Dr. Payen published between 1846 and 1870 a series of mono- 
 graphs on Montaigne. He bequeathed to the Bibliotheque Na- 
 tionale more than 1500 works relating to his favourite author. 
 
MONTAIGNE 5 
 
 a few questions which have not yet been solved, it 
 seems as though the history of his soul should be 
 easy to write. Of a man who described himself with 
 so much complacency, who said, "I dare not only 
 to speak of myself, but to speak only of myself," 
 how is it possible that critics have not yet succeeded 
 in drawing a portrait which may be accepted as 
 final? How can they be so utterly at variance in 
 their judgments of him? According to some, Mon- 
 taigne is a sceptic, an Epicurean, a selfish egotist, 
 an idler; according to others, he is a rationalist, 
 a Stoic, a man of a large heart, and a lover of work. 
 Whom shall we believe? All of these critics per- 
 haps ; for in his ever fluctuating thoughts and tastes, 
 Montaigne was at once each and every one of these. 
 He is an ever changing Proteus, of whom it might 
 be said, as Fenelon did of Alcibiades, that "he 
 assumes the most contrary forms." Did not his 
 friend La Boetie say to him: "You are an Alci- 
 biades"? Was not Montaigne thinking of his 
 own character when he declared that "the most 
 beautiful souls are those which show most variety 
 and flexibility"? He escapes every attempt at 
 classification. He is not the man of one exclusive 
 form; no one system holds him in bondage. He 
 unites in his rich nature the most opposite quali- 
 ties. And it is precisely those ever recurring con- 
 
6 MONTAIGNE 
 
 trasts of his elusive and changeful character which 
 partly explain the contradictions of his numer- 
 ous critics. 
 
 It is one of the ironies, and so to speak a mockery, 
 of the history of education in France, that some of 
 the men whom we appeal to, and with good reason, 
 for the highest lessons in pedagogy, were not them- 
 selves educationists by profession, and did not per- 
 sonally practise the art of which they laid down the 
 principles. Nay! They took no care to bring up 
 their own children and conscientiously to fulfil their 
 paternal duties. J. J. Rousseau handed over his 
 sons and daughters to the tender mercies of the 
 foundlings' hospitals. Montaigne did not show 
 himself an unnatural father to the same degree, but 
 he is at least to be blamed in this, that he bore very 
 lightly the loss of four of his daughters, who died in 
 their infancy: "They all die at nurse, . . ." he 
 says. 
 
 What are we to think of a father who, more of an 
 author than of a father, would rather have written 
 a fine book than live again in his children? "The 
 offspring of our mind lie closer to our hearts. There 
 are few men given to poetry who would not be prouder 
 to be the fathers of the JEneid than of the finest boy 
 in Rome." With a flippancy which is surely in 
 bad taste, Montaigne affects not to remember exactly 
 
MONTAIGNE 7 
 
 how many children he has lost. 1 "I lost two or 
 three children, not without regret, but without 
 grieving." Did he at least interest himself in the 
 education of the daughter who remained to him? 
 No. "She has been brought up by her mother," 
 he says, " privately and in retirement. ... I 
 interfere in no way with her mother's authority. 
 Feminine rule has mysterious ways of its own, and 
 must be left to women. ..." 
 
 If he was too careless a father to condescend to 
 interest himself in shaping the mind of his only 
 daughter, he would seem to have shown the same 
 indifference as a husband, and to have kept his wife 
 rather far from his thoughts and his heart. What 
 he especially required of her was that she should 
 have the virtues of a good housekeeper. 
 
 "I require of a married woman, above all other 
 virtues, an understanding of domestic economy. . . . 
 The most useful and honourable science and occupa- 
 tion of the mother of a family is the science of 
 housekeeping. It angers me to see, in several 
 
 1 One is all the more surprised at this somewhat flippant decla- 
 ration, as Montaigne noted down very exactly all family events 
 in a copy of Beuthers's Ephemerides, which has been found. We 
 gather from it that his daughter Leonor, the only one who lived, 
 was born in 1571; she was his second child. In 1574 and 1577, 
 he makes notes of the birth of a fourth and of a fifth daughter, 
 and in 1583, of a sixth daughter, all of whom, like two of those 
 who had preceded them, died when scarcely a few months old. 
 
8 MONTAIGNE 
 
 homes, the husband return, dull and dejected through 
 the worries of business, towards midday, to find 
 his wife still dressing her hair and titivating in her 
 private apartment." 
 
 Montaigne admits that he was not intended for 
 married life, for what he lightly calls the " vulgar 
 pleasures" of wedlock. He had married Frangoise 
 de la Chassaigne in 1565, at the age of thirty-two, 
 to conform to custom, and to please his parents, 
 rather than through natural inclination. He was 
 personally so little disposed to marry that he writes, 
 in whimsical mood: "Of my own free will, I should 
 have got out of marrying Wisdom herself, had she 
 been anxious to have me!" 
 
 No doubt he will say of marriage that it is " a wise 
 bargain," "one of the finest of the component 
 parts of society"; but this legal institution receives 
 no share of Montaigne's heart. He lays down as 
 a principle that love, true love, cannot exist between 
 husband and wife: "A good marriage, if there are 
 any such, declines to keep company with love." 
 Thus we should speak no more of conjugal love, but 
 at the very most of conjugal friendship. 1 
 
 If Montaigne offers nothing exemplary, far from 
 it, as a husband or as a father, he was, on the other 
 
 'He has dared write without circumlocution: "The great 
 Cato like ourself was tired of his wife." 
 
MONTAIGNE 9 
 
 hand, a model son, and a hero in friendship. He 
 speaks but little of his mother, it is true, although he 
 spent his whole life beside her. 1 But he worshipped 
 his father. 2 With what pious veneration he speaks 
 of him, after losing him in 1568! . . . "The good 
 father whom God gave me, who got nothing from 
 me except gratitude for his kindness, but that, 
 truly, of the liveliest. ..." Montaigne's filial 
 piety manifests itself in acts of touching delicacy. 
 He nearly always dressed in black and in white, in 
 memory of his father's ways. He liked to use, to 
 cover himself with his father's old cloak, because it 
 seemed to him that he thus "wrapped himself up 
 in him." But he was especially anxious to continue 
 his father's traditions, to treasure his moral inheri- 
 tance, to obey him still, although he was dead: 
 "It is my proud boast that my father's will is still 
 alive and active within me." 
 
 But it was especially in his affection for Etienne 
 de la Boetie, the author of the famous pamphlet, 
 On Voluntary Servitude, that Montaigne showed 
 of what warmth of feeling his heart was capable. 
 
 1 Montaigne's mother, Antoinette de Louppes, of Spanish, 
 and probably of Jewish extraction, survived her son, and did 
 not die until ten years after him, on the 4th of April, 1601. 
 
 2 Montaigne's father, originally a tradesman, had been en- 
 nobled, and had given up commerce for a military career. He 
 followed Francis I into Italy. He was successively jurat, or magis- 
 trate, provost, and mayor of Bordeaux. 
 
10 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Read once again the admirable letter which he wrote 
 to his father on the death of his friend, and also that 
 divine chapter in the Essays which he has devoted 
 to Friendship. Never has any one spoken in such 
 moving terms of the love which may unite two 
 souls, so entirely that "they obliterate and can no 
 longer find the seam which joined them." Never 
 did any love song, in its most ardent effusions, equal 
 this hymn to Friendship. "If I should be urged 
 to tell why I loved him, I feel that my only answer 
 can be : 'Because it was he, because he was myself.' " 
 Never did human souls mingle and blend in a more 
 intimate or a closer embrace. It was a universal 
 fusion and "commixture, which having seized all 
 my will, induced the same to plunge and lose itself 
 in his; which likewise having seized all his will, 
 brought it to lose and plunge itself in mine, with a 
 mutual greediness and with a like concurrence. . . ." 
 A La Rochefoucauld would perhaps say that self- 
 esteem, mutual admiration, the personal satisfac- 
 tion of finding one's self appreciated and understood, 
 played their part in this burning and passionate 
 friendship. What does it matter, if from this blend 
 of inferior motives there arises, in all its purity, the 
 flame of a sincere affection, ready for any self- 
 sacrifice? When La Boetie was first struck down 
 by the illness which was to carry him off at the age 
 
MONTAIGNE 11 
 
 of thirty-three, — the age at which Pascal died, — 
 he gave his friend to understand that his disease 
 might be infectious, and advised him therefore to 
 keep away, and to come and see him only occasion- 
 ally, for a few short moments. . . . How did Mon- 
 taigne act? "From that hour," he says, "I never 
 left him. . . ." * 
 
 Montaigne's friendship for La Boetie was the great 
 passion of his life. It was "a whole-hearted and 
 perfect" friendship, "one and indivisible," each one 
 giving himself up so entirely to his friend that 
 "there remained nothing to him to bestow else- 
 where"; an exclusive friendship which caused Mon- 
 taigne to turn with loathing from all other "vulgar 
 and common friendships"; it was like a first love, 
 when, the soul having surrendered itself entirely, 
 the fountain springs of the heart seem to have 
 dried up for life. Montaigne, to be sure, was ac- 
 quainted with other feelings than that of friendship. 
 In somewhat free and crude terms he makes us the 
 
 1 La Boetie died on the 18th of August, 1563, of dysentery. Born 
 at Sarlat in 1530, he was three years older than Montaigne. Ap- 
 pointed Councillor at the Parliament of Bordeaux in 1552, he had 
 Montaigne for a colleague from 1557, and it was there that they 
 formed their close friendship, founded on a perfect community of 
 feelings. Nothing indeed could be further from the truth than to 
 write : " How could these two friends think so differently while 
 they loved each other so closely ? " (Combes, Study on the political 
 ideas of Montaigne and of La Boetie.) 
 
12 MONTAIGNE 
 
 confidants of the love affairs of which he had more 
 than one in his youth. But "there was no part he 
 could play so well as that of a friend;" and he does 
 not hesitate to express his preference for a friend, 
 "a rare and exquisite friend," over the sweetest of 
 sweethearts. 
 
 11 These two passions entered my heart in full know- 
 ledge of each other, but were never to be compared ; 
 the former — friendship — ever pursued its proud 
 and lofty flight, and looked down disdainfully on the 
 other, fluttering to and fro far beneath her. . . ." 
 
 Montaigne enjoyed the intimate friendship of La 
 Boetie for only four years, but he never forgot it. 
 Eighteen years after his death, amidst all the in- 
 terests of his Italian journey, he wrote in his Journal, 
 or Diary: "I fell to thinking so sadly of M. de la 
 Boetie, and dwelt so long on these thoughts, that 
 it did me the greatest harm." And in the Es- 
 says : — 
 
 "If I compare my whole life with the four years 
 during which it was granted to me to enjoy the 
 sweet company and society of that friend, it is naught 
 but smoke; it seems but a dark and wearisome 
 night. Since the day when I lost him, I- have only 
 dragged languidly along, and the very pleasures 
 that offer themselves to me, instead of comforting 
 me, make me feel his loss twice as keenly ; we shared 
 
MONTAIGNE 13 
 
 everything together, and it seems to me that I am 
 stealing his share. ..." 
 
 But it is not only through the sentimental effu- 
 sions of his inconsolable regret that Montaigne has 
 given proof of the faithfulness of his attachment to 
 his vanished friend. If he often complained of his 
 memory, which was "marvellously apt to fail him," 
 he claims — and gave ample proof — that his heart 
 at least could remember. And indeed, he never 
 ceased to give tokens of his devotion to his friend, 
 
 — an active devotion ; he published La Boetie's 
 works; he took his part against those who in good 
 faith, after reading his pamphlet on Voluntary 
 Servitude — that republican manifesto of which 
 Villemain said that it was "like an ancient manu- 
 script found among the ruins of Rome, under the 
 shattered statue of the youngest of the Gracchi," 
 
 — might have been tempted to look upon its author 
 as a disturber of public order, as a dangerous revolu- 
 tionist. No; careful of La Boetie's memory, pru- 
 dent Montaigne would not allow it to be admitted 
 that the brilliant writer whom he had loved so well 
 and of whom he said that, had he lived, "he would 
 have been the greatest man of his time," was naught 
 but a rebel and a sedition-monger. He never tires 
 of repeating that on the contrary "there never was 
 a better citizen, one who was more anxious for the 
 
14 MONTAIGNE 
 
 peace of his country, or more averse to the disturb- 
 ances and novelties of his time." And as it may 
 appear difficult to justify this certificate of political 
 wisdom, granted to a pamphleteer who, with burn- 
 ing eloquence, pleaded the cause of liberty against 
 tyranny, the cause of the peoples against their 
 kings, who calls those who are in office "devourers 
 of the people," and religion "the body-guard of 
 tyrants," Montaigne endeavours to lessen the import 
 of La Boetie's words, to produce extenuating cir- 
 cumstances. According to him, this pamphlet is 
 a work of early youth, 1 the declamation of a sixth- 
 form schoolboy, steeped in the works of the an- 
 cients, hardly eighteen years of age, or even six- 
 teen, as Montaigne maintains on second thoughts 
 in a later edition of the Essays. It was in order not 
 to compromise by fresh publicity the memory of 
 his adopted brother, like "those who sought to 
 disturb and change our political state," and who 
 had already printed his work "with evil intent," 
 that Montaigne abstained from inserting in his 
 
 1 On Voluntary Servitude was printed in 1576, in the Memoires 
 de I'Etat de France sous Charles IX, published by Simon Goulart. 
 La Boetie had written it at the age of sixteen or eighteen, accord- 
 ing to Montaigne, i.e. in 1546 or 1548. The latter date is the more 
 probable, for the indignation which animates the young writer may 
 then be explained by the bloody repression which the Constable 
 Anne de Montmorency exercised at Bordeaux in 1548, in the 
 king's name. 
 
MONTAIGNE 15 
 
 own book the text of La Boetie's pamphlet, and set 
 in its place twenty-nine more inoffensive sonnets, 
 which do no less credit to La Boetie's poetical talent. 1 
 A heart as sensitive to friendship as that of Mon- 
 taigne cannot be taxed with coldness. The wound 
 of his shattered affection never ceased to bleed. 
 Besides, Montaigne by no means showed lack of 
 feeling in his actions taken as a whole. He sought, 
 more than he succeeded in attaining, the state of 
 tranquil indifference, the ataraxy of the philosophers. 
 I am well aware that his rule of life was to suffer as 
 little as possible, and to keep far from him anything 
 that might have afflicted him or disturbed his peace 
 of mind. I am aware that he, before Montesquieu, 
 said that reading and study drove away his grief: 
 "The company of books takes the edge off pain," 
 — and in short that, for reasons of health as much 
 as of wisdom, he endeavoured to look on the best 
 side of everything. 
 
 1 On this subject one may consult an interesting communication 
 made to the A cademie des Sciences morales et politiques on the 30th 
 of January, 1904, by Dr. Armaingaud. According to M. Armain- 
 gaud, it was Montaigne himself, whom La Boetie had appointed heir 
 to his books, as his " intimate brother and close friend/' who com- 
 municated to some Protestant polemical writers the text of the 
 pamphlet on Voluntary Servitude, which they were the first to 
 publish. M. Armaingaud even believes that Montaigne added with 
 his own hand several passages to the original text. There is much 
 that is obscure in Montaigne's complicated nature. 
 
16 MONTAIGNE 
 
 But in spite of all his efforts, his soul was rilled 
 with genuine and tender kindness. He was almost 
 inclined to reproach himself with what he called 
 "his extraordinary weakness for pity." — "I sym- 
 pathize keenly with the afflictions of others. . . . 
 The sight of the anguish of another fills me with 
 distinct anguish." — He even owns to being some- 
 what oversensitive, since, he says, he could not see 
 a chicken slaughtered, without a feeling of pain. 
 He shows love even to animals, can refuse nothing 
 to his favourite dog, and although a keen huntsman, 
 "he can hardly bear to hear a hare cry under the 
 teeth of his dogs." The smallest trifle would put 
 him about. "If my horse has been badly bridled, or 
 the loose end of a stirrup-leather beats against my 
 legs, I am out of sorts for the whole day." This 
 sage was afflicted with nerves; the least buzzing 
 of a fly was martyrdom to him. And, what is more 
 interesting still, he grieved over "the indigence and 
 oppression of the poor people." There is no doubt 
 that the grievous spectacle of the civil wars of his 
 time caused him suffering; it went to his heart to 
 see his country rent asunder. If, in 1570, eighteen 
 months before the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 he withdrew, at the age of thirty-seven, within his 
 castle, if he shut himself up in his ivory tower, 
 it was because he was sick of his century, a "spoilt 
 
MONTAIGNE 17 
 
 century" in which " lying was rampant," in which 
 the different factions vied with each other in deceit 
 and cruelty; it was because he could not get used 
 to so savage an age. He stood aloof, that he might 
 no longer view at such close quarters the misery 
 of his country, and it is not without reason that 
 some one has said that his retreat reminds us of that 
 of Alceste, fleeing from the world and from Celimene 
 because he loved them too well. 
 
 Montaigne's detractors have not spared him any 
 more in his public than in his private life. They 
 make him out to have been indifferent to the affairs 
 of his country and careless of his duties as a citizen. 
 Here, again, there is a legend to be exploded. He 
 does not, indeed, seem to have been born for action. 
 He was too fond of peaceful rest, and of ease, to 
 have a taste for active life, with all the hardships 
 which it involves. And yet he seems to have loved 
 soldiering, "the noblest of professions." This taste 
 manifests itself in the choice which he makes of his 
 three greatest men: a poet, Homer, and two mili- 
 tary leaders, Alexander the Great, whom he ranks 
 with either Csesar, or Epaminondas. 1 If he did not 
 seek after "high fortunes and commands," if he 
 avoided "scrambling to rise above the position in 
 
 1 Montaigne had seen active service on several occasions in the 
 ranks of the army of the king against the Huguenot troops. 
 
18 MONTAIGNE 
 
 which God placed him at his birth/' it was, he 
 admits, because "he was overfond of his ease." 
 Not, indeed, that he despised honours. He was proud 
 of having been made a knight of the order of Saint- 
 Michael by King Charles IX, in 1571 ; prouder still 
 perhaps of having been appointed by the future 
 Henry IV, in 1577, gentleman of the chamber to 
 the king of Navarre. Though he does not confess 
 to it in the Essays, we know from his Diary of Travel 1 
 that during his stay in Rome he took every step to 
 obtain the title of Roman citizen, which he bore 
 with great pride. "I spared no effort to obtain 
 the letters of Roman citizenship." He appreciated 
 purely honorary dignities, what one might call 
 platonic honours, but he preferred to waive aside with 
 a disdainful hand, lest his nonchalant day-dreams 
 should be disturbed, those offices which involved 
 duties, hard work, and heavy responsibilities. He 
 resigned in 1570, at the earliest possible moment, 
 his seat in the Parliament of Bordeaux. And if he 
 was elected mayor of that town in 1581, this mandate 
 
 1 Montaigne's journey lasted nearly a year and a half, from 
 the 22d of June, 1580, to the 30th of November, 1581. The Ms. of 
 his Diary was found, one hundred and eighty years after his death, 
 in an old strong-box, by Canon Prunis, who was on a visit at Mon- 
 taigne's castle. Montaigne's heirs may well be taxed with neglect 
 for forgetting among the dust of the attics so priceless a manu- 
 script. 
 
MONTAIGNE 19 
 
 was quite unsolicited, since the vote of his fellow- 
 citizens brought him back from Italy, where he had 
 been travelling for a year. 
 
 Though Montaigne confesses that he took only a 
 " languid interest" in public affairs, we must not 
 conclude that he proved inferior to his task when 
 called upon to act by circumstances. The mayor 
 of Bordeaux was wanting neither in abnegation nor 
 in vigilance. Read the letters which he addressed to 
 Marshal de Matignon, his Majesty's lieutenant-gen- 
 eral in Guyenne ; they show with what active solici- 
 tude he watched over the interests which were en- 
 trusted to him. Amidst the turmoil of civil war, 
 face to face with perpetual threats of attack and 
 invasion, he has an eye for everything; he inspects 
 the defensive works, he remains on foot and on the 
 alert at night, although "nothing is stirring," in 
 order to be ready for any eventuality. "I spent 
 every night under arms in the town, or else outside 
 the town at the harbour." It is sufficient proof that 
 he showed himself worthy of the confidence of his 
 fellow-citizens, that, contrary to custom, he was re- 
 elected mayor for two years in 1583. He reminds 
 us, not without some show of vanity, that "this 
 had only occurred twice before." His "languid 
 nature" had evidently not prevented him from 
 worthily fulfilling his trust. 
 
20 MONTAIGNE 
 
 "I wish these people well with all my heart," 
 he said, "and certainly, if occasion had arisen, I 
 should have spared nothing in their service." 
 
 But the occasion did arise, one will say — the 
 plague which visited Bordeaux in 1585; and Mon- 
 taigne is supposed to have then failed in his duty 
 by deserting his post and faint-heartedly protect- 
 ing his life from the danger of contagion. Let us 
 reestablish the facts, and note, first of all, that Mon- 
 taigne was absent from Bordeaux when the scourge 
 fastened on the town. Must we then find fault with 
 him for not returning to it? But wherein could 
 his presence have benefited the unfortunate people 
 of Bordeaux, during a disastrous epidemic which, 
 according to contemporaries, in six months laid 
 more than 14,000 victims in their graves ? 1 On 
 the 30th of July, 1585, Montaigne wrote from Li- 
 bourne to the magistrates of Bordeaux : — 
 
 "I shall spare neither my life, nor aught else, 
 in your service, and leave it to you to decide whether 
 that which I can render you through my presence, 
 at the coming elections, is worth my venturing into 
 the town, in its present evil plight." 
 
 So he placed himself at the disposal of those under 
 
 1 This is an enormous number, and must surely be exaggerated, 
 since the whole population of Bordeaux, at that time, hardly 
 exceeded 40,000 inhabitants. 
 
MONTAIGNE 21 
 
 his charge, who did not recall him, as they considered 
 they had no need for him. Let us add that the 
 plague had appeared even in Montaigne's castle, 
 that he had to flee, and that for several months he 
 wandered from place to place, with all his family, 
 to escape the epidemic. 
 
 " I went in painful quest of a retreat for my family, 
 
 — a wandering family, feared alike by their friends 
 and by each other, objects of horror wherever they 
 sought to settle down; obliged to change their 
 abode if only one of the band complained of a pain 
 in his finger. . . . For six dreary months I acted 
 as guide to this caravan. ..." 
 
 There are therefore several points to urge in Mon- 
 taigne's favour, to justify him for apparently shirking 
 his civic duties. The truth is that he did not think 
 himself obliged to run uselessly after danger, without 
 its profiting any one : " I shall follow the right-minded 
 party up to the stake, but stop short of it, if I can." 
 
 — "Let Montaigne be involved in the public ruin, 
 if need be; if there be no need, I shall be grateful 
 to fortune if he escapes." Prudence is not cowardice, 
 and to make free to blame Montaigne in this cir- 
 cumstance would be to show one's self unduly exact- 
 ing, unless a man is worthy of the name only on 
 condition that he has a taste for useless self-sacrifice 
 and unseasonable heroism. 
 
22 MONTAIGNE 
 
 If Montaigne kept aloof as much as he could 
 from public offices, " game he had no liking for," as 
 he used to say in his hunting language, he was never 
 indifferent, however, to the events of his time and 
 to the fortunes of France. 1 He witnessed as a spec- 
 tator, without taking any part in them, the trage- 
 dies which were enacted around him, but he was 
 an attentive and sad spectator, sometimes bitter 
 and full of anger in his judgments. " There is so 
 much corruption in the affairs of my time that I 
 could not mingle in them." And he buried him- 
 self anew, not without some impatience, in the 
 reading of his favourite authors; he took refuge 
 in the wisdom of the ancients, to turn aside and 
 divert his mind from present follies, to forget, 
 or try to forget, a time when " evil-doing was so 
 common." — "This century is so depraved that 
 whoever is guilty only of parricide and sacrilege is 
 looked upon as a man righteous and honourable." 
 Yet his anxious and inquisitive mind would not allow 
 him to remain long absorbed in studious medita- 
 tion. From within his library, he followed the course 
 of events. Situated by his place of residence "at 
 the very centre of disturbance of the civil wars of 
 
 1 In 1558 Montaigne was at the siege of Thionville. In 1559 
 he followed Francis II to Bar-le-Duc. In 1588 he was present 
 at the States of Blois, where the Due de Guise was murdered. 
 
MONTAIGNE 23 
 
 France, " — his castle was ransacked more than once 
 by bands of plunderers, — "he was all the more in- 
 clined to turn his thoughts to the affairs of the 
 State and of the universe without, when he was 
 alone," when he had leisure for reflection. He had 
 tears to shed for the unfortunate Mary Stuart, "the 
 fairest queen in the world, widow of the greatest 
 king in Christendom. . . . She has just died by the 
 hand of the executioner; an infamous and barbar- 
 ous piece of cruelty!" 
 
 What was his attitude amidst the religious or 
 political factions which were rending France ? That 
 of a faithful citizen, or at least of a faithful subject, 
 whose loyalty remained unshaken under five suc- 
 cessive kings, Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX, 
 Henry III, and Henry IV. "I shall spare neither 
 my care, nor, if need be, my life, to uphold the 
 king's authority in everything." His attitude was 
 also that of a philosopher of independent mind, who 
 judges impartially, and from a high standpoint, 
 both men and things, and who never abdicates the 
 rights of his conscience; he remains a stranger to 
 the violent passions, to the furious hatred, of the 
 various parties, keeps cool, and bears himself calmly 
 and judiciously through this period of universal 
 folly. 
 
 Montaigne was never a courtier, although he lived, 
 
24 MONTAIGNE 
 
 now and again, " amidst the agitation of court." 
 He did not adapt himself easily to the ways of 
 princely companies. He loathed ceremony. He 
 disliked to "hang about," to parley with some 
 ' i wretched unknown usher. ' ' Free and independent, 
 too unbending to lend himself to the whims of 
 princes, it was not in him to approve of all the acts 
 of the monarch, "in troublous and distempered 
 times, when the public weal is best served by treason, 
 falsehood, and massacre." He would willingly 
 have appropriated La Boetie's proud maxim, 
 "Let us obey our parents, own allegiance to Reason, 
 live in bondage to no one." He said himself: "I 
 will be a slave only to Reason;" and also to Law. 
 "The laws have relieved me of great distress; they 
 have traced a rule of conduct for me and given me 
 a master." 
 
 And however great his loyalty, when he speaks 
 in all freedom, he has harsh words for kings, who 
 are after all only men such as others are, "common 
 folk," and even "adventurers, less than the least 
 of their subjects, from whom they differ, so to speak, 
 only by their hose." He anticipated Pascal in 
 saying, "It is not my reason which bends and 
 yields before the great: it is my knees." 
 
 Montaigne, of course, knew that it is the duty of 
 a citizen not to remain neutral in questions of 
 
MONTAIGNE 25 
 
 national importance: "It would be treason, so to 
 speak, not to take sides. ... To remain uncer- 
 tain, to 'sit on the fence' with regard to the diffi- 
 culties of one's own country, appears to me neither 
 seemly nor worthy." But he did not always con- 
 form strictly to this rule of conduct. He was too 
 independent to enroll himself absolutely under one 
 party. He discerned with rare insight the qualities 
 and faults, the virtues and vices, of the men who 
 contended for power. He could appreciate the 
 qualities of the Dukes of Guise, for whom he had 
 conducted secret negotiations at the States of Blois, 
 in 1588; he even carried to some excess his admira- 
 tion for Cardinal de Lorraine, "that much begrimed 
 soul," as Brantome said, whom Montaigne looked 
 upon as "necessary for the public weal." But 
 on the other hand, he was loud in his praise of 
 Michel de l'Hopital; he visited him, in 1571, in 
 his place of retreat at Vignay, and said to him, 
 "I wish to do homage and show reverence to the 
 peculiar qualities which are in you." He was in 
 constant relation with those in authority at his 
 time, and was admitted into their confidence. He 
 never said to the one "what he could not have said 
 to the other," for "there is nothing to prevent one 
 from acting loyally between men who are enemies." 
 What high lessons in moderation we receive from 
 
26 MONTAIGNE 
 
 this philosopher, lost amidst a world of fanatics 
 and sectarians ! He looked down upon the stream 
 of intrigue and of hatred with eyes "less blinded 
 with passion" than those of his contemporaries. 
 "I am animated with passions neither of hatred nor 
 of love toward the great ; my will is fettered neither 
 through personal injuries nor through personal 
 obligations." Let us profit by his wise advice, 
 which applies equally to all times. Montaigne 
 would not allow a man to be looked upon as a traitor 
 or a turncoat, because he took the liberty of criti- 
 cising certain acts of his friends or of approving 
 certain ideas of his adversaries. He would have 
 none of that passive obedience which enrolls all 
 consciences under one flag, and which forbids any 
 independence of opinion. 
 
 "I have no words strong enough to condemn 
 this vicious way of thinking! — He belongs to the 
 'Ligue,' for he admires the urbanity of M. de Guise ! 
 — He is amazed at the activity of the king of 
 Navarre ; he is a Huguenot ! — He finds something 
 to criticise in the king's manner of life ; he is preach- 
 ing sedition!" 
 
 Montaigne shared the fate suffered by impartial 
 minds at all times: he incurred the disfavour of 
 every party. "For the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, 
 for the Guelph a Ghibelline." However careful he 
 
MONTAIGNE 27 
 
 was not to compromise himself, since, to avoid 
 blows, he would have hidden "even under the skin 
 of a calf," he did not always succeed. If ever he 
 experienced a surprise in his life, it was certainly on 
 the day in 1588, when he saw himself arrested and 
 incarcerated for a few hours in the Bastille by the 
 partisans of the Duke of Guise. 1 
 
 Montaigne was among those who "were amazed 
 at the activity of the king of Navarre." At the 
 time of his municipal administration, on the 19th 
 of December, 1584, he received him, not without 
 pomp, with all his court, in his castle in Perigord. 
 He did not await the king's conversion to wish and 
 hope for his triumph. In 1590 he wrote to him: 
 "Even when I had to confess it to my priest, I was 
 ever with you in your successes; now I am whole- 
 heartedly on your side." 
 
 But, whatever his respect for the personality of 
 kings, Montaigne was never slow to speak freely 
 to them and to give them advice. In what noble 
 language, for instance, did he address Henry IV ! 
 With what loftiness of political views he encouraged 
 him to clemency, reminding him that with regard 
 to the affections of a people, " it never rains but it 
 pours," and that if only once the tide of popular 
 good-will should set in his favour, its own impetus 
 
 1 He was immediately released by order of Catharine of Medici. 
 
28 MONTAIGNE 
 
 would carry it on irresistibly." With regard to 
 those who had been rebellious and disaffected, he 
 asked that the victor, even in the first flush of vic- 
 tory, should treat them "with greater kindness than 
 their protectors themselves had done." And he 
 concluded this sketch of the education of a prince, 
 by wishing that his Majesty " might be rather cher- 
 ished than feared of his people." 
 
 Montaigne has the poorest opinion of human 
 nature. If he urges us to study and " probe" our- 
 selves, it is partly that we may recognize "of what 
 weak and tottering pieces our whole fabric is built 
 up." "It appears to me," he dares to say, "that 
 we can never be despised according to our deserts." 
 
 "Of all the opinions which the ancients had of 
 man in general, I am most inclined to adopt those 
 which make us most contemptible, vile, and in- 
 significant." 
 
 He sees in man much malice and stupidity, and 
 even more stupidity than malice. We seem to be 
 listening to Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. And if he 
 includes the whole of humanity in a universal con- 
 tempt, he particularly dislikes that of his own time. 
 Abhorring falsehood as he does, it disgusts him to 
 see that " feint and dissembling," vices for which 
 he has a "deadly hatred," have become "the most 
 notable qualities of a depraved century." Rous- 
 
MONTAIGNE 29 
 
 seau will oppose the virtues of man in the state of 
 nature to the vices of man in a state of civilization. 
 Montaigne would not gainsay this view, but he would 
 rather incline to place the golden age at Athens 
 or at Rome, with the ancients, whom he thinks 
 superior to modern men. 
 
 "We do not," he says, " possess their vigour of 
 mind. . . . Our will is as much impaired as theirs 
 ever was, but we cannot equal them, either in the 
 refinements of pleasure, or in virtue." 
 
 But Montaigne belongs to his time and shares all 
 its prejudices in his opinion of women. He knows 
 no better yet than to subordinate the life of woman 
 to that of man; he looks upon woman as born to 
 serve. Let us excuse him; two hundred years 
 later, Rousseau will hold the same views. Mon- 
 taigne can imagine for her no royalty but that of 
 beauty; her sovereignty consists in being charming 
 and graceful. " Where the ladies have a real ad- 
 vantage is in their beauty." He has indeed much 
 to say about them, and in the Essay entitled 
 Of three Commerces or Societies, i.e. men, books, and 
 women, he enters into long dissertations on feminine 
 intercourse. In his travels, if he is a keen observer 
 of all things, he by no means neglects to look at 
 women; in the towns through which he passes, he 
 is careful to note their manner of dress and their 
 
30 MONTAIGNE 
 
 adornment; he distinguishes between their differ- 
 ent degrees of beauty. He expresses the opinion, 
 for instance, that in Italy there are not so many 
 handsome women as in France, but that there are 
 fewer ill-favoured ones. At Rome, he even visits 
 women of doubtful morals. Like Socrates, he fre- 
 quents Aspasia, but he is careful to reassure us, and 
 warns us that his intercourse with courtesans is 
 limited to "mere conversation," a precaution which 
 is perhaps not unnecessary, coming from a man 
 who confessed to having known "love in its most 
 frenzied forms," and who needed to be ever on his 
 guard, "being one of those in whom the flesh is 
 weak." 
 
 But however sensitive he may have been to the 
 attractions of the fair sex, Montaigne nearly always 
 showed himself unjust in his appreciation of their 
 intellectual capacity, as also of their moral worth. 
 He sets women apart in a world of their own, that 
 of their "own and natural riches" ; he will not allow 
 them to participate in the labours of men, and does 
 not consider them fitted for mental work. Long 
 before Moliere, he holds that they are learned enough 
 "when they can distinguish between their husband's 
 shirt and his doublet." He likes to speak ill, not 
 only of their intelligence, but of their character. 
 Consider the beginning of the chapter entitled "Of 
 
MONTAIGNE 31 
 
 Three Good Women." Does he only know of three, 
 then, in spite of his great learning? "They are not 
 to be found by the dozen," he says, "particularly 
 with regard to their conjugal duties. . . ." 
 
 He would not even admit that a woman was 
 capable of friendship, that feeling "in which," he 
 said, "I am an expert." 
 
 "There is no example of this sex having ever yet 
 attained to it. . . . The ordinary endowments of 
 women are not such as will suffice for the close com- 
 munion which fosters this holy bond; their soul 
 does not appear to be firm enough to stand the strain 
 of so tight and so enduring a knot." 
 
 Nor can we refrain from smiling when we see our 
 philosopher call upon the authority of the ancients 
 to corroborate his opinion: "By common consent 
 of all ancient schools this sex has been denied any 
 participation in friendship." 
 
 Women, thus disgraced in Montaigne's mind, would 
 have good cause to be indignant. But one should 
 never quarrel with him for an overhasty word, for 
 some rather harsh judgment which he may have 
 risked. He is apt to withdraw, to contradict, what 
 he has advanced. In the perpetual fluctuation of 
 his thought, there is never anything definite. After 
 judging women so unfavourably, he suddenly turns 
 round, — a familiar trick of his, — he changes his 
 
32 MONTAIGNE 
 
 mind, and in other passages of the Essays, he does 
 them full justice. It is pleasant to hear him say 
 that "it is vain arrogance on the part of men to 
 assume over them some vague preeminence in cour- 
 age and virtue." We might almost be listening 
 to a latter-day " feminist" when he declares that 
 "women are not at all wrong to decline to recognize 
 the rules of living which obtain in this world, since 
 it is men who framed them, and without consulting 
 women." This scoffer goes so far as to say, "Males 
 and females are cast in the same mould; there is 
 no great difference between them, save such as has 
 been wrought by education and custom. ..." 
 And he insists : — 
 
 "If women attain less often than men to high 
 degrees of excellence, it is a wonder that this lack 
 of a good education has not a worse result. Is there 
 any more difference between men and them than 
 there is among themselves according to the education 
 which they have received, according as they have 
 been brought up in town or in the country, or accord- 
 ing to their nature? Why, with proper intellectual 
 nourishment, should it not be possible to bridge 
 the interval which exists between their understand- 
 ing and that of men?" 
 
 So, to become man's equal, woman is only await- 
 ing better intellectual "nourishment," a better 
 
MONTAIGNE 33 
 
 education; it is to be regretted that Montaigne, 
 who understood so well the necessity of it, did not 
 take the trouble to outline it. 
 
 If Montaigne's good sense had not been enough 
 to compel him to this retractation, we may believe 
 that toward the end of his life the friendship of 
 Mile, de Gournay would have contributed to modify 
 and to soften the severity of his judgments on woman. 
 The devotedness of her whom he called "his daugh- 
 ter of alliance," 1 and who was supremely proud and 
 happy of this title, touched him to the quick. He 
 was not without some legitimate vanity, and al- 
 though he says jestingly of his book that it will 
 only serve "to keep some piece of butter from melt- 
 ing in the market-place," he was not without some 
 idea of the value of the Essays. His vanity as a 
 writer was agreeably tickled by the ingenuous ad- 
 miration of a young lady of twenty, who in her bom- 
 bastic and somewhat peculiar style said of the 
 Essays that they were "the judicial throne of reasons, 
 the accession to manhood of the mind, the resur- 
 rection of truth." At this outburst of feminine 
 sympathy, Montaigne was delighted, though rather 
 taken aback. "That she, a woman, in that century, 
 and so young, should thus have understood and 
 
 'This is Florio's translation of "sa fille d' alliance." (Trans- 
 lator's note.) 
 
34 MONTAIGNE 
 
 extolled him," evidently disturbed his disdainful 
 estimate of feminine understanding. "The great 
 vehemence with which she for long loved me and 
 desired my acquaintance," — she only entered into 
 relations with him in 1588, four years before his 
 death, 1 — appeared to him as "an accident most 
 worthy of consideration " ; note, however, that he 
 says an " accident," as if he persisted in excluding 
 women from participation in friendship. He at 
 least admitted her to his own, and went so far as to 
 say: "She is all I have left in this world. . . . She 
 is one of the best parts of my own being. . . ." 
 
 Montaigne lived in constant communion with 
 books. He was a reader before aught else. His 
 library, fairly well stocked with about a thousand 
 volumes, was a fine one, he said, "among village 
 libraries." He never travelled without books, either 
 in peace or in war. He knew of no better provision 
 for our journey through life. It was in his study 
 that he spent "most of the days of his life, and 
 most of the hours of each day." 
 
 He was not content with reading much ; he could 
 appreciate the worth of what he read. He may 
 be looked upon as the creator of literary criticism, 
 
 1 There was not only correspondence, but mutual visiting, 
 between Montaigne and Mile, de Gournay. He went to see her 
 at her castle in Picardy, in 1588, and Mile, de Gournay returned 
 his visit at Montaigne. 
 
MONTAIGNE 35 
 
 and it would be easy to compose an Art of Writing 
 by bringing together various passages scattered 
 through the Essays. 
 
 The perspicacity of his literary taste is rarely at 
 fault. His only blunder, almost, was his judgment 
 on Rabelais, when he set down Gargantua among 
 the books that are "merely intended to amuse us," 
 like the Decameron of Boccaccio and the Basia of 
 Johannes Secundus. His erudition was most ex- 
 tensive, although he always poses as an ignoramus. 
 It is true that he knew nothing of Greek, greatly 
 inferior thereby to some of his contemporaries, — to 
 Henri de Mesmes, who could recite Homer from 
 one end to the other, and also to La Boetie, who 
 had translated into French the (Economics of Xeno- 
 phon. But he had a thorough knowledge of the 
 Latin tongue, which he had learnt from his birth 
 as another mother language: "I understand it 
 better than French." In his youth he had written 
 a considerable quantity of Latin verse ; in his man- 
 hood even, when he was strongly moved, Latin 
 words were the first to come to his lips. He knew 
 Italian, as he showed by writing in that language 
 part of his Diary of Travel. He was acquainted 
 with Spanish, and read assiduously the books pub- 
 lished in Spain, which dealt with the discovery of 
 the New World. 
 
36 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Some writers claim to have recognized in Mon- 
 taigne the predominance of the Latin genius. This 
 is not quite exact, since he disliked Cicero, and went 
 to Greece to find his three greatest men: Homer, 
 Alexander, and Epaminondas. And had he chosen 
 a fourth, it would perhaps have been Socrates: 
 "In speaking of him," says Emerson, "for once his 
 cheek flushes, and his style rises to passion." 
 
 Montaigne had a "special fondness" for poetry. 
 At school, at the age of seven or eight already, he 
 read Ovid with transports of delight. He read the 
 whole of Virgil, then Terence, then Plautus, without 
 a pause. He has been reproached wrongly with 
 a preference for the literature of the Roman Deca- 
 dence. It is true that he esteemed Lucan, but he 
 placed in the front rank, and far above him, Virgil, 
 Lucretius, Horace, and Catullus, not to mention 
 Terence and Martial. He quotes Lucretius oftenest ; 
 he admires Virgil most, especially in the Georgics, 
 "the most finished work in poetry," and in the fifth 
 book of the Mneid, "the most perfect of all." 
 
 The historians, the philosophers, and the moralists 
 were also among his favourite authors. He took little 
 pleasure in reading the orators; and although he 
 says of Cicero that "no man ever equalled his 
 eloquence," he thought his writings "tedious"; he 
 goes so far as to say that he finds in them nothing 
 
MONTAIGNE 37 
 
 but "wind." He read Tacitus over and over with 
 delight, and " was wont to give Csesar special praise." 
 But the books which he kept ever at hand were, 
 before all others, Seneca and Plutarch; Plutarch 
 especially, "our Plutarch," since he had assumed 
 a French garb in the translation of Amyot, to whom 
 Montaigne gave the palm over all other French 
 writers. 
 
 "We ignorant men might have given ourselves 
 up for lost, if the translation of Plutarch had not 
 raised us from the mire." 
 
 Among other reasons why "Plutarch is his man," 
 he gives the following, to wit : that his work is com- 
 posed of unconnected pieces; you can "leave him 
 whenever you please; he does not compel you to 
 long and assiduous labour." Is that not also one of 
 the reasons to which the Essays owe their success 
 and their popularity? 
 
 One of the distinctive features of Montaigne's 
 character is curiosity, a curiosity which descends to 
 old wives' gossip. He has a fondness for anecdotes, 
 for small details, far more, perhaps, than for general 
 ideas. He collects the tittle-tattle of his immediate 
 neighbourhood, of Toulouse, of Bergerac, as well as 
 that of the writers of Rome and Athens. In the 
 towns through which he passes he picks up the 
 stories and tales which are current. 
 
38 MONTAIGNE 
 
 For those who would know Montaigne intimately, 
 his Diary of Travel is a document worth studying. 
 In the Essays, though he hates to be artificial, he 
 is nevertheless an author, composing his features 
 before a mirror. In his notes of travel, hurriedly 
 jotted down from day to day, he shows himself 
 " naked," as he said, and often in an unexpected 
 light. Travelling, indeed, with its surprises, and 
 the novelty of the sights which it presents to the 
 eyes, gives rise to many fresh impressions; it vivi- 
 fies faculties which the routine of ordinary life had 
 left inactive. In Italy, Montaigne discloses to us 
 how much his soul, in spite of all his protestations, 
 was open to new influences, and with what ease it 
 adapted itself to foreign customs. His was an uni- 
 versal soul, open to everything, ready for anything, 
 more receptive even than learned; a cosmopolitan 
 soul, so to speak, — cosmopolitan even as regarded 
 the table, since he regretted not having brought his 
 "chef" with him, in order to have him learn Italian 
 cookery. 
 
 Montaigne's journey was no doubt a satisfaction 
 afforded to his taste for exploration and discovery: 
 "Our life here below is a quest after Truth; the 
 world is a school for inquiry." But his journey 
 was undertaken especially in quest of health; it 
 was a medical pilgrimage from one hot spring to 
 
MONTAIGNE 39 
 
 another. Do not mention glory to him, or wealth 
 or power: "Let me have health, by the grace of 
 God !" His halts in Rome or Florence, to view the 
 masterpieces of art, are shorter than his sojourn 
 at the mineral station Delia Villa, near Lucca, to 
 try to regain the physical strength which is leaving 
 him. 1 It is true that with his customary irony he 
 jeers at the pretended virtues of those miraculous 
 waters, " which cure all diseases" ; but he uses them, 
 nevertheless, and even overdoes it. Wherever there 
 is a spring, without stopping to inquire about the 
 nature of its waters, he hastens to it, bathes and 
 drinks ; he drinks immoderately, frantically, up to 
 nine glasses a day at Plombieres, seven glasses at 
 Baden or at Lucca. . . . 
 
 "How little industrious I am!" Montaigne used 
 to say. Must we then tax him with laziness ? Yes, 
 if laziness consists in a dislike for regular work, in 
 the avoidance of all painful effort. — Of the game 
 of chess he used to say, "I hate it, because it re- 
 quires too much effort for a game." — No, if it is 
 true that the ever active, ever alert and inquisitive 
 mind of a man who loved travelling because he found 
 
 1 Montaigne had also frequented the mineral springs of France, 
 Bagneres de Bigorre, Eaux-Chaudes, Dax, etc. Cf. the study by 
 Dr. Constantin James: Montaigne, ses voyages aux eaux minerales, 
 Paris, 1859. 
 
40 MONTAIGNE 
 
 in it a continual "exercitation," cannot be charged 
 with laziness. 
 
 Would it be any fairer to reproach him with 
 having been nothing but an egotist? Here again 
 we might plead either for or against, on the author- 
 ity of Montaigne's own declarations. His advocate 
 might quote for the defence the passages in the 
 Essays, where he says that he is sociable to excess 
 that can enjoy no pleasure unless he shares it with 
 others. "My essential form," he said, "is a ten- 
 dency to communication." He loved conversation 
 as an exercise of the soul, apart from any other 
 gain to be derived from it; and in conversation, he 
 said, there should be naught but kindness, straight- 
 forwardness, cheerfulness, and friendship. 
 
 But, on the other hand, how many confessions of 
 his show him solely concerned with his personal 
 happiness, and convinced that the first duty of man 
 is to be happy ! 
 
 "A man should take to wife none but himself. . . . 
 The greatest thing in the world is to know how to 
 belong to one's self. . . . We should reserve a back- 
 shop for ourselves, entirely our own, entirely free, 
 where we may establish our true liberty, where we 
 may discourse and laugh, as if we had neither wife, 
 nor children, nor possessions." 
 
 The state that Pascal realized in his life through 
 
MONTAIGNE 41 
 
 piety, mysticism, and love of God, — a state of re- 
 nunciation of human affections and of withdrawal 
 within himself, — Montaigne attained to that state 
 by another road, through love of himself. "The 
 ego is hateful," said Pascal; "the ego is our all," 
 Montaigne would almost say. Starting from those 
 contradictory principles, the two moralists arrive 
 at the same practical conclusion : a sort of cenobitism 
 of a religious type with the one, of a lay type with 
 the other. 
 
 Montaigne's egotism is at bottom only a need of 
 independence, carried to its extreme limit. He 
 was determined to belong to himself. He hated 
 being under any obligation, or being bound in any 
 way. He hated above all servitude or subjection : — 
 
 "Princes do me enough good when they do me 
 no harm; that is all I require of them." 
 
 He is the enemy of any assiduity, of any constraint : 
 "I have a deadly hatred of being either bound or 
 subject to any other than myself." 
 
 Domestic affairs, although less important than 
 public business, are not less irksome to him ; he calls 
 them "servile duties." He wishes his happiness 
 to depend on himself alone. He is so anxious to 
 rid himself of all subjection, of all obligations, that 
 sometimes he considered himself the gainer by the 
 ingratitude of those to whom he had done a service, 
 
42 MONTAIGNE 
 
 because it dispensed him from fresh efforts to renew 
 his good offices. While he admits that we should 
 act while we are young, and give to the world "our 
 more active and flourishing years," he thinks we 
 should detach ourselves very soon, and early "take 
 leave of the company." 
 
 "We have lived enough for others; let us live for 
 ourselves at least during this remainder of life ; and 
 let us live to seek our ease." 
 
 Montaigne has another fault : he is not without 
 vanity. He is proud of his armorial bearings, and 
 swells with importance when he says, " My coat is 
 azure treflee or," etc. 
 
 He puts down in his diary, with great satisfaction, 
 the civilities shown to him, as to a stranger of dis- 
 tinction, by the magistrates and notable men of the 
 towns which he visits. In the inns where he takes 
 his quarters, his escutcheon with his coat-of-arms 
 must be affixed to the outer walls. He speaks with 
 vanity of his ancestors, of his castle: "It is my 
 birthplace and that of most of my ancestors," and 
 he introduces them to us as gentlemen of an old 
 stock, although they were nothing but rich fish- 
 mongers, according to Scaliger. 1 
 
 The reader must not think, however, that it was 
 
 1 Scaliger had been a pupil at the " College de Guyenne " a few 
 years after Montaigne. 
 
MONTAIGNE 43 
 
 through vanity that he spoke so much of himself. 
 It is without any underlying pride, and at the risk 
 of compromising himself in the opinion of his readers, 
 that he complacently gives us such minute informa- 
 tion on his most intimate habits. He disobeys the 
 maxim of the ancients, "Hide thy life." He gives 
 us his physical portrait, speaks of his heavy mus- 
 tache, of his medium stature and thickset body, 
 adding that a handsome stature is the only beauty 
 of men, and that he could lay no claim to it. But 
 it is his moral self that he outlines. "What a fool- 
 ish design Montaigne formed," says Pascal, "to go 
 and picture himself!" We might retort, with Vol- 
 taire, that it was on the contrary "a charming 
 design," and especially with Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre, "When J.- J. Rousseau and Montaigne talk 
 about themselves, I think they are talking about 
 me." If Montaigne has met with so much favour, it 
 is because almost all men recognize themselves in 
 him, with their weaknesses and faults. He confessed 
 to his with such easy frankness, that it seems to 
 us that his example is an excuse for our own faults. 
 In any case we cannot reproach him with showing 
 himself in too favourable a light, with singing his 
 own praises, since he is apt rather to jeer at himself : 
 "I am nothing but a goose." He tells us, to our 
 surprise, that he is completely wanting in memory; 
 
44 MONTAIGNE 
 
 his other faculties, he says, are of the most common- 
 place type. In his assumption of false modesty, 
 he goes so far as to say, "Everything is coarse in 
 me; there is a lack of grace and beauty." 
 
 If we are to believe him, he was but a dull boy at 
 school, "both heavy and leaden, longer to learn a 
 lesson, and less interested, not only than all his 
 brothers, but even than all the children of his prov- 
 ince"; and he means these words to apply both to 
 the exercises of the body and to those of the mind. 
 
 Montaigne's moderation has often been praised, 
 and it is certain that he was, before aught else, a 
 believer in the golden mean. He is in this respect 
 a typical example of the French spirit, of the old 
 French spirit at least, of that exquisite sense of 
 measure that we are gradually losing. He is mod- 
 erate even in wisdom : — 
 
 "In my old age, I guard against temperance, as 
 I did formerly against pleasure. Wisdom may 
 be carried to excess, and requires moderation no 
 less than folly. There may be excess in virtue, and 
 it is no longer virtue, if any excess be in it." 
 
 Even when he feels most keenly, he keeps himself 
 well in hand; he does not give himself entirely 
 away; "he spares his will." He was voluptuous, 
 it must be admitted, since he said, "If I find 
 the smallest opportunity for pleasure, I grab at 
 
MONTAIGNE 45 
 
 it"; — and again, "I who have no other aim 
 but to live and to enjoy life"; — and yet he 
 strove to avoid temptation; he was on his guard 
 against his passions. In his youth, he would fight 
 against the progress of any love entanglement, 
 when "he felt it taking too great a hold on him." 
 He did not allow his feeling to burst into such a 
 flame as would have held him "at its mercy." He 
 curbed his will, as soon as it fastened too lustfully 
 on any object. Not that he entered upon a direct 
 struggle, for effort was painful to him, but he em- 
 ployed stratagem and cunning to get the better 
 of his new-born passion, and created diversions in 
 order to weaken the desire which threatened to 
 tyrannize over him. 
 
 This wise spirit of moderation, which character- 
 izes Montaigne, does not, however, go so far as to 
 forbid him fits of anger and indignation, or strong 
 hatred. Whatever wisdom study and meditation 
 have instilled into him, his Gascon nature some- 
 times regains the upper hand with all its fierceness. 
 He certainly shows little moderation when, before 
 Moliere, and with even more harshness, he showers 
 sarcasm and invective upon medicine and doctors, 
 "with their magistral fopperies and prosopopeyal 
 gravity." — "The sun shines upon their successes 
 and the earth hides their blunders. . . . They 
 
46 MONTAIGNE 
 
 killed off a friend of mine who was worth more than 
 the whole lot of them." — He shows no moderation 
 when, with scathing irony, he attacks pedantry and 
 false science; when he calls philosophy "a clatter 
 of brains." He shows least moderation of all when, 
 allowing himself to be carried away, full sail, with a 
 relentless vehemence for which Pascal admired him, 
 he pitilessly takes human reason to task for its con- 
 tradictions, uses its own weapons to crumple it up, 
 revolts against its pretensions to attain to certainty, 
 and places man "by special favour, on a level with 
 beasts." 
 
 If, in his indictment of reason, Montaigne bases 
 himself on the contradictions of human opinions: 
 " There never were in this world two opinions alike ; " 
 — he might equally well have instanced, in support 
 of his argument, the indecisions of his own mind 
 and of his ever vacillating thought : — 
 
 "Distinguo: on this word I base the whole of my 
 logic. . . . There are just as great disparities within 
 ourselves as between ourselves and others. . . . 
 Within myself will be found every contradiction: 
 I am bashful and insolent, chaste and licentious, 
 talkative and silent, hard-working and a dilettante 
 [he does not say "lazy"], ingenious and dull, morose 
 and good-natured, given to lying [when he referred, 
 for instance, to the noble origin of his family] and 
 
MONTAIGNE 47 
 
 truthful, learned and ignorant, open-handed, stingy 
 and prodigal." 
 
 And a few more characteristics might be added: 
 sceptical and credulous, indifferent and passionate, 
 stay-at-home and fond of travelling. . . . There 
 are all sorts of men in Montaigne. He experienced 
 every impulse of human nature. And what he said 
 of other men is at least true of himself, "Each man 
 bears within himself every attribute of humanity." 
 
 With Montaigne we must always be on our guard, 
 and distrust even his most categoric affirmations. 
 You have recorded one of his opinions, for which 
 he has stated the strongest grounds. That, then, 
 is his final verdict, you say, and you are about to 
 congratulate him or to show that he is wrong. Do 
 not be over-hasty, for if you turn the page, you will 
 perhaps find a different, or even a contrary, con- 
 clusion on the same subject, and expressed with the 
 same apparent conviction; you may even think it 
 impossible that such contradictory ideas should have 
 "come from the same shop." Nothing is more dis- 
 concerting than this uncertain course of an ever 
 elusive thought, at the mercy of every wind, and 
 which never finds its moorings. 
 
 Let us consider, however, that the fluctuating 
 indecision of Montaigne's judgments springs from 
 some of the qualities of his mind: first, from the 
 
48 MONTAIGNE 
 
 impetuosity of his imagination: "I love to see 
 poetry skip and frolic on its way. . . . My own 
 style and mind ramble about in a like manner;" 
 and, secondly and especially, from his penetrating 
 acuteness, his anxious curiosity, which makes him 
 turn the same subject over and over in his mind, 
 in order to see further into it. Let superficial minds 
 pride themselves on never varying ! When once 
 they have got hold of a little bit of the truth, they 
 stick to it, and will no longer depart from the shal- 
 low opinion they have formed after a rapid glance at 
 the object they are studying. Montaigne, who goes 
 below the surface, and right round an idea, who looks 
 at every side of a fact and often returns to the same 
 question, sees it in turn from every point of view. 
 Montaigne's contradictions are in the main only the 
 consequence of the very complexity of the questions 
 he sets himself, the reflection of a world which is 
 naught but " variety and dissimilarity." — "I con- 
 tradict myself, but I do not contradict truth." 
 
 It is also possible that Montaigne's contradictions 
 are due to the inconsistency of a character made up 
 entirely of contrasts. He blamed those who are 
 ever the slaves of the same inclination, and, in his 
 expressive language, said that "he would rather 
 approve of a soul built up of several platforms, such 
 as might be raised to any height and taken to pieces 
 
MONTAIGNE 49 
 
 again." The suppleness of his mind verged on in- 
 coherence. In one place, he will say of Socrates 
 that he is "the man most worthy to be known and 
 given as an example to the world"; in another he 
 will extol Alcibiades, and "his life, the richest that 
 one could live." In the same chapter, he will talk, 
 like a saint, "of divine Providence, which allows its 
 Church to be tossed amid so many storms, in order 
 to awaken pious souls"; and a few lines further on 
 he will tell us at great length his own adventures 
 with the ladies. 
 
 The inconsistency of Montaigne's character be- 
 trays also a certain levity. His imagination carried 
 him away. ' ' Most of us, in the workings of our mind, 
 require lead rather than wings." — "A very little," 
 he would say, "diverts us and leads us astray, be- 
 cause we are held down by very little." He was 
 liable to fly away at any moment because he never 
 clung strongly to anything. We are grieved to find 
 that even when sunk in grief over the loss of La 
 Boetie, he immediately sought a diversion : — 
 
 "I once suffered a great grief; to divert my 
 thoughts, I played at being in love. And love 
 consoled me of the pain that friendship had caused 
 me." 
 
 The Essays contain lessons for every age, as we 
 have just seen, some of them not altogether edify- 
 
50 MONTAIGNE 
 
 ing. They contain excellent ones for old age. Now 
 it should be noticed that Montaigne thought himself 
 on the downward slope of old age when he was only- 
 forty years old. Thenceforward he was only "half 
 a being, " as he said. In 1582, at the age of fifty, 
 while writing the third book of the Essays, he 
 said, "I am shrivelling up and growing rancid." 
 But what a cheerful and smiling old man he is ! 
 How he strives to maintain, amidst the infirmities 
 of age and the harbingers of death, his good-humour 
 and his gayety! God keep him from resembling 
 those whose soul, as they grow old, " grows sour and 
 musty!" As his memories roam through his long 
 years of past happiness, he does not consume him- 
 self in vain regret: "I neither complain of the past, 
 nor fear the future." He considers himself happy 
 to have journeyed so far through life: "I have seen 
 the young shoot and the flowers, and the fruit, and 
 I now see the withering of the stock." No doubt 
 the poor man, who, as he says, is "on the high road 
 to ruin," does show some little regret for the days 
 of his youth, so green and full of strength. Read, 
 for instance, the chapter On Some Verses of Virgil, 
 which would be better entitled : The Art of Love, 
 or Confessions of a Don Juan. 1 If Montaigne finds 
 
 1 Scaliger said that this chapter should have for a title Coq-a 
 I'dne, or Cock and Bull Stories. 
 
MONTAIGNE 51 
 
 it somewhat difficult to take leave of the pleasures 
 of youth, he starts in quest of others, and grows 
 fond of good cheer: "I am learning to appreciate 
 good wine and good sauces." Better still, he en- 
 deavours to remain youthful in mind ; for it is the 
 privilege of the mind to " regain possession of itself" 
 and to rise above the attacks of age : "Let my mind 
 remain green, and bloom, if it can, like mistletoe, 
 on a dead tree. ..." It is true that elsewhere 
 he will confess sadly that old age "puts more wrin- 
 kles on our minds than on our faces." 
 
 He had no fear of death, of which he said, playing 
 on the words, that it is "not the end, but the termi- 
 nation of life"; l and elsewhere that it is "the last 
 act of the play." Even "amidst the dances and 
 games" of his youth, he already thought of death. 
 One of his admirers, Justus Lipsius, mistook not 
 when he wrote to Mile, de Gournay, — begging her 
 to look upon him thenceforth "as her brother," — 
 that their adoptive father "had no doubt greeted 
 death with that cheerfulness which was natural 
 to him." Indeed, it is very surprising that the idea 
 of death should present itself so often to Montaigne's 
 mind, like a haunting obsession. He constantly 
 returns to it, not to tremble, but to "grow familiar 
 with it." — "Let us have nothing so often in our 
 
 1 Non le but, mais le bout de la vie. 
 
52 MONTAIGNE 
 
 minds as death." He wishes, he says, "to be recon- 
 ciled to death, to make friends with it." His suffer- 
 ings help him to prepare for it, to go through what 
 we might call the education of death. He notes 
 down with the greatest minuteness what his im- 
 pressions had been, one day that he had fainted after 
 a fall from his horse; and he concludes from this 
 semi-experience that the passage from life to death 
 is perhaps not so painful as people imagine. 
 
 " Perhaps death is not worth all the trouble I take, 
 all the preparations I make, all the assistance I call 
 up and collect in order to bear that ordeal. I can 
 depart, when it pleases God, without regretting 
 anything in this world." 
 
 What he hopes for is a sudden death: " Death 
 is all the better for being swift." It is then, he says 
 almost light-heartedly, only a difficult quarter of 
 an hour to go through. He would not mind dying 
 on horseback. If he had lived in our times, death 
 in a motor-car would have been quite to his taste. 
 Being an epicure, and fond of his ease even in death, 
 he would fain die gently, without sadness, far from 
 the honest tears of relatives, and of the feigned 
 demonstrations of grief of false friends. 
 
 How can we wonder that Pascal, a Christian, who 
 never contemplates death and its mystery without 
 quaking, is indignant with a philosopher who awaits 
 
MONTAIGNE 53 
 
 it almost with indifference, and who would "die 
 basely, unresistingly, like a pagan " ? Montaigne's 
 feelings with regard to death are "horrible," says 
 Pascal. 1 No, they are those of a man nobly resigned 
 to the common law, — those of a man who hopes to 
 die as he lived, like a sage, master of himself; who 
 sees his last moments drawing nigh, not only undis- 
 turbed, but without "care," without anxiety, and 
 who continues "the course of his life even unto 
 death." 
 
 Where Pascal is right, is when he observes that 
 amid Montaigne's reflections on death, there is 
 hardly a thought given to the hereafter. With 
 regard to immortality, no doubt, as on all other 
 religious questions, the author of the Essays pro- 
 fesses the Roman Catholic faith. But at heart, 
 regarding that future life which he hardly ever 
 mentions, had he any definite assurance, any settled 
 opinion? The answer is doubtful. He quotes, 
 without comment, La Boetie's dying words: "I 
 am going, I am certain of it, to find God and the 
 abode of the blessed. ..." And likewise, in his 
 eulogy of Julian the Apostate, "that man so great 
 and so rare" — the censors of the Roman Inquisi- 
 tion took him to task for these words of praise, and 
 
 1 Pascal was almost as angry with him for having expressed 
 doubts regarding the certainty of geometry. 
 
54 MONTAIGNE 
 
 invited him to "reclothe" this passage, — he notes, 
 without adding a word, the fact that Julian "had 
 a strong faith in the eternity of souls." And again, 
 he will say of those who sacrifice the care of our 
 present existence to the thought of their future 
 destiny: "That opinion is absurd, which holds our 
 present life in contempt. ..." What conclusion 
 are we to come to, but that the immortality of the 
 soul was for Montaigne a problem to which he affixed 
 a note of interrogation, and to which he applied his 
 famous "What do I know ?" ; that it was at the most 
 vague and uncertain hope? 
 
 "O what a bold faculty is hope, which, in mortal 
 man, and in a moment, does not shrink from usurp- 
 ing the Infinite, Immensity, nay, Eternity itself ! . . ." 
 
 Montaigne's religion has been the subject of much 
 discussion. Large volumes, — such as that of Abbe 
 de la Bouderie, — have been written on his Chris- 
 tian faith. Others, readers of Chateaubriand, have 
 said that the Essays might be called, "The Genius 
 of Paganism." Whom are we to listen to? What 
 is beyond doubt is that Montaigne bears himself 
 outwardly as a perfectly orthodox Roman Catholic. 
 He partakes of the Sacraments; he is devout, he 
 makes the sign of the Cross "whenever there is 
 occasion"; for instance, "when he yawns." At 
 Eastertide he receives the sacrament at Loreto, in 
 
MONTAIGNE 55 
 
 Italy ; * but vainglorious as ever, he would have us 
 know that he receives it in a private chapel, " which 
 every one may not do." He repeats the Lord's 
 Prayer: a prayer " dictated by the very mouth of 
 God," and indeed the only one which he used. He 
 has a priest called to his death-bed. And again 
 he declares that he submits humbly to the Catholic 
 church, "in which he is dying and into which he 
 was born." He bows his head before the divine 
 will. 
 
 "It is enough that a Christian should believe that 
 all things come from God, and receive them in the 
 full acknowledgment of His divine and inscrutable 
 wisdom." 
 
 It was Man in the state of nature that the Jansen- 
 ists anathematized in Montaigne. And yet it often 
 happened that he called upon divine grace, and upon 
 the assistance of God, to sustain him in his human 
 weakness. Pascal would have subscribed without 
 demur to this passage of the Essays : — 
 
 "Oh! what a vile and abject thing is man, if 
 he do not rise above humanity ! And he will thus 
 rise, if God, by special favour, will lend him his aid." 
 
 But neither those orthodox declarations, nor 
 
 1 At Lore to, Montaigne had the following "ex-voto," or votive 
 tablet, engraved : Michael Montanus, Gallus Vasco, eques regii 
 ordinis ; Francisco, Cassaniana uxor, Leonora Montana filia unica. 
 
56 MONTAIGNE 
 
 those religious practices, are a guarantee that Faith 
 was in him. Montaigne, Pascal said, "acts as a 
 pagan"; he also thought as a pagan. His Chris- 
 tianity was all on the surface ; an outward submis- 
 sion to the use and wont of the country of his birth. 
 I am a Christian, he said, as I belong to Perigord. 
 He is a Roman Catholic, rather than a Christian; 
 a philosopher rather than a Roman Catholic. It 
 should be noted that though he quotes much, he 
 rarely quotes the Gospel, and never speaks of Christ. 
 A man can be no great believer in revelation when 
 he writes : — 
 
 "Whatever we learn, it is a mortal hand which 
 presents it to us, a mortal hand which accepts it." 
 
 He is fond of relating miraculous occurrences, but he 
 observes, not without irony, that miracles are invari- 
 ably withheld from his sight; and he expressly affirms 
 that the order and course of Nature can be disturbed 
 by no intervention. In his relations with the church, 
 he seems to adopt more or less the same attitude as 
 he does toward medicine. He heaps upon doctors 
 his most stinging epigrams, and yet, having reached 
 the end of his diatribe, he bows low to them : "How- 
 ever, I hold doctors in honour. . . . When I am sick, 
 I call them to me ; I pay them, like other people. ..." 
 Yes; but he adds that "his judgment must needs 
 be marvellously out of joint, if ever he should be- 
 
MONTAIGNE 57 
 
 lieve in their power and in the efficacy of their 
 drugs." 
 
 It is difficult to gather exactly what Montaigne 
 thought of the Reformation. In the perpetual 
 oscillation of his judgment, at one time he declares 
 that posterity will celebrate it for having fought 
 against error and vice, for having filled the world 
 with piety, humility, obedience, and all manner of 
 virtues ; and anon he scoffs at the efforts which the 
 Protestants are making to spread the knowledge 
 of the Bible by means of translations: "A strange 
 people, who think they have brought the Word of 
 God within the understanding of the masses, because 
 they have put it into popular language!" It re- 
 mains certain that his attitude toward the religious 
 quarrels of his time was the same as in political 
 questions: he kept aloof and remained neutral; 
 he did not follow the example of those among his 
 own brothers who had been converted to Protes- 
 tantism. 1 
 
 "Let those who in these latter days have so ear- 
 nestly laboured to frame and establish unto us an 
 exercise of religion and service of God, so contem- 
 plative and immaterial, wonder nothing at all if 
 
 1 Montaigne was the third child of a large family, — seven or 
 eight boys or girls. His two elder brothers were already dead 
 when he was born. 
 
58 MONTAIGNE 
 
 some be found who think it would have escaped 
 and mouldered away between their fingers. " 
 
 A man "of good faith/' but of little faith, Mon- 
 taigne, in his inmost soul, remained outside any 
 religious confession. The wisdom to which he as- 
 pires is a human wisdom, which should be "neither 
 produced nor disquieted by religion." He wishes 
 to live the human life, in conformity with his natural 
 condition. He is the true forerunner of modern 
 freethinkers. He has the intuition of the advent 
 of a lay and rational system of ethics, "sprung from 
 nature," and which shall feel "strong enough to 
 stand unaided, born and rooted within ourselves, 
 of the seed of universal reason, which is to be found 
 within every unperverted man." He eliminates 
 the supernatural, and claims to find within himself 
 "as much doctrine as he needs." Sainte-Beuve 
 was not wrong when he said that a chapter might 
 be written on the dogmatism of Montaigne. But 
 this dogmatism does not exceed the limits of practical 
 reason. It is a doctrine of life, which he bases either 
 on the precepts and examples of ancient wisdom, 
 or on conscience, of which he said that "its grip is 
 tighter and more severe than that of a tribunal 
 of judges." But in the domain of pure reason, 
 Montaigne is indifferent and sceptical. He sings 
 the same song as Pascal on the impotence of human 
 
MONTAIGNE 59 
 
 reason, but he sings it to another tune, and the 
 finale is not the same. In vain are we reminded that 
 Montaigne said grace before meat and heard mass 
 in his bedroom. It is none the less true that in the 
 apartment above, in the sanctuary of his library, 
 he had caused to be engraved on the rafters of the 
 ceiling, as if to have them constantly hovering over 
 him, fifty-six maxims, which are as a summary of 
 his philosophy and the essence of scepticism: " Van- 
 ity, uncertainty, error. ... — Man is but a vessel 
 of clay, a dim shadow, mud and ashes. — I lay down 
 no law; I do not understand; I suspend judgment, 
 etc. . . ." The conclusion of his intellectual quest 
 is the "I know not" of Socrates, with the addition 
 of a note of interrogation, "What do I know?" 
 
n 
 
 Montaigne's Pedagogy 
 
 Montaigne is no pedagogue of the people ; alone, 
 in the sixteenth century, the men of the Reforma- 
 tion took any thought of popular education, j The 
 plan that he puts before us, in the celebrated chapter 
 Of the Institution and Education of Children, was 
 conceived only for a son of noble family, happily 
 situated and of exalted birth, his little neighbour 
 at the castle of Gurson. 1 His theme was the edu- 
 cation, under the guidance of a carefully chosen 
 " governor" or tutor, of a young nobleman intended 
 by his condition for a life of ease, and perhaps of 
 idleness. But as of this little nobleman Montaigne 
 wants to make a man, his views often extend beyond 
 the limited horizon of a castle-education, and many 
 of his maxims are applicable to children of all con- 
 ditions and of all times. Moreover, Montaigne's 
 
 1 This Essay, Chapter XXIV of Book I, is dedicated to Diane 
 de Foix, Countess de Gurson, with reference to her child, who, 
 for that matter, was not yet born. Montaigne, with the high 
 spirits of a Southerner, prophesies that this child about to be 
 born must needs be a boy: "for, madam, you are too generous 
 to begin with other than a man-child. . . ." 
 
 60 
 
MONTAIGNE 61 
 
 impetuous imagination often carried him far beyond 
 the limits within which he seemed to have intended 
 to keep his reflections ; so that while he deals with 
 a private and individual education, it often happens 
 that he touches on pedagogical questions of general 
 import. - Lastly, it is not only in the one chapter 
 dedicated to Countess de Gurson that Montaigne 
 discusses education; his whole work is strewn with 
 digressions in which he gives us his own views, or 
 else criticises the teaching and disciplinary methods 
 then in use. "I am fond of reverting to this ques- 
 tion of the 'ineptness' of our education." 
 
 Montaigne, who is averse to any set opinions, 
 harbours no superstitious belief in the virtues of edu- 
 cation. He does not look upon it as an infallible 
 and all-powerful means of success, nor does he believe 
 that the future of the individual depends upon it 
 alone. To the best professional pedagogues he op- 
 poses " those good schoolmasters which are Nature, 
 Youth, and Health." He recognizes the strength of 
 physical heredity, and that also of moral predestina- 
 tion. 
 
 "We bear within ourselves the impulses, not only 
 of the corporal being, but also of the thoughts and 
 inclinations of our parents. . . . Natural inclina- 
 tions may be helped and strengthened by educa- 
 tion, but they can hardly be changed or overcome. 
 
62 MONTAIGNE 
 
 I have seen in my time a thousand natures fly to 
 virtue or to vice, in opposition to the discipline they 
 were subjected to. There is no one who, if he 
 hearkens unto himself, will not discover within him 
 a form which is his own, a master-form, which fights 
 against education. ..." 
 
 At every moment the expressions "a well-begotten 
 soul," "an ill-begotten mind," recur under his pen; 
 and he quotes himself in proof of the action of natural 
 and hereditary influences : — 
 
 "What good there is in me I owe to the accident 
 of my birth ; I hold it neither from laws, nor precepts, 
 nor any other apprenticeship." 
 
 If he admits that there are limits to the effects of 
 education, he is far, however, from undervaluing 
 its importance. "Who is there but sees that in a 
 state everything depends on this education and 
 nurturing ? " And consequently he would view with 
 favour the intervention of the State, and even its 
 sovereign authority, in the matter of education. He 
 laments that the Spartans and the Cretans were the 
 only nations who "committed the care of youth to 
 the law" ; and quite forgetting that it is for a mother 
 of good birth that he is drawing up a plan of domestic 
 education, he declares that it is great folly to leave 
 education under the authority of the parents, "how- 
 ever foolish and wicked they may be." 
 
MONTAIGNE 63 
 
 Montaigne is ever inspired by antiquity, by Plato, 
 Socrates, by Plutarch especially. He could not, 
 like Rabelais, give himself the pleasure of reading 
 in the original text "the Opera moralia of Plutarch 
 and the fine Dialogues of Plato." And yet it is 
 by calling to his aid his memories of the Classics, 
 the " pedagogisms " of Plato and the Socratic method, 
 that, after Rabelais, and with as much heat as the 
 latter, he makes a violent onslaught on the " inept" 
 education of his time. Whoever is acquainted with 
 his invectives against pedantry, vain erudition, 
 false learning, and also against the barbarous dis- 
 cipline of the Middle Ages, will no longer be tempted 
 to take him for a sceptic, a cold and indifferent wit- 
 ness of the evil the existence of which he recognizes 
 and condemns. On this subject, he is no longer 
 content to smile and to jest; he waxes indignant, 
 levels accusations, is carried away by his anger. 
 He finds no words stinging enough to scourge ped- 
 ants and their "asinine" and overweening presump- 
 tion, to break away from empty rhetoric, from syllo- 
 gistic dialectics : — 
 
 "I would rather be a good cook than a good rhet- 
 orician. ... I would rather have my son, if I 
 had one, learn to talk in taverns than in schools of 
 rhetoric. . . . Whoever acquired reason through 
 logic ? Where are its fine promises ? Does one hear 
 
64 MONTAIGNE 
 
 more rambling nonsense between gossiping fish- 
 wives than in the public disputations of dialecticians ? 
 It is baroco and baralipton which have so besotted 
 and befogged their devotees." 
 
 Montaigne's pedagogy is then before aught else 
 a protest and a reaction against the faults of medi- 
 aeval schools, and also against the abuses which the 
 literary fanaticism of the Renaissance had brought 
 into fashion. - His pedagogical doctrine — for he 
 had one — is already apparent in his criticisms. 
 It is a counterthrust of the new spirit, of the spirit 
 of light and liberty, against the long enslaving of 
 the obscure ages which had proscribed gentleness 
 in discipline and independence in teaching. It is 
 also, before Rousseau, a return to Nature, that is to 
 say, in Montaigne's words, to what is "general, 
 common, and universal," to what is human, in 
 short. Montaigne disowns anything "which is 
 supported only by the hoary beard and the wrinkles 
 of custom"; he refers everything "to truth and 
 reason." He is bent on following "the fine open 
 road traced for us by v Nature," from which the 
 importunate subtlety of a false philosophy turns 
 us aside by "enslaving our natural freedom." 
 
 "We cannot go wrong in following Nature. The 
 sovereign precept is to conform to it. . . . It is 
 unreasonable that the art of man should take prece- 
 
MONTAIGNE 65 
 
 dence of our great and powerful mother Nature. . . . 
 Wherever Nature shines in its purity, it is marvellous 
 how it puts to shame our vain and frivolous enter- 
 prises." 
 
 Montaigne is undoubtedly the first who brought 
 into prominence this truth, which became after 
 him one of the commonplaces of classical pedagogy, 
 that before that specialized education which turns 
 out a professional man, a scientist, or a scholar, 
 there is, there ought to be, a general education which 
 makes the man. He explains this humorously under 
 the form of an anecdote : — 
 
 " Being once on my journey toward Orleans, it 
 was my chance to meet upon that plain that lyeth 
 on this side Clery, with two masters of arts travelling 
 toward Bordeaux, about fifty paces one from an- 
 other; far off behind them I descried a troop of 
 horsemen, their master riding foremost, who was the 
 Earl of Rochefoucault. One of my servants in- 
 quiring of the first of those masters of arts, what 
 gentleman he was that followed him ; supposing my 
 servant had meant his fellow-scholar, for he had not 
 yet seen the Earl's train, answered pleasantly, 'He 
 is no gentleman, but a grammarian, and I am a 
 logician/ Now, we that contrariwise seek not to 
 frame a grammarian, nor a logician, but a complete 
 gentleman, let us give them leave to misspend their 
 
66 MONTAIGNE 
 
 time; we have elsewhere, and somewhat else of 
 more import to do." 
 
 The essential element of this general education 
 consists in the education of judgment, and that is 
 the culminating point of Montaigne's pedagogy. _ 
 
 If the scholar has learned to judge, the supreme 
 end of education will have been reached. What, 
 then, is meant by judging? 
 
 To judge is first of all to think for one's self, to 
 hold opinions which are our own ; it is to inquire 
 after truth through an effort of personal reflection. 
 
 To judge is to think rightly, to see clearly in all 
 questions which may present themselves, thanks to 
 the clear understanding that pertains to an unwarped 
 mind. ; 
 
 To judge well, lastly, is to be able and ready to' 
 act well. For correct judgment keeps one free from 
 the errors and illusions which are the source of evil 
 actions. Soundness of thought calms and appeases 
 passions. To think for one's self and to think rightly 
 is already to have acquired moral strength. 
 
 On the first of these points, that is, independence 
 of thought, Montaigne explains his views as forcibl; 
 as the author of the Discourse on Method will do 
 century later : — 
 
 "Learn to think freely, and not to follow lamel 
 on the track of another; make bold to shake ridici 
 
MONTAIGNE 67 
 
 lous foundations upon which false opinions are built. 
 . . . Truth and reason are common to all." 
 
 Montaigne himself gives the example of this liberty 
 of thought ; he does not allow himself to be ensnared 
 and blinded by the authority of present custom, 
 nor by fashion, which " topsyturvies" the under- 
 standing of his contemporaries. He inveighs with 
 inexhaustible vigour against purely verbal education, 
 that which makes no appeal to personal judgment, 
 and which is content to stamp upon the memory 
 knowledge that the mind has neither tested nor 
 examined, and that it does not assimilate. 
 
 "We are like unto him who, being in need of fire, 
 should go and beg some at his neighbour's, and find- 
 ing there fire in plenty, should stop there to warm 
 himself, without remembering to bring any home. — 
 Even as the birds which feed their young carry the 
 grain in their beaks without tasting it, thus do our 
 pedants purloin science from books, which they in no 
 way digest, but merely keep on their lips, ever ready 
 to part with it again and scatter it to the winds." 
 
 Learning is of use only to him who has been able 
 
 to assimilate it, to espouse it, and to make really 
 
 his own the opinions which one borrows from others. 
 
 The work of the mind should resemble that of bees, 
 
 vho fly hither and thither sucking the flowers, but 
 
 nth their plunder they make honey, after which it 
 
68 MONTAIGNE 
 
 is no longer either thyme or marjoram. . . . What 
 is important is not the extent of one's knowledge, 
 but one's power of reflection; it is the strength of 
 a well-developed reason, which weighs and scruti- 
 nizes the motives of its beliefs and shapes its opinions 
 freely: "The soul is not a vessel that requires filling; 
 it is a hearth to be warmed." — "I would rather 
 shape my soul than furnish it." 
 
 Nor indeed would it avail that our judgment should 
 be our own, if it should prove to be false. Rectitude 
 of mind is one of the foremost intellectual virtues. 
 Better a well-fashioned head than a well-filled one. 
 If, says Montaigne, I like to subject to "inquisition," 
 that is to say, to examination, "the continual variety 
 of human affairs, it is that our judgment may become 
 the more enlightened and the stronger." He does, 
 personally, everything he can to moderate the rash 
 impetuosity of his own judgment. He recommends 
 prudence, and is mindful of it himself. He reminds 
 us that "each thing has a hundred faces"; and that 
 it beseems us, therefore, to analyze, to distinguish, 
 and also to pause, in any delicate subject, when we 
 feel that we cannot proceed, "sounding the ford," 
 as he says, ' ' and if we find it too deep for our stature, 
 keeping on the bank " ; that is to say, abstaining 
 from formulating an opinion. 
 
 Judgment, then, is the critical spirit which ob- 
 
MONTAIGNE 69 
 
 serves, reasons, and concludes ; it is the understand- 
 ing which disentangles truth from error. But it is 
 also the faculty which distinguishes good from evil, 
 and which regulates our manner of living. Mon- 
 taigne does not keep judgment apart from moral 
 conscience. It is that we may become better men 
 that he would have us better able to judge. He con- 
 stantly associates those two points of view. He 
 will say: "This will make men better advised and 
 more virtuous." His chief reproach against the 
 education of his day is that it leaves both our under- 
 standing and our conscience empty of content. 
 The Middle Ages subordinated all teaching to theol- 
 ogy; Montaigne subordinates it to ethics. True 
 education tends toward action. "My science is 
 to learn how to live." He never ceases to expa- 
 tiate on this subject, and he repeats under every 
 form that the advantage we derive from study is 
 that we become better and wiser. If he is so violent 
 in his attacks on book-learning, it is because the 
 latter commits the mistake of neglecting practical 
 and moral education. 
 
 "Behold this man, snuffling, blear-eyed, and 
 unwashed, rising after midnight from his study. 
 Think you that he is seeking, among his books, how 
 he may become better, more contented, and wiser? 
 Alas, no ! . . ." 
 
70 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Could Montaigne point to his own example to 
 extol the theory that looks upon moral education 
 and the cultivation of judgment as one, and to guar- 
 antee its efficacy? He did indeed exercise his 
 judgment, "that universal tool," with rare inde- 
 pendence. He brings it to bear on every possible 
 subject, in his delightful chats with his reader. He 
 would descant on military tactics, on the wars of 
 Scipio and Hannibal, of Francis I and Charles V, 
 with as much ease and assurance as on joy and sad- 
 ness, love and friendship. He admired the military 
 genius of Caesar, and his prodigious intelligence; 
 but he did not hesitate to judge him severely for 
 destroying the Roman Republic, thereby "rendering 
 his memory abominable to all good men." He never 
 abdicated his liberty of thought, faithful to the proud 
 motto: "Judgment must everywhere maintain its 
 rights." But was he "better and wiser" on this 
 account ? He tells us he was. 
 
 "I have seen my friends sometimes consider that 
 I had the advantage of them in courage and patience, 
 when my only advantage was in judgment and 
 opinion." 
 
 In his fits of stoicism, it is to his understanding 
 that he appeals for help to bear with misfortune; 
 he goes so far as to say that "a man of understand- 
 ing loses nothing of himself, in the disasters of his 
 country, in the ruin of his family." 
 
MONTAIGNE 71 
 
 Thanks to his judgment, he claims to have partly 
 escaped the sufferings which afflict most men: "For 
 the world looks upon several things as horrible, 
 which I contemplate more or less with indifference." 
 
 More than once he put a curb to his passions, he 
 resisted impulses of anger and hatred, by seeking 
 for a point of support in his intelligence alone : — 
 
 "I am but little given to those propensities which 
 arise within us without any guidance or interven- 
 tion of our judgment." 
 
 Yes; but again he will say, "My affections change, 
 but not my judgment." Is this not an admission 
 that sensibility does not always depend on judg- 
 ment, that it asserts itself without, and in spite of, 
 our judgment? And he writes also, "Whatever 
 excesses I ever indulged in, I condemned; for my 
 judgment was not infected by them." Does he 
 not then recognize that a sound judgment, even 
 though it preserves us from errors of thought, does 
 not always preserve us from errors of conduct? 
 What does it matter if error condemns them, when 
 it does not prevent them? 
 
 Howbeit, and since judgment is, according to 
 Montaigne, the dominant faculty of every well- 
 trained man, 1 let us examine by what means he 
 
 1 Full of Montaigne's teachings, Mile, de Gournay said : "Judg- 
 ment raises men above beasts, Socrates over men, and God over 
 Socrates." 
 
72 MONTAIGNE 
 
 intends us to acquire this most precious of all quali- 
 ties. What, in short, is his practical pedagogy? 
 
 Here, Montaigne is an excellent guide, who sub- 
 stitutes a natural, living, and free education to the 
 artificial and abstract, mechanical and servile in- 
 struction of the Middle Ages. He seems to unwrap, 
 one by one, the bands in which scholasticism had 
 enfolded the human mind; the mummy, immo- 
 bilized in the cloths of syllogistic reasoning, seems 
 to come back gradually to life and freedom. 
 
 What he desiderates in the first place, is that 
 the child's initiative should be allowed full play. 
 The tutor shall allow his pupil to "trot on in front 
 of him," in order to judge of his natural pace, and 
 to be able thereafter to accommodate himself to it. 
 Whereupon some critics exclaim, not without in- 
 justice, "Education after the fashion of Montaigne 
 resolves itself into nothing." * Do they wish, then, 
 to return to that tyrannical education which takes 
 no account of a child's bent, which oppresses him 
 under the yoke of uncompromising didactic methods, 
 leaving no opening, no outlet for natural forces? 
 Montaigne is right, when he asks that the pupil 
 shall be accustomed to think for himself, and allowed 
 opportunity to speak. He is right when he pro- 
 
 1 Cf. M. FJmile Faguet's Preface (p. xv) to the posthumous 
 work of Guillaume Guizot : Montaigne, Etudes et fragments. 
 
MONTAIGNE 73 
 
 scribes instruction which appeals solely to the 
 memory. Although he recognizes that memory is 
 a precious tool " without which judgment can 
 scarcely perform its duties," he nevertheless points 
 to the fact that "an excellent memory very often 
 goes with a feeble judgment." It is not through 
 learning by rote fine maxims, "that have been 
 stamped upon his memory, to be fired off like oracles," 
 that the child will achieve his intellectual and moral 
 education. His reflection and intelligence should 
 be appealed to early, — as early as possible. That 
 his understanding may become active, it must needs 
 be given full independence : — 
 
 "Let judgment preserve its free gait; we render 
 it slavish and timid if we deny it any initiative." 
 
 Therefore, we must not overload it with formal 
 teaching; we must not imitate those loquacious 
 educators who do not allow their pupils time to look 
 around them, and who bawl facts into their ears 
 "as if they were pouring them into a funnel." 
 
 It is through observation, through personal and 
 direct experience, by frequenting men and looking 
 at things, that the child will first develop his judg- 
 ment. The commerce of men is marvellously fitted 
 to form the mind. We know what pleasure Mon- 
 taigne derived from it. He loved to converse, to 
 discourse, and to "confer," on condition, however, 
 
74 MONTAIGNE 
 
 that he might choose his company. "The incompar- 
 able author of the Art of Conferring," as Pascal said, 
 saw in this art "the most fruitful exercise of our 
 mind"; and one that he considered pleasanter than 
 any other action in life. In an animated and famil- 
 iar conversation he found more excitement for the 
 mind than in the "languid exertion of reading." 
 — "We should live with those who are alive/' 
 he would exclaim. And so he invited children them- 
 selves to mingle in the conversations and discussions 
 of the people about them, to take a share in them, 
 at the risk of having to acknowledge with good grace 
 any mistake due to their ignorance. He invited 
 them to listen with attentive ear to all that was said 
 around them. The malice of a page, the foolish 
 act of some valet, a table utterance, all these offer 
 opportunity for instruction. Everything should be 
 to an awakening judgment an occasion for reflection 
 and study: "The child should probe the ability 
 of each one: cow-herd, mason, or passer-by. ..." 
 That was what Montaigne did on his own account : 
 after spending long hours in his library in holding 
 commerce with the greatest minds of antiquity, 
 he took pleasure in conversing familiarly with a 
 carpenter or a joiner. 
 
 To observe things is not less profitable than to 
 converse with men : — 
 
MONTAIGNE 75 
 
 "Let a child's fancy be encouraged toward a 
 seemly interest in all things. Whatever striking 
 objects there may be around him, let him see them: 
 a building, a fountain, a man, the ground of an 
 ancient battle, the spot where Caesar or Charle- 
 magne passed. Those are all very pleasant things 
 to learn. . . ." 
 
 The spirit of the intuitive method, of object les- 
 sons, that which will animate Froebel, Pestalozzi, 
 has already breathed upon Montaigne. Far from 
 isolating the child in the study of the past, he throws 
 him into real life, brings him into contact with 
 realities. He expects much from that gradual 
 education which results from the " frequentation of 
 the world," which proceeds spontaneously from the 
 circumstances, the surroundings, the environment 
 amid which the pupil is placed. His knowledge 
 shapes itself, not abstract, ready-made, and passive, 
 out of a book reeled off by heart, but living and active 
 out of the facts which he observes and interprets. 
 And take note that Montaigne is not content with 
 a superficial and lightly made observation. He 
 would seem, at times, to be the precursor of Bacon, 
 and to be laying the first foundations of experimen- 
 tal logic, — when he says, for instance, "It is not 
 enough to number one's experiences, they should 
 be weighed and set in order." 
 
76 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Montaigne is far from thinking, as Rousseau was 
 to do, of excluding books from education. But he 
 would have them used with discretion, in modera- 
 tion, and always with a view to forming the judg- 
 ment. What he is fighting against is not the book, 
 but the book learned by rote, the book read without 
 criticism. «- 
 
 Reading, moreover, is an occupation which, 
 carried to excess, may become as painful as any 
 other; if, in the commerce of books, we should lose 
 our gaiety and health, "our chief assets," let us 
 not hesitate, but give up our reading ! As for him, 
 he likes only two kinds of books: pleasant books 
 which amuse and " tickle" him, or else those which 
 comfort and advise him, "for the better arrange- 
 ment of his life and death." He does not say which 
 books he would propose to put into children's hands, 
 but at least he teaches us how those which the mas- 
 ter has chosen ought to be read. Reading must 
 exercise, not our memory, but our judgment. We 
 should ask for an account, not only of the words 
 of the text, but of "their meaning and substance." 
 Such maxims may appear trite at the present day, 
 but, at the time of Montaigne, they were something 
 quite new. How often we have heard repeated after 
 him — but the utterance originated with him — 
 that in the study of history, the explanation of the 
 
MONTAIGNE 77 
 
 events, and a reasoned acquaintance with the char- 
 acters, are of more importance than dates or facts ! 
 
 "Let the master bethink himself whereto his 
 charge tendeth, and imprint not so much in his 
 scholar's mind the date of the ruin of Carthage, as 
 the manners of Hannibal and Scipio ; not so much 
 where Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of 
 his duty that he should have died there; let him 
 teach him not so much to know histories as to 
 judge of them." 
 
 "Exercise the judgment," such is the constant 
 refrain of Montaigne's pedagogy. But an enlight- 
 ened and healthy judgment should not only rule 
 over our intelligence, it should become a law unto 
 our actions. Wherefore the child must be schooled 
 in philosophy, that is to say, in ethics. "Philosophy 
 teaches us how to live." Its study is of supreme 
 importance, and is also chronologically the earliest 
 teaching that Montaigne presents to the child. 
 "Among the liberal arts," he says, — forgetting 
 that philosophy or ethics figured neither in the 
 Trivium nor in the Quadrivium, — "let us begin by 
 the art which makes us free," that is, by philosophy. 
 " Let the first discourses in which we steep the 
 child's understanding be those which regulate his 
 morals and his good sense." And foreseeing the 
 objection that children are too young, and that it 
 
78 MONTAIGNE 
 
 is difficult to put before a dawning intelligence les- 
 sons that it would be incapable of understanding, 
 he endeavours to prove that "philosophy has simple 
 discourses," and that a child is able to understand 
 such "from the time when he returns from nurse, 
 much better than he can learn to read or write." 
 
 "It is philosophy that teacheth us to live, and 
 infancy as well as other ages may plainly read her 
 lessons in the same. . . . Philosophy hath dis- 
 courses whereof infancy as well as decaying old 
 age may make good use." 
 
 We may treat with scepticism those somewhat 
 rash affirmations. Montaigne himself is conscious 
 of the difficulty. Hence he seeks means to smooth 
 the somewhat rugged road along which he is leading 
 the child. The tutor shall hint at the moral lesson 
 rather than teach it. This lesson will be mingled 
 with every action, every event of the child's life; 
 — we seem already to be listening to Rousseau — " it 
 will insinuate itself without making itself felt." 
 Therefore, no teaching of doctrine, no formal lessons. 
 Montaigne realizes that to guide us through life, to 
 lead us toward action, a moral doctrine, be it ever 
 so well understood, would not suffice, and that it 
 must go hand in hand with practice. "It is through 
 practice that we must exercise and train our soul, 
 that may bear itself as we wish." The child, to be- 
 
MONTAIGNE 79 
 
 come a righteous man, must go through a personal 
 apprenticeship to virtue. It would be absurd, says 
 Montaigne, if Le Paluel, and Pompee, " these fine 
 dancers of my early days," should think "to teach 
 us their steps and capers by inviting us to look on, 
 without stirring from our place"; and it would be 
 equally ridiculous to imagine that " one can train 
 the understanding without setting it into motion." 
 Let no one say, then, that Montaigne failed to appre- 
 ciate the value of action, the necessity for exercising 
 the will, and the influence of habit. 
 
 "Men cannot be made brave and warlike on the 
 spot, through a stirring harangue, any more than 
 one becomes a musician of a sudden through hearing 
 a good song. In either case proficiency must be 
 acquired through a long apprenticeship, through 
 long and constant training." 
 
 The foundations of moral life, for Montaigne, are 
 neither the authority of religion, nor faithful obedi- 
 ence to the doctrine of such or such a philosopher, 
 but personal effort. He tried to form his own life, 
 to guide it, to protect it from the vicissitudes of 
 fortune. "All my efforts have tended to the fash- 
 ioning of my life ; such has been my trade, such the 
 work I have achieved." He complains that the 
 majority of men are unable to draw up a well-thought- 
 out plan, a settled design, for their conduct; they 
 
80 MONTAIGNE 
 
 resolve on their course of action day by day, "from 
 hand to mouth." The ideal that he conceived for 
 himself is perhaps shabby, inferior, marred by self- 
 ishness, but after all, he had an ideal, and a plan of 
 conduct. 
 
 For the evolving of such a plan, he recommends 
 to others what he practised himself: meditation, 
 self-communion : — 
 
 "Look within yourselves, know yourselves, hold 
 on to yourselves. Your mind, your will, which you 
 are spending elsewhere, bring it back within your- 
 self. . . ." 
 
 Pecaut, the educator of conscience, would have 
 applauded. It is true that "holding on to one's self," 
 when it is Montaigne who is speaking, is no guarantee 
 of a very firm point of support, or of a very stable 
 foundation. But at least it proves that the author 
 of the Essays sought within himself, and not in some 
 exterior authority, the foundation of his moral life. 
 We must, he says, "establish within us a pattern 
 by which we can gauge our actions." And again : — 
 
 "Let man govern himself, respecting and fearing 
 his reason and his conscience, so that he cannot 
 without shame stumble in their presence. . . . 
 There is a peculiar satisfaction in well-doing which 
 causes us to rejoice within ourselves; this is the only 
 reward which never fails us. . . . We must fol- 
 
MONTAIGNE 81 
 
 low the straight road for the sake of its straightness, 
 for the satisfaction which a well-regulated con- 
 science derives from well-doing." 
 
 How, after reading such words, would it be pos- 
 sible still to maintain, as some people have done, 
 that Montaigne "administered anaesthetics to men's 
 consciences"? 
 
 Montaigne is so thoroughly convinced that phi- 
 losophy, " which fashions judgment and morals," 
 ought to be the principal lesson of childhood, that 
 he despairs of educating those who should show no 
 taste for it. If my disciple, he says, takes no pleas- 
 ure in it, if he would rather listen to a fable than to 
 some wise observation, if he prefers dancing to 
 fighting, "I see no other remedy but to establish 
 him as confectioner in some good town, were he 
 even the son of a duke." And even, thinking he 
 has not said enough against the child who is rebel- 
 lious to moral teaching, as if taken with a fit of rage, 
 he writes in the margin of this passage, in a later 
 edition, "Let his tutor twist his neck early, if there 
 be no witnesses ! . . ." On that day Montaigne 
 really lacked moderation. 
 
 After all, there is perhaps no reason to be aston- 
 ished that Montaigne should consider the study of 
 moral philosophy as accessible to children, and even 
 as more intelligible to them than "a tale from 
 
82 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Boccaccio." He makes it so amiable, so playful, 
 so " frolicsome." On the one hand he docks phi- 
 losophy of everything that is calculated to make it 
 formal and forbidding: technical expressions and 
 pedantic terminology. "It is quibblers who must 
 bear the blame, if philosophy appears but a vain 
 and fantastic name." On the other hand, he gen- 
 erally professes an amiable and easy-going moral 
 doctrine, which is not hostile to pleasure; it loves 
 life, beauty, glory, and health. Consequently, it 
 would be as easy for the pupil to accomplish duty 
 as it is for the master to teach its rules. "The re- 
 ward of virtue lies therein, that it is so easy, useful, 
 and pleasant to practise." 
 
 Never did Montaigne's fluctuating thought un- 
 consciously abandon itself more to contradictions, 
 to sudden changes of view, than in the successive 
 definitions which he gives of morality and of virtue. 
 Was it to crave forgiveness for these that he com- 
 plained so often of his treacherous memory ? But it 
 is not from one chapter to another, it is in the same 
 Essay, at a few lines' distance, that he contradicts 
 himself without seeming to notice it. He has just 
 said of the lofty virtue of Socrates that it was nat- 
 ural to him, that to practise it he had not had to 
 fight with evil instincts, and he admires him for that 
 spontaneous wisdom, to which nature had opposed 
 
MONTAIGNE 83 
 
 no obstacle. Now, a little further on, he writes: 
 " Socrates used to admit to those who discerned 
 in his countenance some inclination to vice, that 
 such was, in truth, his natural propensity, but that 
 he had cured it through self-discipline." 
 
 A more serious contradiction is that which brings 
 epicureanism and stoicism into conflict within 
 Montaigne himself. How often he has celebrated 
 an easy and amiable virtue, which "preaches only 
 feasting and good living, and constant merry- 
 making." He is angry that virtue should be clothed 
 in sable, "a foolish and ugly dress." He likes wis- 
 dom to be cheerful. He avoids " rigidity and aus- 
 terity of living, and holds all surly countenances in 
 suspicion." He hates those cross-grained and mo- 
 rose minds which ignore the pleasures of life. And 
 smitten with real poetic fury, he sings, in a well- 
 known passage, a hymn to the Virtue of his dreams : 
 to "Virtue, who gloriously, as on a throne of majesty, 
 sits sovereign, goodly, triumphant, lovely, equally 
 delicious and courageous, professing herself to be 
 an irreconcilable enemy to all sourness, austerity, 
 fear, and compulsion ; having Nature for her guide, 
 Fortune and Voluptuousness for her companions," 
 etc. 1 Montaigne grows intoxicated with his own 
 words; similes and epithets shine and burst forth 
 
 1 Essays, Book I, Chap. XXV. 
 
84 MONTAIGNE 
 
 in a magnificent flight of sparkling language. But 
 how comes it that after discoursing on the " paths 
 of wisdom, shady and flowery, and soft to tread on," 
 the same philosopher changes his mind to the extent 
 of writing that " virtue refuses to take ease for a 
 companion"; that "this easy, soft, and gently 
 sloping path, along which a naturally good inclina- 
 tion guides its steps," is not that of true virtue; 
 and that in short the latter demands " a rugged and 
 thorny path" ? It is Zeno, whom he calls "the fore- 
 most man of the foremost philosophic school, and 
 fit to teach all others," that Montaigne now takes 
 for his guide. It is the virtue of the Stoics which 
 he is extolling, that which "rings out something 
 greater and more active," and to attain to which 
 it is not enough "through a happy disposition, 
 gently and peacefully to walk in the footsteps of 
 reason." 
 
 We must not expect from Montaigne a complete 
 and precise plan of studies, nor ask him for more 
 than he promised us. He warned us himself that 
 he would have but little to say on teaching properly 
 so called, ' ' forasmuch as he could add nothing of any 
 moment to it." It is only by the way, and in few 
 words, that he mentions any other studies than 
 philosophy. And he commits the grave blunder of 
 putting them off until the day when the child's 
 
MONTAIGNE 85 
 
 judgment shall have been formed. Then only shall 
 he be taught "what is meant by logic, physics, 
 geometry, rhetoric." Those are assuredly very 
 short-sighted views. Montaigne forgets that those 
 special studies, in a well-understood pedagogical 
 system, can and ought to be the very instruments 
 of the education of the mind; that they form an 
 essential part of "mental gymnastics" ; that "object 
 lessons" and familiar talks on ethical subjects can- 
 not suffice to enlighten the reason, and to stock 
 the mind with the necessary knowledge; that the 
 intelligence requires that more substantial nourish- 
 ment which can only be provided by the general and 
 abstract truths contained in the various literary 
 and scientific subjects of education. 
 
 Montaigne has been reproached, not without 
 reason, with having strangely restricted the part 
 which science ought to play in education, and hav- 
 ing given it too modest a place in his school pro- 
 gramme. Nor would it be a sufficient excuse to urge 
 that in his days science could hardly be said to exist. 
 It was equally non-existent at the time of Rabelais, 
 and yet the latter, in a prophetic vision of the future, 
 put down on his programme, as if they had already 
 accomplished their work, all the branches of natural 
 science. No, we must admit that it is Montaigne's 
 tendency — anxious as he is before aught else to 
 
86 MONTAIGNE 
 
 shape his pupil's moral nature — to despise pure 
 science, that which affords no help, no rules, for our 
 practical conduct in life, and which ' ' often goes to use- 
 less lengths or useless depths in its considerations." 
 It should be of no moment to us, he says, whether 
 Copernicus is right or Ptolemy. Anything of the 
 nature of a speculative problem interests him but 
 little. We are "very simple" to teach our children 
 the science of heavenly bodies, before the science of 
 man. And yet, let us beware; it is especially false 
 science, verbal learning, undigested erudition, which 
 he attacks : — 
 
 ' ' I love and honour learning as much as those who 
 have it, and, put to its proper use, it is the most 
 noble and powerful acquisition of man; but with 
 regard to those (and their number is legion) who 
 rely for their understanding on their memory, and 
 who are helpless without their book-learning, I hate 
 them, if I dare say so, rather more than stupidity 
 itself. . . . Doctrine is a most useful accessory 
 to a well-born soul; to another soul it may be per- 
 nicious and hurtful; ... in some hands, it is a 
 sceptre, in others a fool's bauble. ..." 
 
 So that Montaigne's contemptuous indifference, 
 his hostility, are directed less against science as such 
 than against science ill-practised, and put to wrong 
 uses in education. He gives it a place in his school 
 
MONTAIGNE 87 
 
 programme. Rabelais said to his pupil, "In short, 
 let me see abysmal depths of science." Does not 
 Montaigne express very much the same thing when 
 he says, of the physical universe, "In short, I 
 would have it be my scholar's book"? But even 
 in this study of the universe, Montaigne continues to 
 pursue his moral and practical ideal. If he asks that 
 man should understand nature in general, it is that 
 he may admire its "great and sovereign majesty," 
 in order the better to realize what a small place he 
 holds in it, and to understand that his ambitions 
 should be in conformity with his humble destiny. 
 The study of nature, like the frequentation of men, 
 like the commerce of books, like all and every study, 
 in short, should be but a school for judgment, and 
 for moral judgment in the first place. 
 
 Montaigne, although so thoroughly conversant 
 with Latin that the Latinist Muret "feared to tackle 
 him," was one of the first to shake off the yoke of 
 Latinism: "Greek and Latin are very fine things, 
 no doubt, but we pay too dearly for their acquisi- 
 tion. ..." We know how he had himself learned 
 the Latin tongue. "Before the first unloosening of 
 his tongue," he had been intrusted by his father to 
 masters who spoke only Latin to him. The castle of 
 Montaigne had become, so to speak, a small village 
 university; and also a school of music, since musi- 
 
88 MONTAIGNE 
 
 cians were intrusted with the duty of preparing 
 every morning a pleasant awakening for the child. 
 Parents, valets, chambermaids even, every one 
 around him jabbered in Latin. At six years of age 
 he knew not a word of French, nor of the Perigord 
 dialect. Is this method, which had made Latin 
 Montaigne's mother tongue, the right one ? Mon- 
 taigne himself does not think so. On this point he 
 does not allow the recollection of his own education 
 to influence him; nay, perhaps his personal ex- 
 perience had taught him the drawbacks of the sys- 
 tem, more ingenious than wise, which his father had 
 imagined. At all events, he declares most emphati- 
 cally that Latin should only be learned after French, 
 and even after "modern" languages. "I should 
 like, in the first place, to be thoroughly conversant 
 with my own language and that of my neighbours." 
 
 The dead languages are therefore relegated to a 
 secondary position. Hitherto, they have taken 
 up too much time, and been studied too mechani- 
 cally. Their study should be simplified and made 
 easier, with a minimum of grammar. Montaigne 
 had no love for grammarians. It was his boast that 
 he himself had learned languages only by practice, 
 without knowing the rules. "I know not what is 
 meant by adjective, conjunctive, or ablative. . . ." 
 
 This lofty contempt for grammar was allowable 
 
MONTAIGNE 89 
 
 in a great writer, who created his own language. 
 But the liberties which he takes, and to which he 
 partly owes much that is natural or novel in his 
 language, can evidently not be put before common 
 men as models for imitation. His rhetoric is that 
 of nature. Art and especially artifice are rigidly 
 proscribed. Montaigne cares nothing for order and 
 composition in his discourse. " Whether it come 
 early or late, a useful maxim, a fine example, is 
 always seasonable." Self-complacent with regard 
 to his own faults, he ingenuously erects into rules 
 the disorderly habits of his own thought. In his 
 considerations on the qualities of style, it is a por- 
 trait which he draws, the portrait of his own 
 peculiar style, rather than an ideal model that could 
 be recommended to all. He desiderates "a simple, 
 artless, and unaffected speech"; very good; but 
 he does not hesitate to add that he likes it " un- 
 ruly and desultory " ; and in this he really agrees too 
 heartily with his own peculiarities. 
 
 Montaigne gave health the first place among 
 earthly blessings: /'Health is a precious thing, 
 and the only one which deserves that life should be 
 given up to its pursuit." How could he have failed 
 to recognize the importance of physical education? 
 Hygiene already occupies his thoughts. He laments 
 that modern peoples have lost the habit of ' ' washing 
 
90 MONTAIGNE 
 
 their bodies daily," a custom which was formerly 
 universally observed. In these matters, Montaigne 
 likes to quote as an example his father, of whom 
 he says that " there hardly ever was a man of his 
 condition to equal him in all bodily exercises." 
 Endowed with rare muscular strength, the older 
 Montaigne seems to have indulged in parlour acro- 
 batics, and could "go round his table on his thumb. " 
 It is true that his son had not inherited his physical 
 strength. He was a "very fair runner," but con- 
 fesses his unfitness for other bodily exercises. He 
 could neither swim nor fence, at a time when his con- 
 temporaries went in crowds to learn fencing in Italy, 
 where his own brother fought a duel. He could 
 "hardly dance." He complains of his clumsy and 
 "benumbed" hands. On the other hand, he was 
 an excellent horseman. He could spend fifteen 
 hours in the saddle without fatigue. His journey 
 in Italy was a long ride on horseback. If Venice 
 did not appeal to him, it was perhaps because in the 
 town of gondolas "there is not a single horse." 
 "Ideas," he says, "come to me at table, but es- 
 pecially on horseback." And he goes the length of 
 saying, "I would rather be a good horseman than a 
 good logician." 
 
 Montaigne was too thoroughly impressed with the 
 fact that the physical and the moral being are closely 
 
MONTAIGNE 91 
 
 bound up in each other, to neglect the education of 
 the body. 
 
 "The body has a large share in our being. . . . 
 Those who would separate our two principal com- 
 ponents and hold them apart, are wrong: on the 
 contrary, they should be coupled and joined together ; 
 we should order our soul, not to stand aloof and 
 despise the body, but to rally to it, to embrace it, 
 cherish it, assist it, control it, advise it, to take it 
 for a mate, in short, that their effects may not 
 appear different and contradictory, but uniformly 
 agree. . . ." 
 
 Without indulging, like Rabelais' pupil, in an orgy 
 of gymnastics, Montaigne's pupil will know that to 
 fortify his soul, he must begin by "stiffening his 
 muscles." He will practise running, wrestling, 
 dancing, hunting, learn to handle horses and weapons. 
 He will expose himself to cold, to heat; will laugh 
 at the precepts of medicine; he will inure himself 
 to hardships, as the pupil of Locke will do later; 
 he will harden himself against fatigue and pain. 
 " It is not a body nor a soul that you are training, but 
 a man." That is one of Montaigne's reasons for ob- 
 jecting to domestic education: a child who is kept 
 on his mother's lap grows up soft and effeminate. 
 The soul must not be obliged to groan and labour 
 in the company of too tender and sensitive a body. 
 
92 MONTAIGNE 
 
 The child must be brought up roughly, and exposed 
 to danger; and Montaigne, carried beyond all 
 bounds by his theory, goes the length of authorizing, 
 nay, encouraging in the young man excesses of 
 every kind. "Even in debauchery I would have 
 him outdo his companions." Better inspired, he will 
 say elsewhere : "Let him be able to do all things, but 
 let him love to do only what is good." 
 
 Montaigne said: "Even though I could make 
 myself feared, I would rather make myself loved." 
 This is the feeling which inspires him in his ideas 
 on scholastic discipline. Here, again, he takes up 
 vigorously the fight begun by Rabelais. He attacks 
 and denounces the severe and brutal government of 
 the colleges of his time, that which he underwent 
 at the "College de Guyenne," a government made up 
 of violence and tyranny, of horror and cruelty. He 
 prohibits any severity in the education of a free 
 soul. He mocks at masters who lose their temper 
 with their pupils, after the manner of those "who 
 shout before the culprit has come into their presence, 
 and go on shouting for an eternity after he has 
 withdrawn." He complains that in the bosom of 
 the family children are punished too severely for 
 "innocent mistakes"; that they are tormented out 
 of season for "bold acts," for faults without con- 
 sequence. The only failings which he insists must 
 
MONTAIGNE 93 
 
 be energetically repressed are lying and stubborn- 
 ness." In public education, without inclining 
 toward excessive indulgence, he wishes a "mild 
 severity" to be the watchword of school discipline. 
 He would do away with corporal punishment : — 
 
 "I have never seen the birch have any other effect 
 but to make souls more craven and more maliciously 
 stubborn." 
 
 He dreams of educational establishments, where 
 "Gladness and the Graces" would be painted on the 
 walls to cheer the children; where joy would reign 
 as a reality in the class-room ; where "dancing, games, 
 leaping, and summersaults" would alternate with 
 studies, attractive withal, and pursued without con- 
 straint. Less work, the whip abolished, pleasant 
 lessons, in which the master invites his pupils to 
 voluntary and easy efforts, violence and rough han- 
 dling done away with; such cheerful and gentle 
 discipline is the ideal which Montaigne wishes to see 
 applied to the education "of those delicate and 
 tender souls which we have to train toward honour 
 and liberty." 
 
 Montaigne entertained no very flattering opinion 
 of the nature of women, "of their ill-regulated mind, 
 their morbid tastes, and their inherent weakness," 
 so we cannot expect from him any broad-minded or 
 lofty conception of feminine education. He criti- 
 
94 MONTAIGNE 
 
 cises the "Armandes," or blue-stockings of his time, 
 but cannot even conceive the ideal of an "Hen- 
 riette" with an "enlightened mind" on all subjects. 1 
 He scoffs at those of his fair contemporaries who lay 
 claim to wit and erudition: "They quote Plato and 
 St. Thomas in matters wherein the testimony of the 
 man in the street would avail as much." Is not this 
 what he did himself, in his constant quotations? 
 Rhetoric, logic, science in general, are to them "use- 
 less drugs." Rhetoric would serve them only "to 
 hide their fairness under beauties that are foreign 
 to them." In the concessions he makes regarding 
 the studies he is willing to allow them, there enters 
 nearly as much contempt as in the prohibitions 
 which he puts on them. 
 
 "If, however, they cannot brook being obliged to 
 yield the palm to us in any respect, if they are curious 
 of books and literature, poetry is a pastime fitted to 
 their needs ; it is a gay and subtle art, a many-worded 
 and dissembling art, entirely made up of pleasure, 
 and as showy as women themselves. ..." 
 
 He will allow women some knowledge of history 
 and of moral philosophy, but assigns a narrow aim 
 to these studies, and a practical bearing on their 
 conduct. 
 
 1 The references are to characters in Moliere's " Les Femmes 
 Savantes." (Translator's note.) 
 
MONTAIGNE 95 
 
 "They will draw from these studies various useful 
 lessons : they will learn to spin out the pleasures of 
 life, and to bear with human fortitude the inconstancy 
 of a servant, the rough bearing of a husband, and 
 the importunity of years and of wrinkles. ..." 
 
 In short, woman shall study — if study she must, 
 — what is necessary to teach her patience, resigna- 
 tion, and obedience. Of her general culture and per- 
 sonal development Montaigne says not a word. 
 He is of those who would pay their court to woman 
 by maintaining her in ignorance, lest learning should 
 be prejudicial to her natural charms. On this point, 
 indeed, he quotes the authority of the Church in 
 support of his mean and shabby views: " Neither 
 we nor theology require much science in women." 
 Yet Montaigne ought to have understood the neces- 
 sity for a strong and serious feminine education, 
 since he was conscious of the drawbacks and dangers 
 of the frivolous training which was then in fashion : 
 
 "We bring up girls from childhood so that they 
 may be expert in love ; their graceful bearing, their 
 adornment, their science, their speech, their whole 
 education is directed to that one end. . . ." 
 
 What Montaigne lacked above all things to be a 
 true educator was a love for childhood. He was 
 too fond of peace to enjoy the company of children, 
 even of his own. "I could not brook having them 
 
96 MONTAIGNE 
 
 reared near me." He would easily have done with- 
 out offspring. 
 
 " Children are among the things which are in no 
 wise very desirable, particularly at this time when it 
 would be so difficult to make them good. . . ." 
 
 If he barricaded himself, so to speak, in his library, 
 in order to avoid the society of men and to live with 
 himself, how could he have opened the gates of his 
 ivory tower to the noisy and uncomfortable turbu- 
 lence of children? He did not understand their 
 charm, blind as he was to the graces and pretty 
 ways of those frail creatures, as they come into being, 
 though one of our contemporaries has said: "What 
 glimpses of Paradise are left to us on earth are due 
 to the presence of children." Montaigne, on the 
 contrary, waves them roughly out of his sight, unable 
 to understand "the passion with which people kiss 
 and fondle children hardly born," unable to find 
 either in their souls or in their bodies "anything 
 that renders them amiable." 
 
 He will not allow a mother to suckle her own child ; 
 he will not even have a foster-mother in the house. 
 Reared himself in a village, and in mercenary hands, 
 he is determined that his daughters also shall spend 
 their early years far from their parents. 
 
 Montaigne, it must be confessed, was but little 
 acquainted with that laborious virtue which curbs 
 
MONTAIGNE 97 
 
 our humours under the yoke of duty, which makes 
 us watch overnight, and slave by day, in the service 
 of those whom we love; tasks which become easy 
 for the very reason that we love them. It is only 
 when the child has grown that he consents to admit 
 him to his society : — 
 
 "I would not avoid the company of my children. 
 I should wish to act as their close adviser, and to 
 enjoy the sight of their merriment and holiday- 
 making. I should endeavour, by pleasant conversa- 
 tion, to foster in my children a lively and unfeigned 
 affection for me. . . . That father is greatly to 
 be pitied whose only hold on his children's affection 
 is the need which they have of his help. . . . We 
 must win respect through virtue, and love through 
 kindness. ..." 
 
 With young men, therefore, Montaigne becomes 
 an affectionate father, because he finds pleasure in 
 their society. Had he been blessed with any sons, 
 he would, he says, have treated them kindly when 
 their twentieth year drew nigh; he would have 
 initiated them early to the family affairs, he would 
 have dispossessed himself in their favour of a part of 
 his estates, without waiting for the hour of testa- 
 ments and death. 
 
 Montaigne does not seem to have had much feeling 
 for the beauties of nature. He looks with more 
 
98 MONTAIGNE 
 
 admiration on the fair Italian women whom he sees 
 in the streets in Florence, and at the windows in 
 Rome, than on the great Alpine landscapes of the 
 Tyrol mountain passes. In any case, he prefers 
 a pretty countryside to the awe-inspiring aspects of 
 rugged nature. After he has "made a plunge" 
 into the Alps, he is delighted to find himself once 
 more on the pleasant banks of the Adige, "when the 
 mountains have lowered their horns a little." Just 
 as among men he prefers those of a " temperate and 
 average character," thus also in nature he prefers 
 hills of moderate height, graceful sites, the "pleas- 
 ant little meadows within the valleys." He ad- 
 mires the torrents of the Apennines especially when, 
 "having lost their first fury, they become in the 
 vales peaceful and gentle streamlets." Amidst 
 high mountains, he likes best their green slopes with 
 tilled fields, and villages nestling within their folds; 
 and this sight suggests to him a most ingenious 
 simile : — 
 
 "The ridges of the Tyrol mountains resemble 
 a gown which one only sees crumpled up, but which, 
 unfolded and stretched out flat, would form a great 
 country, if all these mountains were under cultiva- 
 tion and inhabited. ..." 
 
 He is also pleased to find among these mountains 
 "pleasant and comfortable roads," along which one 
 
MONTAIGNE 99 
 
 may ride at ease; "so much so," he says, "that if 
 he had to escort his daughter on her walks (Leonor 
 was then eight years old), he would as lief do so on 
 these roads as in an avenue of his gardens at Mon- 
 taigne/' — a passing thought given to his family 
 which we note with pleasure in a somewhat neg- 
 lectful father. 
 
 Neither is a feeling for art at all prominent in 
 Montaigne. Even while travelling in Italy, he hardly 
 seems to have felt the breath of the artistic Renais- 
 sance passing over his head. In vain had Michael 
 Angelo and Raphael adorned the Eternal City with 
 the novelty of their works. Montaigne passed on 
 negligently without noticing them. And when, in 
 an eloquent page of his Diary, he speaks of Rome, 
 it is ancient Rome, the memories of the past, which 
 he alone calls up : — 
 
 "He said that of Rome nothing was to be seen 
 but the heavens under which it had been seated, and 
 the outlines of the spot where it had lain ; that this 
 science which he had of ancient Rome was an ab- 
 stract and contemplative science, nothing of which 
 came under the senses ; that those who said that at 
 least the ruins of Rome were to be seen, asserted 
 too much ; for the ruins of so awesome a handiwork 
 would bring more honour and reverence to its mem- 
 ory; this, he said, was naught but the sepulchre 
 
 Lore 
 
100 MONTAIGNE 
 
 of Rome. The world, rising against her long domi- 
 nation, had first broken and shattered every piece 
 of that admirable body, and because, although 
 dead, overthrown and disfigured, it was still awe- 
 inspiring, they had buried its very ruins. What- 
 ever slight tokens of the ruin of Rome still appear 
 above her bier, had been preserved, he said, by fate as 
 a testimony to that infinite greatness which so many 
 centuries, so many conflagrations, and the oft-re- 
 peated coalitions of the world to compass its ruin, 
 had been unable to extinguish at all points. ..." 
 
 Little touched by the embellishments of the new 
 Rome, he said : — 
 
 "The buildings of this bastard Rome, which are 
 now being fastened on these ruins, put me in mind 
 of the nests which the sparrows and daws attach 
 in France to the vaults of the churches which the 
 Huguenots have just been wrecking." 
 
 Fine arts, plastic arts, therefore left Montaigne 
 more or less indifferent. In Rome, however, the 
 statues attract his attention; and he enumerates 
 those which he admired most in the palace of the 
 Cardinal of Ferrara. But he has hardly anything 
 to say on the paintings ; and what he does say be- 
 trays singular prejudices, since he will not even allow 
 that painting is in the least capable of representing 
 nature : — 
 
MONTAIGNE 101 
 
 "All our efforts cannot even succeed in picturing 
 the nest of a little bird, with its texture and beauty, 
 nor even the web of a puny spider. ..." 
 
 Let us note, however, a theory which is of interest 
 in art, and which, although expressed in a couple 
 of lines, is pregnant with consequences: "I would 
 naturalize art," — and he added, coining a word 
 which neither lived nor deserved to live: "instead 
 of artialising nature." — Montaigne thus associated 
 himself with the movement which, during the last 
 centuries of the Middle Ages, had already carried 
 architects, cathedral sculptors, and miniature paint- 
 ers beyond artistic stagnation and traditional con- 
 ventionality, and had led them to inaugurate a new 
 art by introducing movement and life into it through 
 the imitation of nature. Let us note also that 
 Montaigne would have approved of the effort which 
 is being made at the present time to provide schools 
 and class-rooms with a cheerful and artistic setting, 
 which surrounds the child with an atmosphere of 
 beauty. He asked that the class-rooms should be 
 strewn with flowers. He wished to see the walls 
 adorned with the pictures of "Gladness and Joy, 
 of Flora and the Graces." 
 
 Whatever may have been the lacunae in Mon- 
 taigne's mind, he came very near being a complete 
 man. His pedagogy is open to nature and to life, 
 as he wished works of art to be. It is at fault, how- 
 
102 MONTAIGNE 
 
 ever, in that it remains rather superficial, easy-going, 
 and slight. Montaigne is a thinker and a writer of 
 genius, and men of genius are perhaps not best 
 fitted to become educators. Everything is easy 
 to them : the resources of their rich nature dispense 
 them from effort; hence they do not think of re- 
 quiring it in others. They forget that the common 
 herd of men do not enjoy the same faculties. Hav- 
 ing reached without labour and without trouble the 
 highest peaks of intellectual and moral life, they 
 do not take into consideration that, even to rise 
 midway to these heights, those who labour in the 
 valley require a more intensive education and a 
 harder discipline. 1 
 
 Montaigne is none the less a wise counsellor, whose 
 lessons will always be profitable. Between Eras- 
 mus, the erudite humanist, exclusively in love with 
 belles-lettres, and Rabelais, the bold dreamer, who 
 seems intent on cramming the whole encyclopaedia 
 of human knowledge into the brain of his disciple, — 
 who was a giant, it is true, — at the risk of causing 
 it to burst, Montaigne occupies an intermediate 
 place, with his circumspect and moderate tendencies, 
 averse to any excess. 
 
 1 "Are we not all sons of Montaigne," said Felix Pecaut, who 
 complained of it, "sons of Montaigne by the absolute freedom 
 of our minds, but also by our disposition to look with indifference 
 on the most various opinions?" (Revue pedagogique, 1888, 
 Vol. I, p. 216.) 
 
MONTAIGNE 103 
 
 The child who has followed Montaigne's lessons 
 will be above all clear-minded; he will possess a 
 solid and acute judgment, a prudent and upright 
 character. He will have tasted, like his master, 
 "only the outer crust of science." But he will 
 have surveyed the whole field of knowledge, lightly, 
 u a la frangaise" ; this expression is indeed surpris- 
 ing from the pen of a sixteenth-century writer, at 
 the close of the Middle Ages, whose logicians, truly, 
 in no way announced the amiable lightness of mind 
 of the French people. He will be a man devoted 
 to duty, or at least a man of honour. Although averse 
 to vain ceremony, he will show himself on all occa- 
 sions polite and civil, prodigal of salutations, ever 
 ready to " raise his bonnet"; especially in summer, 
 because there is less risk of catching a cold in that 
 season. . . . More important still, he will be a 
 mild and tolerant man, independent in his ideas and 
 straightforward in his speech. "Lying is the worst 
 of faults." What he may lack, a little, will be the 
 qualities of the heart. If Montaigne is silent with 
 regard to the qualities of the heart, we are far from 
 thinking with Guizot that this redounds to his honour. 
 He will also lack a taste for action ; and lastly, what 
 Rabelais and the men of the Renaissance for the 
 most part possessed to the highest degree: faith 
 in science, enthusiasm, and confidence in the future. 
 
Ill 
 
 Montaigne's Influence 
 
 "If we believe everything that Montaigne advises, 
 and do all that he recommends, we may need to add 
 thereto, and to take the pupil somewhat further than 
 he did : but we must pass by the road which he took ; 
 if he did not say all, all that he did say is true, and 
 before we may pretend to outstrip him, we must 
 endeavour to overtake [him." Thus spoke Guizot 
 in 1812, not without some exaggeration, in the 
 Annates de V Education. 1 Indeed, long before the 
 nineteenth century, many of Montaigne's pedagogic 
 views were fully appreciated, and taken as sources 
 of inspiration. Locke, Rousseau, borrowed largely 
 from him. The Solitaires, or recluses of Port-Royal, 
 in their Logic, put him under contribution, though 
 they omitted any acknowledgment or thanks. 
 Montaigne is really the chief of a school, as an Eng- 
 lish writer, Herbert Quick, proclaims in his Educa- 
 tional Reformers, where he declares that the author 
 
 1 Montaigne's Ideas on Education, an article that has often 
 been reprinted, and particularly in Conseils d'un Pere sur V Edu- 
 cation, Paris, 1883. 
 
 104 
 
MONTAIGNE 105 
 
 of the Essays founded, in the field of pedagogy, a 
 school of thinkers, the principal adherents to which, 
 in later times, were Locke and Rousseau. 1 - In Ger- 
 many, several editions of Montaigne's pedagogical 
 Essays have been published. 2 On all sides, due 
 homage has been rendered to the merit of a pedagogy 
 made up of good sense and wisdom, which paved the 
 way for a more liberal and a broader education. 
 Without aspiring to it, Montaigne has become one 
 of the masters of human thought. 
 
 It is true that it is his work taken as a whole, even 
 more than his short pedagogical sketch, which calls 
 forth the almost unanimous admiration of his critics. 
 Sainte-Beuve, imagining posterity as escorting Mon- 
 taigne's funeral, introduces into the procession the 
 most illustrious French writers: La Fontaine and 
 Moliere, Montesquieu and J.-J. Rousseau, Voltaire 
 also, and many others. Did not Mme. de Sevigne 
 exclaim: "Ah! what an amiable man! And how 
 full of good sense his book is ! " 
 
 To this throng of admirers must be added a num- 
 ber of foreign thinkers. Thus the American writer 
 Emerson gives him a place in his gallery of Represen- 
 
 1 Educational Reformers, latest edition, Cincinnati, 1883. 
 
 2 For instance, the edition of E. Schmidt in the Library of 
 Pedagogical Classics, Langensalza, 1876. Cf. also the editions 
 of Karl Reimer (1872), of Schippard (1880), and the study on 
 Montaigne by Wittslock (1874). 
 
106 MONTAIGNE 
 
 tative Men. 1 Beside Plato, "the Philosopher," 
 and Shakespeare, "the Poet," Montaigne is pictured 
 as "the Sceptic"; and Emerson wreathes him with 
 flowers: "I remember the delight and wonder in 
 which I lived with it" (i.e. an odd volume of 
 Cotton's translation of the Essays). 
 
 Beside Emerson we must place Byron, of whom 
 it was said 2 that Montaigne was the only great writer 
 of past times whom he read with avowed satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 An even more unexpected testimony is that of 
 Nietzsche, who, in that period of his intellectual 
 evolution when he conceived a taste for the clear- 
 ness of thought of French literature, celebrated 
 the "charming loquacity" of Montaigne. 3 
 
 People have not been content to read and admire 
 Montaigne ; they have taken up his thoughts, copied 
 them, and developed them. 
 
 It was not Pascal, but Montaigne, who wrote: 
 1 ' He who imagines, as in a painting, this great picture 
 of Mother Nature in her full majesty, and who, in 
 this picture, looks upon himself, and not upon himself 
 alone, but upon a whole kingdom, as a small stroke 
 
 1 Translated into French by M. Izoulet, under the title of 
 Les Surhumains. Montaigne is not superhuman, as M. Izoulet 
 would have it, but he is a thoroughly representative man. 
 
 2 By Leigh Hunt, quoted by Emerson. (Translator's note.) 
 
 3 Cf . E. Faguet's recent book: En lisant Nietzsche. 
 
MONTAIGNE 107 
 
 made with a very fine point, that one alone judges 
 of things in their right proportions. . . ." 
 
 It was not Descartes, but again Montaigne, who 
 said: "That you can put nothing into a pupil's 
 head simply by quoting some authority, and so to 
 speak on credit ... ;" or again: — 
 
 "When the Pyrrhonians affirm their doubt, we 
 immediately take them by the throat to force them 
 to confess that this much at least they know: that 
 they doubt." 
 
 It was not Rousseau, but Montaigne again, who 
 declared that "to refine the mind is not to make it 
 wiser," and elsewhere : — 
 
 "The study of science weakens our courage and 
 renders it effeminate, far more than it strengthens it 
 and inures it to war." — "I think Rome fought 
 better before she grew learned." 
 
 And likewise, do we not think we are listening 
 to Fenelon, when we read in the Essays : "Education 
 should be conducted with a gentle severity"? — or 
 again, to Locke, in such a passage as this: "Harden 
 the child against perspiration and cold, against the 
 wind, the sun, and the dangers which he ought to 
 look down upon." 
 
 One single work sufficed to acquire for Montaigne 
 immortal renown. In that extraordinary success, 
 we must assuredly ascribe a share to the delightful 
 
108 MONTAIGNE 
 
 style. Never did a man speak a language that was 
 so new, so savoury, so supple and rich, very French 
 withal, with a spice of the Gascon idiom. Mon- 
 taigne is one of the creators of the French language. 
 How many new words he coined, a number of which 
 have survived ! Picturesque expressions flow in an 
 endless stream under his pen. Metaphors abound, 
 metaphors that are new, rather than those i{ whose 
 beauty has taken on the wrinkles of age." Nearly 
 always the concrete image takes the place of the ab- 
 straction. "Cut these words," said Emerson, "and 
 they would bleed; they are vascular and alive." 
 Moreover, in the fresh novelty of that flowery 
 language which blooms in full liberty, the boldness 
 of the construction, the contempt for syntax, con- 
 tribute to the seduction of a style both picturesque 
 and poetical. Did not Montesquieu, who believed 
 that even in prose, we can be a poet, put Montaigne 
 among "the four great poets," with Plato, Male- 
 branche, and Shaftesbury? The lack of order and 
 arrangement, the desultoriness even of a thought 
 which proceeds at random, without obeying any 
 regular plan, are not without their attractiveness. 
 Montaigne was no lover of continuous discourse: 
 "I pause often for lack of breath." "A glimpse of 
 a tuft of fur " crossing his path was enough to lead 
 him off on a charming digression from his main 
 
MONTAIGNE 109 
 
 theme. The Essays resemble a collection of "news 
 paragraphs/' written by a journalist of great talent, 
 at a time when journalism was non-existent. So 
 that one should not attempt to read the Essays 
 from end to end, as one reads a book of continuous 
 and methodical doctrine. To enjoy all their charm 
 and admire them unreservedly, one should read them 
 in fragments, day by day, as they were written. 
 They should be taken in small sips, so to speak. 
 We can then enjoy to the full the "flow of gossip" 
 of the wittiest of talkers; and appreciate the sim- 
 plicity, the familiarity of conversation, of a writer 
 who "talks to his paper as he would talk to any one," 
 and of whom it was also Montesquieu who said, 
 "In most authors, I see the author who writes; in 
 Montaigne I see a man who thinks." 
 
 Original in his style, Montaigne is no less so in 
 his ideas. I know, and he in no wise concealed, that 
 he owes much to the writers of antiquity. "My 
 book is a bunch of flowers for which I have provided 
 only the thread." He often struts in borrowed 
 feathers, and he used to say, ' ' I wish some one would 
 pluck the feathers off me, " thus hinting that, if he 
 were once stripped of all he had borrowed, there 
 would remain little or nothing of the Essays. There 
 would remain all the fine embroidery which an im- 
 pulsive imagination worked on to the rough ground 
 
110 MONTAIGNE 
 
 of other people's thoughts, without reckoning all 
 the new ideas that belong to him alone. Through 
 all his reminiscences and his overflow of quotations 
 from the poets, historians, and philosophers of Greece 
 and Rome, there blows a modern spirit, and Mon- 
 taigne's personality stands out on every page. He 
 claimed his share of originality when he said that 
 he used books, "not to shape his opinions, but to 
 assist and support them, when once they were 
 formed." 
 
 u In the books I read I am ever on the lookout 
 for something to pilfer, that may serve to jewel or 
 shore up my own." 
 
 If some chapters of the Essays, by their titles at 
 least, are merely recollections of the short moral 
 treatises which the philosophers of antiquity have 
 left us, — Of Anger, Of Constancy, Of Virtue, — 
 others are, so to speak, the first sketches of some of 
 the books which have been written within the last 
 three centuries by the most famous of our thinkers 
 and philosophers ; such are, for instance, the essays 
 entitled, Of Liberty of Conscience, Of Roman Great- 
 ness. And is it not a fact that Pascal's Pensees, or 
 Thoughts, had their origin in the famous chapter 
 entitled Apology of Raymond Sebond ? Montaigne 
 is, so to speak, the middleman between ancient 
 thought and modern thought. He makes antiquity 
 
MONTAIGNE 111 
 
 live again, and at the same time, by his novel and 
 bold views, he opens a new era; and this, it would 
 seem, without being conscious of it, for this man of 
 progress does not believe in progress. He is a 
 precursor without knowing it. 
 
 Montaigne had little faith either in the progress 
 of the individual or in the progress of society. At 
 the age of twenty, according to him, a human soul 
 is " released from its ties," being already all that it 
 is capable of becoming. In another passage, he 
 fixes the age of thirty as a limit for the evolution 
 of the individual ; and he recalls the fact that most 
 great men had accomplished their glorious actions 
 before that age. He quotes himself as an example, 
 and says that since his thirtieth year, "his mind, 
 like his body, has gone back rather than advanced." 
 The most that he will concede is that for those who 
 make good use of their time, "Knowledge and 
 experience increase with life;" but sharpness of 
 mind, promptness and firmness of judgment, 
 " those faculties which are far more ours, more im- 
 portant and more essential, fade and languish." 
 
 Montaigne — untrue in this respect to the spirit 
 of the Renaissance — does not believe, either, in the 
 collective progress of humanity. He neither be- 
 lieves in it, nor even desires it. He would like 
 "to put a peg into our wheel to stop its motion." 
 
112 MONTAIGNE 
 
 And yet he prepared that progress in which he had 
 no faith. His book is full of progressive views on 
 the most diverse matters. Is he not in advance 
 of his time by that spirit of tolerance which made 
 him condemn the fanaticism of his contemporaries ? 
 It was on the morrow of the St. Bartholomew 
 massacre that he wrote, "We put a very high value 
 on our conjectures when we authorize ourselves of 
 them to roast a man alive." Does he not condemn 
 the rack, and death by torture, which were still to 
 endure for generations? He is a humanitarian, in 
 that age of savage cruelty of which La Noue could 
 say, "The French are changed into tigers;" and 
 Henry IV, "We are always ready to cut each other's 
 throats." He has "a cruel hatred of cruelty." 
 He waxes indignant at the abominable sights which 
 he has the grief of witnessing. 
 
 "We have seen neighbours and fellow-citizens, 
 under the cloak of piety and religion, torture and 
 tear to pieces a body full of feeling, roast him on 
 a slow fire, and leave him to be bitten and devoured 
 by dogs and swine." 
 
 If he does not seem to suspect the future flights of 
 science, he foresees that on some points at least the 
 future is destined to modify and improve the present 
 state of things. We have seen how roughly he 
 handled medicine, with the irritation of an invalid 
 
MONTAIGNE 113 
 
 whom doctors are unable to cure, even though they 
 prescribe for the calculus which he suffered from 
 such fantastic remedies as " powdered rat's drop- 
 pings! ..." And yet he prophesies that a day 
 will come when medicine will render real services 
 to humanity, the day when each branch of medi- 
 cine has become specialized, and when there will be 
 a competent doctor for each kind of disease. 
 
 Montaigne does not remain absorbed in the ideal- 
 istic meditations of philosophical dilettantism. He 
 is already a practical man, with a thought for useful 
 arts, interested in commerce and industry. In 
 his travels, he studies and compares the different 
 systems of healing, the state of the public fountains. 
 He is as anxious to understand the working of a 
 hydraulic machine as to visit public libraries, art 
 galleries, or churches. In the towns of Germany, 
 he notes that our neighbours "have got iron and good 
 Workmen in abundance, and that they are far ahead 
 of us." France was already outdistanced by Ger- 
 many. He inquires about the institutions which 
 may facilitate commercial life; he would like to 
 see in every town a central information office, a 
 kind of labour exchange. 
 
 The prejudices of a narrow patriotism are unknown 
 to Montaigne. The love he bore to his "wretched 
 country" did not prevent him from doing justice 
 
114 MONTAIGNE 
 
 to other nations. Like Socrates, he might have said, 
 "I am not a citizen of Athens, I am a citizen of the 
 world." He sees with "infinite pleasure" the 
 efficient policing, the simple way of living, and the 
 freedom of Switzerland. He has a better opinion 
 of the Italians than of the French; he thinks " their 
 mind is more alert, their judgment sounder." With 
 regard to his fellow-countrymen, "an indiscreet 
 nation," he criticises, among other failings, their 
 bellicose temper: "Put down three Frenchmen 
 amid the deserts of Libya, they will not remain for 
 a month together, without molesting and scratching 
 each other." In his Diary of Travel, it is evident 
 that the very favourable judgments he passed on the 
 nations he visited were mingled with some little 
 contempt for his own country, "which he hated so 
 that his heart rose against it." But he was enthu- 
 siastic with regard to Paris, which he criticised only 
 for the rank smell of its mud, as he did Venice for 
 that of its marshes. It is quite a modern writer 
 who sings this hymn to the glory of Paris : — 
 
 "I am never so angry with France but that I 
 look upon Paris with a kindly eye. Paris has pos- 
 sessed my heart since my childhood, and like other 
 excellent things, has retained its hold on me ever 
 since. The more beautiful towns I have seen since 
 then, the more strongly the beauty of this one has 
 
MONTAIGNE 115 
 
 established its claim to my affection; I love it for 
 itself, and more in its own being than when over- 
 laden with external pomp ; I love it tenderly, even 
 in its warts and blemishes ; I am French only through 
 this great town, great by its people, great by the 
 happiness of its situation, great especially and be- 
 yond compare by the variety and diversity of its 
 conveniences : it is the glory of France and one of 
 the most noble ornaments of the world. God protect 
 it from our quarrels and divisions ! . . ." 
 
 Even the method of reasoning practised by Mon- 
 taigne is, in some respects, animated by a spirit 
 which is new. In the marshalling of his thoughts 
 he is not so wayward and devoid of order as one 
 might think. Nearly always, as he proceeds, he 
 founds himself on facts, — facts of every kind, it is 
 true, which are not all authentic, which he has not 
 observed for himself, and the responsibility for which 
 he lays on the shoulders of the writers from whom 
 he borrows them; but after all it is on facts, his- 
 torical or not, which his erudition provides him with 
 in plenty, that he founds his reflections and con- 
 clusions. This is already in a sense the method of 
 Bacon. Montaigne does not proceed by deduction, 
 according to the geometrical method which will 
 be that of Descartes ; but he observes, and proceeds 
 by induction, before ever Bacon had advised this 
 
116 MONTAIGNE 
 
 course. The Essays have been called the Preface 
 to the Instauratio magna. 
 
 It is especially himself that Montaigne observes, 
 and he may be considered as the inspirer of that 
 introspective psychology which takes for its aim the 
 analysis of self, and for its means interior observa- 
 tion ; that psychology which was long held in honour 
 by French philosophers, and which, in spite of its 
 shortcomings, has been of such advantage for the 
 knowledge of human nature. He has analyzed 
 most acutely the failings of memory. He has spoken 
 in happy terms of the relation between the soul and 
 the feelings: "The soul is touched very lightly and 
 so to speak glided over by the gentle impressions of 
 the senses." Nor is he blind to the difficulties of 
 this process of interior reflection. 
 
 "It is," he said, "a thorny undertaking to follow 
 such a vagabond as our mind, to reach the opaque 
 depths of its inner recesses, to select and catch hold 
 of the light air- waves of its motions." 
 
 But he added, "If there is no description equally 
 difficult, there is none either that is of such utility." 
 He devoted himself to it entirely, towards the end 
 of his life: "For several years I have had myself 
 only as the object of my thoughts." To justify 
 himself, he quoted the example of Socrates: "Is 
 there aught that Socrates deals with at greater length 
 
MONTAIGNE 117 
 
 than with himself?" Like the Greek philosopher, 
 he esteemed other sciences as worthy of esteem 
 only "in the service of life," and therefore looked 
 upon the knowledge of Self as the most important 
 of all. 
 
 There is scarcely a pedagogical question on which 
 Montaigne had not a word to say, a word that hits 
 the mark, and is modern in sense. 
 
 The boarding system he condemns unhesitatingly : 
 "I will not have this boy imprisoned. . . ." 
 
 The overworking of scholars, which in our days 
 has been written about so largely, he denounces 
 severely : — 
 
 "I would not corrupt the child's mind by keeping 
 him cramped at his work for fourteen or fifteen 
 hours a day, like a porter. ..." 
 
 Excessive mental work, an indiscreet application 
 to study, a rash thirst for knowledge, all these, 
 according to Montaigne, lead simply to dulness, 
 stupidity, or insanity. 
 
 "There is nothing so charming as the little chil- 
 dren of France, but they generally disappoint the 
 hopes that had been founded on them. I have 
 heard people of understanding assert that these 
 colleges, to which they are sent, besot them thus." 
 
 On the subject of the study of modern languages, 
 Montaigne was three centuries in advance of us. 
 
118 MONTAIGNE 
 
 However, it is through travel, and residence abroad, 
 that he would foster this branch of education : — 
 
 "We should begin to take our scholar about from 
 his earliest youth, and start with those neighbouring 
 nations the language of which is most different from 
 our own (there is little doubt that this refers to 
 Germany), and which the tongue cannot accommo- 
 date itself to, unless it be trained early." 
 
 The "direct method" which we apply to-day, 
 and which consists in learning languages less through 
 grammar than through practice and conversation, 
 was recommended by Montaigne even for Latin. 
 
 "Active" methods, which demand reflection on 
 the part of the pupil, have found in our time no more 
 zealous advocate. 
 
 We require at the present day that some ethical 
 teaching should be given early, and introduce into 
 the fourth and third classes x an elementary and 
 familiar course on the duties of man. Montaigne 
 Was already in favour of this. 
 
 We live in a busy century, when every one is in 
 a hurry to elbow his way to the front. It was 
 already thus in the days of Montaigne, who would 
 not allow his pupil to labour too long at books. Life 
 
 1 The "quatrieme" and "troisieme" of a French lycee cor- 
 respond approximately to the third and fourth forms, respec- 
 tively, of an English public school. (Translator's note.) 
 
MONTAIGNE 119 
 
 is short, he says, and he complains that the en- 
 trance of young men upon active careers is delayed 
 too long. "They are not put to work early enough." 
 Too large a share of life is given to " idleness and 
 apprenticeship." 
 
 "Our child is in a hurry: only the first fifteen 
 or sixteen years of his life should be devoted to 
 pedagogic training; the remainder should be given 
 to action. . . ." 
 
 We think of organizing, for the moral and social 
 education of youth, public holidays and celebra- 
 tions ; here again Montaigne was an initiator : — 
 
 "Good governments are careful to assemble 
 the citizens, and to marshal them, not only for 
 solemn services of worship, but also for drill and for 
 games. ..." 
 
 And the result, he says, will be this happy con- 
 sequence, that "the society and friendship of men 
 will be increased." 
 
 Though in education Montaigne is an innovator, 
 and at times an extremely bold one, in politics 
 he is the most timorous of conservatives. Do not 
 suggest to him that any changes might be made 
 in established custom, whatever evil he may think 
 of it. He has no love for revolutions, and he looks 
 upon any theoretical discussion on the best form 
 of government as a futile academic exercise. 
 
120 MONTAIGNE 
 
 "We are fond of finding fault with our present 
 condition; and yet I hold that it is vice and folly 
 to desire the rule of a few, in a popular State; or, 
 under a monarchy, some other form of govern- 
 ment." 
 
 Ah! no doubt, if all present conditions were 
 first swept away, if an ideal city were to be built 
 on new ground, "in a new world," Montaigne would 
 have some " picture of a policy" to propose, some 
 plan of government, different from that which he 
 supports, without denying, be it said, either its 
 abuses or its vices. But we are face to face with 
 a world "already made, and formed to certain 
 customs." To try and reform it would be, to begin 
 with, more or less impossible. 
 
 "Whatever means we be allowed in order to 
 straighten it and reorganize it, we can hardly hope 
 to twist it out of its accustomed folds. . . ." 
 
 And if a revolution were possible, is it certain 
 that the State would benefit? Montaigne is a 
 conservative especially because he despairs of 
 achieving anything better. 
 
 "All great changes shake the State and intro- 
 duce disorder. . . . The movements of humanity 
 cannot better its lot. . . . Good does not neces- 
 sarily succeed evil ; another evil may take its place." 
 
 Just as in religion Montaigne the sceptic, the 
 
MONTAIGNE 121 
 
 rationalist, concludes in favour of obedience to 
 Catholicism, so in politics, dissatisfied though he 
 is, he advocates respect for the established order 
 of things; and he endeavours to comfort the impa- 
 tient spirits who clamour for reform and wish to 
 save the country from the evils which it is suffer- 
 ing: 
 
 "Our polity is in evil plight: others have been 
 in worse, without dying. ..." 
 
 Montaigne, then, is a conservative. But it some- 
 times happens that this conservative speaks a 
 revolutionary language. Or at least he takes note, 
 without protest, of the bold reflections uttered by 
 strangers, notable Americans, on certain institu- 
 tions of the European states, such as hereditary 
 kingship, or the unequal distribution of wealth. 
 He was at Rouen, towards 1565, with Charles IX. 
 There the youthful king had occasion to receive 
 three natives of Brazil, and he conversed with them 
 for a long time. They were asked what, among 
 the French uses and customs, had surprised them 
 most. Among other things, they answered that 
 what seemed to them very strange, was that "so 
 many big-bearded men, strong and well-armed, 
 should submit to obey a child. ..." They had 
 been even more surprised to find among the French 
 "men filled and gorged with all kinds of comforts," 
 
122 MONTAIGNE 
 
 while some of their fellow-beings " stood begging 
 at their gates, wasted by hunger and poverty"; 
 they could not understand how " these poor people 
 could suffer such injustice, why they did not seize 
 the others by the throat, or set their houses on 
 fire. . . ." 
 
 Montaigne is not so much absorbed in the study 
 of antiquity as to forget to open his eyes not only 
 to the present, but to the future of modern societies 
 and of the whole of humanity. He was acquainted 
 with the Capitol and its plan before he had seen the 
 Louvre, with the Tiber before he had seen the Seine ; 
 but that does not prevent him from giving his 
 attention, with a passionate curiosity, to the ques- 
 tions of discovery and conquest in the New World. 
 Thus, after a pompous description of popular holi- 
 days at Rome, he carries us without transition 
 to the other shore of the Atlantic : — 
 
 "Our world has recently discovered another, not 
 less extensive, less filled, less large-limbed, and yet so 
 new and so childish that it is still being taught its 
 a b c. ..." x 
 
 And he proceeds to foretell the future destinies 
 of that child- world; he seems to have a foreboding 
 of its rapid development, and also of the damage 
 it will do one day to the older world : — 
 
 1 Essays, Book III, Chap. VI. 
 
MONTAIGNE 123 
 
 "This other world will just be beginning to shine 
 when ours is growing dim ; the universe will be smit- 
 ten with the palsy ; one of its limbs will be numbed, 
 and the other in its full vigour." 
 
 Does not the prodigious intensity of life of the 
 United States partly justify Montaigne's predictions? 
 He was amazed at the "awful magnificence of the 
 towns of Cuzco and Mexico." What would he have 
 said of the colossal growth of the cities of New York 
 and Chicago ? 
 
 Meanwhile Montaigne complains, with eloquent 
 anger, of the conduct of the Spaniards in their 
 barbarous conquests. He would have wished to 
 see the populations of America, which had no other 
 care but "to spend life happily and pleasantly," 
 in the hands of peaceful and gentle civilizers, and 
 not in the grip of greedy conquerors, intent on their 
 prey. And, always filled with admiration for an- 
 tiquity, he exclaims : — 
 
 "What a pity that so noble a conquest did not 
 fall to the lot of Alexander, or of those ancient 
 Greeks and Romans ! . . . They would have gently 
 smoothed and polished the savage nature of these 
 peoples; they would have established between 
 them and ourselves a brotherly intercourse and 
 understanding. On the contrary, what have we 
 seen? So many towns levelled to the ground, so 
 
124 MONTAIGNE 
 
 many nations exterminated, so many millions of 
 people cut down with the sword, and the richest and 
 most beautiful part of the world thrown into con- 
 fusion for the sake of a trade in pearls and pepper ! " 
 In the contemplation of those American tribes, 
 who lived peacefully under natural laws, before their 
 oppressors came and taught them the ways, institu- 
 tions, and vices of civilization, Montaigne, the thor- 
 oughly civilized Montaigne, allows himself some Uto- 
 pian day-dreams. He goes so far as to regret, as 
 a lost golden age, the savage life of primitive peo- 
 ples. One of the passages in which he dwells on 
 his fancies has been copied by Shakespeare. The 
 English poet had read the Essays in the translation 
 published by Florio in 1601. 1 Thereupon a French 
 critic imagined, somewhat rashly, that Montaigne 
 had exercised on Shakespeare's mind a profound 
 influence. 2 According to him, the reading of the 
 Essays considerably modified the character of 
 Shakespeare's dramatic output after 1603, by intro- 
 ducing into his dramas a new philosophy. Julius 
 C&sar, Ha?nlet, Coriolanus, according to him, are 
 
 1 The copy of Florio' s translation, with marginal notes by 
 Shakespeare, is in the British Museum. It was even declared 
 that an autograph of Shakespeare had been found in it, but the 
 document appears to be a forgery. 
 
 2 Cf. an article by Philarete Chasles, in the Journal des Dcbats 
 (October, 1846). 
 
MONTAIGNE 125 
 
 full of Montaigne. Those are very bold affirma- 
 tions. All that is certain is that the author of 
 The Tempest put into the mouth of one of his char- 
 acters, shipwrecked with a few companions in mis- 
 fortune on a desert island, a tirade textually borrowed 
 from Montaigne: — 
 
 "Gonzalo: F the commonwealth I would by 
 contraries 
 Execute all things; for no kind of traffic 
 Would I admit; no name of magistrate; 
 Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, 
 And use of service, none; contract, succession, 
 Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; 
 No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; 
 No occupation ; all men idle, all ; 
 And women too," etc. 1 
 
 Montaigne happened to write, once, in a moment 
 of ill-humour, "the vulgar rabble. . . ." He must 
 not, however, be taken for an aristocrat who de- 
 spises the people. He knows what virtues the stout 
 hearts of the people may conceal. Of one of the 
 Three Good Women whose story he tells, he says that 
 she was of humble extraction, and that "among 
 those of that condition it is nothing new to meet 
 with instance of rare kindness." Nurtured at first 
 
 1 The Tempest (1612), Act II, Sc. I. Cf. Essays, Book I, Chap. 
 XXX. We italicize the words which are textually borrowed 
 from Montaigne. 
 
126 MONTAIGNE 
 
 in a humble village home, with common peasants 
 for his godfather and godmother, he never ceased 
 to " devote himself to the lowly." He was a coun- 
 try gentleman, and if he took little interest in agri- 
 culture, of which he had not the remotest notion, 
 he at least sympathized with the farmers. The 
 peasantry, he used to say, in their manner of life and 
 conversation, are better " regulated" than philoso- 
 phers. 
 
 "Let us look down at the poor people whom we 
 see scattered on the ground, bending low over 
 their work : they know nothing of Aristotle or Cato, 
 of example or precept; yet Nature draws from 
 them every day feats of constancy and of patience 
 which are both purer and harder to perform than 
 those which we study so diligently at school." 
 
 Sometimes, escaping from his royalist traditions, 
 Montaigne declares that "the supremacy of the 
 people appears to him most natural and most 
 equitable." Equality was, in his eyes, "the founda- 
 tion of equity." He was not lacking in fraternal 
 compassion for the humble; he showed it by shel- 
 tering in his castle little beggars, whom he tried 
 to rescue from beggary and poverty, and who, for 
 that matter, once clad and fed, bolted, as later on 
 the little vagabonds will do whom Pestalozzi has 
 gathered off the highways. 
 
MONTAIGNE 127 
 
 The theologians of Rome reproached Montaigne, 
 among other things, with his use and abuse of the 
 word "fortune," because he thus sacrificed Provi- 
 dence, the Divine will, in the government of human 
 affairs, to force of circumstances, fate, or chance. 
 Modern philosophy levels the same reproach at 
 him, but for other reasons. Montaigne had not 
 sufficient faith in the power of the will, in the effects 
 of human reflection. He does not feel clearly enough 
 that it is man who can be, if he chooses, the artisan 
 of his own destiny. He looks upon "fortune," 
 that is to say, everything that is independent of the 
 human will, as the true ruler over this world. ' ' Luck 
 and ill luck," he says, "are sovereign powers." 
 
 We must not, however, allow it to be said that the 
 exercise of the will was unknown to Montaigne. 
 A volition is, in its essence, only a strong thought, 
 and who would dream of denying that he had 
 strong and virile thoughts? Some one went the 
 length of saying of the Essays that by the admira- 
 tion and reverence which Montaigne professes for 
 heroes of all ages, they were in a sense a school for 
 the will. 
 
 Montaigne would have been surprised, I think, 
 if some one could have foretold to him the extra- 
 ordinary success which the future had in store for 
 the Essays, — editions innumerable, translations into 
 
128 MONTAIGNE 
 
 foreign languages, as many readers as there are 
 people in the world with a taste for letters. He 
 would have been delighted as well as surprised: 
 for we must not take him at his word when he affects 
 indifference and contempt for glory. He admits 
 occasionally that praise was agreeable to him, 
 whatever quarter it came from. If he put Mile, 
 de Gournay very high among the remarkable per- 
 sons of his age, the esteem in which he held her 
 was largely due to the touching devotion shown 
 to him by this young lady, whose mind, after all, 
 was not above the average, but who acted as a 
 harbinger of his future renown. We must not take 
 him at his word when he speaks of the " nihility" 
 of his works, and professes to be a man "of the 
 common clay." Insincere in this respect, with his 
 feigned modesty, he knew himself too well, he had 
 too unerring a judgment, not to be conscious of his 
 own merit. 
 
 Had it been vouchsafed to him to know the appre- 
 ciations — in their extreme diversity — of the crowd 
 of commentators who have fastened on the Essays, 
 he would have been flattered by their praise, and at 
 heart grieved by their criticisms. But he would have 
 been even more amused by their contradictions. He 
 would have taken pleasure in gathering from their 
 contrary affirmations new arguments for scoffing at 
 
MONTAIGNE 129 
 
 the uncertainty of human judgment, and for pointing 
 to the difficulty of adopting settled opinions. And 
 without pretending to imitate his marvellous style, 
 — only a La Bruyere could make the attempt, 1 — 
 this is perhaps the tenor, if not the form, of some of 
 the reflections which would have occurred to him 
 while reading his critics : — 
 
 "I see," he would have thought, "that, in spite 
 of the long succession of years, the inconstancy of 
 human opinions has not changed within the last 
 three hundred years: they still fluctuate and vary. 
 Here, for instance, is one of your great ministers 
 of education, Guizot, who has extolled me to the 
 skies and loaded me with praise which I should 
 never have dared to aspire to in my most presump- 
 tuous moods. Yes, but here is something calcu- 
 lated to humble my pride, if I could feel any; for 
 what do I read in the work of Guillaume Guizot, the 
 son, I think, of my panegyrist ? That I committed 
 'the mistake of putting forth as a programme 
 my own personal education, which came to noth- 
 ing. . . .' This is rather hard on me, and I appeal 
 from the son to the father. Was my education such 
 a total failure? 
 
 'What else does this severe critic say? That I 
 
 1 Cf . La Bruyere's "pastiche" of Montaigne in the Characters, 
 Chap. V : Of Society and Conversation. 
 
130 MONTAIGNE 
 
 sketched 'a plan of education for a gentleman of 
 high standing, according to the recollections of a 
 spoilt child. . . .' I, a 'spoilt child'? Why, you 
 forget that I was brought up in a village, roughly, 
 like a rustic; that I was trained to the humblest 
 and commonest manner of living, to frugality and 
 austerity; that if peradventure my life did not 
 conform to the habits of my early youth, the fault 
 lay, not with the education which I had received, 
 but with my own inclinations. You forget that I 
 was left in this poor village so long as I was at nurse, 
 and even after that; and that later, when I was 
 hardly six years of age, I was shut up in the 'College 
 de Guyenne/ in a jail for captive youth. It was said 
 to be the best school in France, with excellent 
 teachers, at least two of whom, Buchanan and 
 Muret, have remained famous; but still, it was a 
 school, and caresses were few. 
 
 " It is true that my excellent father, the best that 
 ever was, when he kept me near him, dealt with me 
 in a mild and free manner, exempt from any rigorous 
 subjection, wishing to train my soul in all gentle- 
 ness and liberty ; but it was only when I was at home 
 that I enjoyed this liberty, and until the age of thir- 
 teen I was scarcely ever at Montaigne except in 
 holiday time. 
 
 "It is true also that, on my return from nurse, 
 
MONTAIGNE 131 
 
 my father wrapped me up in the tenderest solici- 
 tude, carried to such a superstitious excess that he 
 Was careful to have me wakened by the sound of 
 some musical instrument, lest my brain should be in- 
 jured by too sudden an awakening. Wherein perhaps 
 lies the reason that I never loved music, having had 
 a surfeit of what I was given to taste prematurely. 
 
 "Socrates, who spoke much of himself, as I also 
 have done, said of the dialogues of Plato, if we are 
 to believe tradition: 'How many fine things that 
 young man makes me say, which I never thought 
 of ! ' I might say likewise of some of my historians 
 that they have discovered in me qualities, and 
 perhaps also faults, of which I was unaware. And 
 yet, God knows how I studied and watched myself 
 throughout my life, how I observed my inner self 
 and meditated on it ! Thus I learn from Mr. Grim 1 
 that I was an economist. That is going beyond the 
 truth, though it is a fact that during my municipal 
 administration I advocated freedom of trade, and 
 did what I could to turn the citizens of Bordeaux 
 away from politics by directing their activity towards 
 commerce. Others have said that I was a philolo- 
 gist, because I wrote the chapter on Chargers. . . . 
 
 "Some have complained that I was over-com- 
 municative. But when I read all the works which 
 
 1 M. Griin, Vie publique de Montaigne. 
 
132 MONTAIGNE 
 
 patient scholars accumulate on my memory, I find 
 that I had not told everything. How touching 
 to behold, three centuries after my death, men of 
 the nineteenth century labouring with such perse- 
 verance to elucidate the obscure points of my life, 
 ferreting right and left ! Should I not be particularly 
 grateful to Dr. Payen, who spent over twenty years 
 rummaging in every nook and cranny of my life 
 and work ? He became smitten with a real passion 
 for me. Yes, his love for me was equal to that of 
 my dear 'daughter of alliance,' Mile, de Gournay. 
 And to how many others do I not owe thanks? 
 They have studied even the arm-chair in which I 
 sat in my library, and which Was rediscovered in 
 the attics of the castle of Montaigne. 1 I never sat 
 in it for long ; my mind slept when my legs were not 
 in motion; and in this respect, I, who frequented 
 every philosophic sect of antiquity, was a faithful 
 follower of the peripatetic sect, whose disciples 
 studied as they walked. 
 
 "But among all those who have recently busied 
 themselves with me, there are two in particular, 
 whom I distinguish, and put by themselves. Firstly, 
 Mr. Champion, who deserves this credit, that he 
 read my work from beginning to end, without tiring 
 
 1 Cf. the print entitled le Fauteuil de Montaigne, by M. G61y, 
 Perigueux, 1865. 
 
MONTAIGNE 133 
 
 of my prolixity and self-repetition. Among my 
 critics are there many who could say as much? 
 No doubt, I could debate with him the question 
 whether, as he believes, I several times modified my 
 way of thinking, and went through several phases; 
 whether, as he declares, two souls cohabited within 
 me ; whether, in short, there was, as people say to- 
 day, an evolution in my character and my thought. 
 But this discussion would lead us too far, and I shall 
 merely refer Mr. Champion to one of the men who 
 have analyzed the spirit of the Essays with most 
 insight, to Sainte-Beuve, who is willing to admit 
 that, after all, 'there was some unity in my ideas.' 
 I have expressly stated that my judgment, almost 
 from my birth, was one; and that with regard to 
 universal opinions, I took up from my childhood 
 the standpoint which I was to adhere to. And with 
 all due respect to Mr. Champion, there is one point 
 on which he is certainly mistaken; never, at any 
 time of my life, did I give way to ' violent party 
 spirit and to a sort of fanaticism.' 
 
 "The other is Mr. Emile Faguet. He has under- 
 stood me. I can almost see lurking about his lips 
 the ironical smile that used to play on my own. 
 He is the true heir to my thought, and if he had 
 lived in my time, I would have made him my 'son 
 of alliance,' the brother of Mile, de Gournay. 
 
134 MONTAIGNE 
 
 "Not that he deals so very tenderly with me. 
 He is much more inclined to severity. But that is 
 not to be wondered at, since he is undertaking to 
 criticise me. When I went over my own works, I 
 used to feel out of temper with myself. Mr. Faguet 
 maintains, for instance, that I will teach children 
 nothing ; at least, little or nothing. And yet did I 
 not write, appropriating one of Plutarch's thoughts : 
 'What should children learn? What they need to 
 know to grow into men'? And again, is it fair to 
 say that in the government of children, I believed 
 in a laisser faire policy, and even in allowing them 
 to do nothing? Because I have confessed that I 
 had no taste for tedious work, should it be inferred 
 that I ever advised against work, against attractive 
 work, founded on affection and willing interest? 
 And have not your best pedagogists reached the 
 same conclusion ? Do they not also recommend that 
 the child's attention be engaged by making his 
 work pleasurable? 
 
 "To judge fairly of a man, you must take his 
 circumstances into account, you must apply to him 
 what is now called the theory of environment. 
 Before the century in which I lived, there had been 
 an abuse of vain and barren science, bristling with 
 thorns and briers. Perhaps I inclined somewhat 
 too complacently in the opposite direction, towards 
 
MONTAIGNE 135 
 
 easy and pleasant study. There had been also 
 an abuse of harsh discipline, against which it was 
 necessary to react. Perhaps if I had lived in a 
 time like yours, when there is a complaint of general 
 'slackness/ I should have shown myself firmer and 
 more severe. That is what Mr. Faguet has clearly 
 understood, when he observes that I was addressing 
 men who were lacking in just those faculties of 
 moderation. I inclined a little, and perhaps a 
 little too far, on the side towards which they had no 
 inclination whatever. 
 
 "He is also deserving of praise for not always 
 taking me seriously. I wrote the Essays only to 
 occupy my hours of loneliness, for my own amuse- 
 ment. But what pleases me especially is that he 
 has defended me, after some others, against that 
 reproach of scepticism which has fastened on my 
 name like a legend. Ah ! I often harboured doubts, 
 to be sure ! I put away from me, with all my might, 
 both prejudice and superstition. But on many a 
 point I had faith, and a firm faith. I had faith in 
 justice, not in human justice, which is often most 
 unjust and iniquitous, but in essential, natural, and 
 universal justice. I believed in tolerance, and 
 practised it. And most of all, I believed in the 
 obligation to seek and to tell the truth. Truth is 
 so great a thing that we should scorn no undertaking 
 
136 MONTAIGNE 
 
 that can lead us towards it. To speak the truth 
 is the very foundation of virtue. Truth should be 
 loved for its own sake. And it is no doubt because 
 I loved truth that in spite of a few censors who have 
 jeered at me, I have met with many readers who 
 have esteemed and loved me." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Besides the chapter entitled Of the Institution and Educa- 
 tion of Children, Bk. I, Ch. XXV, one should consult, in the 
 Essays, other chapters in which Montaigne also speaks his 
 mind on the subject of Education: Bk. I, Ch. XXIV, Of 
 Pedantry; Bk. I, Ch. XXII, Of Custom; — Bk. II, Ch. VIII, 
 Of the Affection of Fathers for their Children; Bk. II, Ch. XXXI, 
 Of Anger; Bk. Ill, Ch. Ill, Of Three Commerces or Societies; 
 Bk. Ill, Ch. VIII, Of the Art of Conferring; Bk. Ill, Ch. XIII, 
 Of Experience, etc. 
 
 The editions of Montaigne are extremely numerous ; we shall 
 only quote the more important. Montaigne published during his 
 lifetime two editions: the first, in 1580, at Bordeaux, in 2 vols.; 
 this edition includes only the first two Books; the second, 
 in 15SS, Paris, 1 vol. ; the latter included a third Book and six 
 hundred additions to the first two. Mile, de Gournay next pub- 
 lished two editions of the Essays, one in 1595, revised and in- 
 creased by a third more than in the preceding editions, from notes 
 written by Montaigne during the last four years of his life; 
 the other in 1635, in which the original text is often altered. 
 
 Edition by Coste, London, 1724, often reprinted. 
 
 Edition of 1802, published from a copy of the 1588 edition, 
 preserved at Bordeaux, and which Montaigne had again filled 
 with notes. 
 
 Edition of J. V. Le Clerc, 1826, reprinted in 1863, with a 
 Preface by Prevost-Paradol, 4 vols, in 8vo. This edition has 
 become classical, and we have followed it in our quotations. 
 
 Variorum edition of Charles Louandre, 4 vols, in 12mo, Paris, 
 1862. 
 
 137 
 
138 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Edition of Dezeimeris and Barkhausen, 2 vols., text of 1580, 
 the first two Books only, Bordeaux, 1870. 
 
 Edition of Combet and Royet, 4 vols., Paris, 1870. 
 
 Edition of Motheau and Jouaust, text of 1588, 7 vols., Paris, 
 1886. 
 
 It would be out of the question to enumerate here all the 
 critical and historical works which Montaigne has inspired. 
 We shall mention only the more recent and interesting. 
 
 Conort, Etude sur Montaigne et ses doctrines pedagogiques, 
 in the Revue pedagogique, 1880-1881. 
 
 Mme. Jules Favre, Montaigne, moraliste et pedagogue, Paris, 
 1887. 
 
 Paul Stapfer, Montaigne, in the collection : Les grands 
 Ecrivains francais, Paris, 1895. 
 
 Paul Stapfer, La Famille et les Amis de Montaigne, Paris, 
 1896. 
 
 Guillaume Guizot, Montaigne, Etudes et Fragments, Paris, 
 1899. 
 
 Paul Bonnefon, Montaigne, V Homme et VCEuvre, Paris, 
 1899. 
 
 Edme Champion, Introduction aux Essais de Montaigne, 
 Paris, 1900. 
 
 Among the literary historians who have dealt at some length 
 with Montaigne, we may quote : — 
 Felix Hemon, Cours de Litterature. 
 E. Faguet, Seizieme Steele, Etudes litteraires, Paris, 1894. 
 
 Various special editions have been given of the chapter on 
 the Institution and Education of Children. 
 
 E. Reaume, Rabelais et Montaigne pedagogues, Paris, 1886. 
 
 F. Hemon, De VInstitution des Enfants, Paris, 1888. 
 
 G. Compayre, De VInstitution des Enfants, Paris, 1888. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 139 
 
 Bibliography for English Readers 1 
 
 The standard translations of Montaigne's Essays into English 
 are those of John Florio (1603) and of C. Cotton (1683), the 
 former of which, in spite of many errors on points of detail, 
 perhaps most closely approximates to the spirit and style of 
 the original. 
 
 These translations have frequently been reprinted and edited. 
 Serviceable editions are the following : — 
 
 Cotton's translation, edited by W. C. Hazlitt, 3 vols. 
 
 Florio's translation, edited by Professor H. Morley, with 
 introduction and glossary. 
 
 Florio's translation, edited by J. H. McCarthy, 2 vols. 
 
 Editions of selected essays are also numerous, one of the 
 best being perhaps that in Blackie's Red Letter Library, with 
 an introduction and notes by Charles Whibley. The translation 
 is Florio's in modern spelling, and the fifteen essays given 
 include that on the Institution and Education of Children. 
 
 The following are among the most noteworthy studies on 
 Montaigne which have appeared in English : — 
 
 R. W. Emerson, Montaigne, the Sceptic (in Representative Men) . 
 
 Rev. W. L. Collins, Montaigne (Blackwood's Foreign Clas- 
 sics for English Readers) . 
 
 Mark Pattison, Life of Montaigne (in his Essays, edited 
 by Professor H. Nettleship). 
 
 George Saintsbury, Article Montaigne in the Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica. 
 
 See also : — 
 
 DR. D. Nasmith, Makers of Modern Thought. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Essays, translated by Elisabeth Lee. 
 
 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Horae Sabbaticce, Series I. 
 
 1 Compiled by the Translator. 
 
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