soever I find it; I cheerfully surrender to it; I open my conquered arms to it as far off as I can see it approaching, and I take a pleasure in being reproved, provided it be not with an air too deriding and imperious. And I accommodate myself to my accusers more frequently for civility sake than for the sake of amendment, choosing to gratify and encourage a freedom to admonish me, by my ready submission to it. Nevertheless it is hard to bring the men of my time to it. They have not the courage to correct, because they cannot bear to be corrected themselves. And they always speak with dissimulation in one another's presence. I take so great a pleasure in being judged and known, that it is in a manner indifferent to me in which of the two forms I am so. My imagination so often contradicts and condemns itself, that it is all one to me if another do it, especially considering that I grant no more authority than what I think fit to his reproof. But I am angry with the man who is so surly, which I know some are, as to be sorry for his admonition if it be not credited, and takes it for an affront if it be not immediately followed. As Socrates always received the contradictions to his arguments with a smile, it may be said that his strength of reason was the cause, and that the advantage being certain of falling on his side, he accepted them as matter of new victory. Nevertheless we see, on the contrary, that there is nothing in the case that renders our sentiment so delicate as an inclination to pre-eminence, and a disdain of the adversary; and that, therefore, the weaker disputant has reason to take in good part those contradictions that correct and set him right. In earnest, I rather choose to keep company with those who gall me than those who fear me. It is an insipid and a hurtful pleasure to have to do with people who admire and make way for us. Antisthenes commanded his children "Never to take it kindly, or as a favour, from any man who commended, 66 9 "them." I find I am much prouder of a victory which I gain over myself, when, in the very heat of the contention, I surrender to the strength of my adversary's argument, than I feel pleasure in a victory which I obtain over him by means of his weakness. In short, I receive and admit of all manner of attacks that are direct, how weak soever; but I am quite out of patience with those that are not made in form. I little care what the subject is; the opinions are all one to me, and the victory is to me a thing almost indifferent. I can argue a whole day together peaceably, if the debate be carried on with order. I do not require strength and subtlety so much as method; I mean the order which is every day observed in the wranglings of shepherds and shop-boys, but never among us. If they start from the subject it is uncivil in them; and yet it is no more than what we do ourselves: but their tumult and impatience does not carry them from their point. They pursue the thread of their argument. If they prevent, and do not stay for one another, they at least understand one another. Any one answers too well for me, if he answer what I say. But when the dispute is confused and irregular, I quit the substance, and adhere to the form with anger and indiscretion, and fall into a testy, malicious, and imperious way of disputing, of which I am afterwards ashamed. It is impossible to deal sincerely with a fool. My judgment is not only depraved under the hand of so impetuous a master, but my conscience also. Our disputes ought to be prohibited and punished Disputes as well as other verbal crimes. What vice † do they not conducted * Plutarch, Of False Shame, chap. 12. '0 'Ain 'Hearns wages τοῖς παισὶ διακελευόμενΘ μηδενὶ Χάριν έχειν ἐπαινεῖι αὐτές. Montaigne has confounded this Antisthenius, or Antistheneus, as the Latin translation of Plutarch calls him, with the chief of the Cynic sect, who never had the surname of Hercules, which Plutarch gives to Antisthenius, and is constantly called Antisthenes. + The description which Montaigne gives, from this place, to the mark †, in page 173, of the faults that commonly attend our disputes, is very just, and very agreeably expressed. Pere Bou that are ill prohibit conse quences of them. ought to be create and accumulate, being always governed and ed; the ill commanded by passion? We first quarrel with the arguments, and then with the men. We learn to dispute purely for the sake of contradicting; and whilst every one contradicts, and is contradicted, it falls out that all that is got by the dispute is the loss and annihilation of the truth. Plato, therefore, in his Republic, prohibits this exercise to fools and ill-bred people. To what end do you go about to inquire into a subject of one who knows not any thing that is worth knowing? It is doing no injury to the subject when a man leaves it in order to see which way to treat it. I do not mean a way that is artful and scholastic, but one that is natural and obvious to a solid understanding. What will it be in the end? One goes to the east, the other to the west. They lose the main point, and scatter it in a crowd of incidents. After storming for an hour, they know not what they are looking for. One is low, the other high, and the third sideling. One is taken with a word and a simile: another is no longer sensible of the opposition made to him, he is so engaged in his pursuit, and thinks of following his own course, and not yours: another, finding himself too weak to hold the argument, fears all, refuses all, and, at the very beginning, mixes and confounds the subject, or, in the very height of the dispute, stops short and grows silent by a peevish ignorance, affecting a haughty contempt, or a silly modesty of avoiding contention. This man, provided he strikes, cares not how much he lays himself open. The other counts his very words, and weighs them for reasons. Another is beholden only to his (Stentorhours was so pleased with it, that he has inserted it almost verbatim in lib. iii. of his Art de Penser, chap. 20, sect. 7, but without directly ascribing the honour of it to Montaigne, whom he only points out by the vague character of the Celebrated Author; whereas he ought most certainly to have named Montaigne expressly, especially after having just criticised him in the same chapter with great severity, to call it no worse, when he not only quoted his words, but named him without any scruple. like) voice, and his lungs. Here is one that draws inferences against himself, and another that deafens you with prefaces and impertinent digressions.† Another falls into downright railing, and picks a quarrel for nothing, in order to get clear of the company and conversation of a wit that is too hard for him. This last looks not into the reason of things, but draws a line of circumvalation about you, with the logic of his clauses, and the rules of his art. is made of Who now does not enter into a distrust of the The strange sciences, and doubt whether he can reap any solid abuse that advantage from them for the necessities of life, con- science. sidering the use we put them to. Nihil sanantibus literis,* as Seneca calls it. Who has got understanding by logic? Where are all its fine promises? Nec ad meliùs vivendum, nec ad commodius disserendum: "It neither makes a man live better, nor "discourse more pertinently." Is there more balderdash in the brawls of fish-women than in the public disputes of the men of this profession? I would rather that a son of mine should learn the language of the taverns than the babble of the schools. Take a master of arts, and discourse with him, does he not make us sensible of this artificial excellency? Does he not captivate the women, and such ignoramuses as we are, by the admiration of the strength of his reasons, and the beauty of his method? Does he not govern and persuade us as he will? Why does a man, who has so great advantage in matter and management, mix railing, indiscretion, and rage, in his disputations? Strip him of his gown, his hood, and his Latin; let him not batter our ears with Aristotle, in his puris naturalibus, you will take him for one of us, or worse. By that complication and confusion of language with which they overpower us, they appear in the light of jugglers, whose feats of activity strike and impose upon our senses, but do not at all shock our belief; and, their slight of hand excepted, they * Seneca, ep. 59. It is me manage lue to dis do nothing but what is common and mean. They But to proceed what greater victory do you thod and hope for, than to convince your enemy that he is ment, that not able to encounter you? When you get the give a va better of your position, it is truth that wins; when putation, you get the advantage of order and method, it is you that win. I am of opinion that, in Plato and Xenophon, Socrates disputes more for the sake of the disputants than of the dispute, and more to instruct Euthydemus and Protagoras in the knowledge of their impertinence than in the impertinence of their art. He grasps at the first subject, like one who has a more profitable aim than to explain it, namely to clear the understandings which he takes him to cultivate and exercise. It is our proper upon * Seneca, epist. 33. i. e. We are always translators, and never authors. |