ment; horror of the murder that has taken place makes me fear to cause a second; and the ugliness of the past cruelty makes me abhor any imitation of it. (b) To me, who am a man of no importance,' may be applied what was said of Charillus, King of Sparta: "He can not be good, since he is not bad to the wicked." 2 Or thus, for Plutarch presents him in these two ways, as he does a thousand other matters, differently and contrariwise: "He must indeed be a good man, since he is good even to the wicked." As, in lawful actions, it annoys me to busy myself about them when they concern persons to whom they are displeasing, so, to speak the truth, in unlawful ones I am not conscientious enough about them when they concern persons who welcome them. CHAPTER XIII OF EXPERIENCE It is to be regretted that this last of all the Essays, written in 1587, is not one of the most interesting. Some of the pages are undesirably garrulous about his physical conditions, and there are many extravagant paradoxes arising from ignorance and also from thoughtlessness and (despite the title) from inexperience. But in other respects it is expressive of Montaigne's temper of mind in what seemed to him his old age. It, in every sense, records his "experience" of life. It is so peculiarly personal in tone that it is only those who have long associated with Montaigne who can read it rightly; it is not till the erroneous traditional views of Montaigne's character have disappeared that the general reader will understand this Essay at all truly. It has little solidity, but it is like a lusty vine beautifying the dead wall of life; and none of its grapes is sour. The sweetness, the serenity, the sadness of our dear, gay, and vehement and irritable friend, touch these pages with softer lights than gleam almost anywhere else. The course of life experience - made Montaigne more sensitive physically and mentally than in youth, but more wise; and his wisdom resolved itself into a love of life "such as it has pleased God to grant us. His "experience" leads to no complaints about the order of things in heaven or on earth, and as little to raptures of memory or of hope. He is simply and calmly content. 1 Qui ne suis qu'escuyer de trefles. Had Montaigne known the Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, he might have quoted in this Essay the words: "Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing the earth which produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew." We desire to know, the Essay begins by saying; but experience is as uncertain a guide as reason, because of its infinite diversity; in jurisprudence no countless number of laws can equal or control the instances of its variety. Therefore the fewer laws we make, the better, all the more since nature's laws are better than man's. Lawyers are as poor members of society as physicians, and even our language becomes obscure in legal matters. Almost it would seem as if in all things explanations but added difficulties; to interpret the interpretations is harder than to interpret the original matter. Feeble minds are entangled in the perplexities of learning: generous minds in the search for knowledge find no end to their investigations. So there are countless books about books. He himself has been led to comment on his own writings. There are more doubts about the opinions of Luther than Luther himself suggested about the Holy Scriptures; and such dissensions resolve themselves into the meaning of words. He returns to the thought on an earlier page of the diversity of human actions and the effect of this upon the laws, and he says: "Neither do events entirely differ from one another; every thing has some likeness to every thing else. But all instances are imperfect, and consequently imperfect also all results of experience. And the laws can bring things into connection only by hook and by crook. The private laws of ethics are difficult enough to lay down, but public laws of general guidance are yet more so, and our justice is a perfect witness to human incompetence.' And he gives illustrations and comments. Then, after a moment's personal rejoicing that he himself has never fallen into the hands of the law, he passes into the weighty and interesting passage about the foundations of the law. And then follows the interesting page (added in 1595) about the rules of nature and the doulx chevet - the soft pillow for a sound head secured by indifference, by incuriosity. The previous pages might be entitled "Of the Laws of France, and Law in general," the following ones "Of the Knowledge of Oneself.” On this subject he dwells for four pages; and then passes to the knowledge of others induced by knowledge of oneself: a knowledge which he confesses is in his case attained as gropingly, and to be uttered in as desultory points-articles descousus as all other knowledge. He returns to his self-knowledge with an interesting little bit of selfportraiture: and from his own dealings with princes passes to the consideration of the man who should be their adviser, and of the need kings have of such men. Then, at last, begins the Essay "Of Experience ": it so clearly begins here, with "In fine, all this jumble" (p. 309), that I am almost inclined to believe that he affixed the preceding pages merely because he did not see what else to do with them, and because he saw the word "experience" on the first page. Montaigne's "reading over" of his own writings was certainly very irregular, and at times very reluctant; and there is reason to believe, there are many indications, that sixteenthcentury authors did not read their own proof-sheets. I think Montaigne never considered one of his Essays in the light of a whole. I think he calls them truly pieces of marqueterie; they are mosaics, made up of separate stones set in irregular patterns; I am audacious enough to believe that an editor might be trusted, and might trust himself occasionally, to rearrange them slightly. The pages that follow are a record of his bodily life, of his own physical experiences, his bodily habits and conditions, and those of others, with special study of his experience of the stone. There is a paragraph - interesting but quite misplaced on the life of a soldier. Equally misplaced is the delightful passage about his father and his father's wish to connect him with le peuple. And, apropos of his teeth, there is a fine stoical passage about old age. Then he passes to the consideration of the proper manner of enjoying physical pleasure, and the charming passage, "When I dance, I dance "introduces the naturalness, the honourableness of enjoying such pleasures of studiously delighting in prosperity. All these pages are eminently characteristic, most admirable in their serene and self-possessed wisdom: and any abstract of them would be idle: they are to be read and re-read. The last page is the most characteristic possible: there could not be a more fitting conclusion to the Essays; it seems to sum them all up. His humour is in the sentence beginning "Much good does it do us to mount on stilts"; his wisdom in the next; his sensitiveness and tenderness in the next; and the words with which he introduces the beautiful concluding citation from Horace are the words with which the reader may phrase his thought of Montaigne himself: "the protector of health and wisdom, but cheerful and companionable." T HERE is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge. We make trial of all means that can lead us to it. When reasoning fails us, we then make use of experience, (c) Per varios usus artem experientia fecit, Exemplo monstrante viam,1 (b) which is a much feebler and lower means; but truth is so great a thing that we must not disdain any medium that leads us to it. Reason has so many shapes that we know 1 Through various practices experience has brought forth art, example pointing the way. - Manilius, Astronomica, I, 59. Taken from J. Lipsius, Politics, I, 8. not which to take hold of; experience has no less. The conclusions that we seek to draw from the comparison of events are not reliable, inasmuch as events are always dissimilar. There is no quality so universal in their appearance as diversity and variety. The Greeks and the Latins and ourselves all make use of the similitude of the egg as the most perfect example of the kind; none the less, there have been men, notably one at Delphi,' who detected marks of difference in eggs so that he never took one for another, (c) and, having many hens, could tell which had laid a certain egg. (b) Dissimilarity enters of necessity into our works; no skill can attain similitude. Neither Perrozet, nor any other, can so carefully polish and whiten the backs of his cards that some gamblers do not distinguish them when merely passing through the hands of another. Resemblance does not make things so much the same as dissemblance makes them different. (c) Nature has constrained herself to make nothing other than any thing else.3 (b) Yet little to my liking is that man's opinion who thought by the multitude of laws to curb the authority of judges by marking the limits of their actions; he did not perceive that there is as much freedom and scope in the interpretation of laws as in making them. And they make fools of themselves who think to lessen our discussions and to check them by referring us to the express words of the Bible; because our minds find no less spacious a field in criticising the meaning of others than in putting forward their own; and as if there were less animosity and bitterness in glossing than in inventing. We see how mistaken was, for we have in France more laws than all the rest of the world put together, and more than would be needed to govern all the world of Epicurus; (c) ut olim flagitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus; (b) and yet we have left so much he 1 Cicero (Academica, II, 18) says that there were several men at Delos (not Delphi) who had this faculty. 2 See Plutarch, Of Envy and Hatred. See Seneca, Epistle 113: Exegit [natura] a se ut quæ alia erant et dissimilia essent et imparia. En leur taillant leurs morceaux. As we once suffered from crimes, so we now suffer from laws. Tacitus, Annals, III, 25. Taken by Montaigne from J. Lipsius, Politics, II, II. for our judges to consider and decide, that there was never freedom of action so powerful and so uncontrolled. What have our law-makers gained by selecting a hundred thousand kinds of special acts and attaching to them a hundred thousand laws? Such a number is in no proportion to the infinite diversity of human actions. The multiplication of our contrivings will never equal the variation of examples. Add to these a hundred times as many, still it will never come to pass that amongst future events any one in all that vast number of selected and recorded events will fall in with one to which it can be joined and paired so exactly that there will not remain some circumstance and diversity which will require a different consideration of judgement. There is little relation between our actions, which are in perpetual mutation, and fixed and unchanging laws. The most desirable, the most simple and general, are the most rare; and I believe that it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we have. Nature gives us always happier laws than those we give ourselves; witness the description by the poets of the Golden Age and the condition in which we see those nations to be living which have no other laws. Observe those who employ as their only judges in their controversies the first passers-by travelling amongst their mountains; and others, on market-day, choose one of themselves, who decides on the spot all their lawsuits. What risk would there be in having the wisest men thus settle our disputes according to circumstances and at sight, without being bound by precedents and consequences? For every foot its own shoe. King Ferdinand, when sending out colonies to the Indies, wisely provided that they should take thither no lawyers,2 for fear that lawsuits might multiply in that new world, jurisprudence being a science productive, by its nature, of altercation and division. He judged with Plato that lawyers and doctors are a bad provision for a country. How is it that our ordinary language, so simple for every other purpose, becomes obscure and unintelligible in a contract and a testament; and that a man who expresses him 1 See G. Bouchet, Sérée IX. See Ibid. • Escholiers de la jurisprudence. See Plato, Republic, book III. |