Mimesis (53 page)

As for the third part of his statement (the rebuttal: you do not even think of yourselves), we may note that tacitly underlying it is the typically Montaignesque concept of “I myself.” In the ordinary sense, the people here addressed do think a great deal of themselves, too much so indeed. They think of their interests, their desires, their worries, their information, their activities, their families, their friends. All this, for Montaigne, is not “themselves.” All this is only a part of “I myself”; it can even lead—and generally it does lead—to an obscuration of the self and to the loss of it: that is to say, whenever the individual abandons himself so completely to one or to another or to several of these things that his present consciousness of his own existence in its entirety, that his full consciousness of a life distinctively his own, melts away in the process. The full consciousness of one’s own life implies for Montaigne also full consciousness of one’s own death.
Ils vont, ils viennent, ils trottent, ils dansent; de mort, nulles nouvelles
(1, 20, pp. 154-155).

Parts five and six of the statement—his doubt whether the publication
of such a work is justified and the apologies he uses to meet that doubt—may be discussed together. The real answer to the question, he has given before. He poses it now only in order that he may once again bring out the unique characteristics of his undertaking, this time in a few excellently formulated antitheses (e.g.
particulier en usage
as against
public en cognoissance
, or
par art
as against
par sort
). The text is further significant because of the unexpected turn it takes from an apologetic formulation to a clear-cut admission of his awareness of his importance. This admission, introduced by the motif
jamais homme
or
jamais aucun
, reveals a new aspect of his method. To paraphrase: Never, he says, has any man been so fully master of his subject, nor pursued it so far into all its details and ramifications, nor accomplished his purpose so unqualifiedly. There may be a faint echo of self-irony in formulations like
en celuy-là je suis le plus sçavant homme qui vive
, yet these sentences are an amazingly frank and clear and emphatic underlining of the uniqueness of his book. They go beyond the previously discussed
moy le premier
inasmuch as they reveal Montaigne’s conviction that no branch of learning and no form of knowledge could possibly be acquired with as much exactness and comprehensiveness as self-knowledge. For him Know Thyself is not only a pragmatic and moral precept but an epistemological precept too. This is also the reason why he is so little interested in the knowledge which the sciences of nature furnish and why he has no trust in it. Only things human and moral are able to fascinate him. Like Socrates he could say that the trees teach him nothing; only the people in the city can do that. Montaigne even gives this thought a polemic barb when he speaks of those who take pride in their knowledge of natural science:
Puisque ces gens là n’ont pas peu se resoudre de la cognoissance d’eux mesmes et de leur propre condition, qui est continuellement presente à leurs yeux, qui est dans eux
…,
comment les croirois je de la cause du flux et du reflux de la riviere du Nil?
(2, 17, p. 605). However, the primacy of self-knowledge acquires a positive epistemological significance only in regard to the moral study of man; for in his study of his own random life Montaigne’s sole aim is an investigation of the
humaine condition
in general; and with that he reveals the heuristic principle which we constantly employ—consciously or unconsciously, reasonably or unreasonably—when we endeavor to understand and judge the acts of others, whether the acts of our close associates or more remote acts which belong in the realms of politics or history. We apply criteria to them which we have derived from our own lives and
our own inner experience—so that our knowledge of men and of history depends upon the depth of our self-knowledge and the extent of our moral horizon.

Montaigne’s interest in the lives of others was always most intense. To be sure, he cannot rid himself of a certain distrust for historians. He feels that they present human beings too exclusively in extraordinary and heroic situations and that they are only too ready to give fixed and consistent portraits of character:
les bons autheurs mesmes ont tort de s’opiniastrer à former de nous une constante et solide contexture
(2, 1, p. 9). He thinks it preposterous to derive a concept of the whole individual from one or several climactic episodes of a life; what he misses is a sufficient regard for the fluctuations and alterations in a man’s inner state:
pour juger d’un homme, il faut suivre longuement et curieusement sa trace
(2, 1, p. 18). He wants to experience man’s everyday, normal, and spontaneous conduct, and for that his own environment, which he can observe in personal experience, is just as valuable to him as the material of history:
moy … qui estime ce siècle comme un autre passé, j’allegue aussi volontiers un mien amy que Aulu Gelle et que Macrobe
… (3, 13, p. 595). Private and personal occurrences interest him as much as or possibly even more than matters of state, and it is not even necessary that they should really have happened:
… en l’estude que je traitte de noz mœurs et mouvemens, les temoignages fabuleux, pourvu qu’ils soient possibles, y servent comme les vrais: advenu ou non advenu, à Paris ou à Rome, à Jean ou à Pierre, c’est toujours un tour de l’humaine capacité
(1, 21, p. 194). All this concern with the experience of life in others passes through the filter of self-experience. We must not be misled by certain utterances of Montaigne’s, as when he voices the warning that one should not judge others by oneself or deem impossible what one cannot imagine or what contradicts our own customs. This is referable only to people whose self-experience is too narrow and shallow, and the lesson one might draw from such utterances is simply a demand for greater elasticity and breadth in our inner consciousness. For Montaigne could give no other heuristic principle in the realm of historico-moral knowledge than self-experience, and there are several passages which describe his method from this point of view, for example the following:
Cette longue attention que j’employe à me considérer me dresse à juger aussi passablement des autres. … Pour m’estre, dès mon enfance, dressé à mirer ma vie dans celle d’autruy, j’ay acquis une complexion studieuse en cela
(3, 13, p. 585).
Mirer sa vie dans celle d’autrui
: in these words
lies the complete method of an activity which sets itself the goal of understanding the actions or thoughts of others. Everything else, the compilation of sources and testimonies, the factual critique and sifting of the data of tradition, is only auxiliary and preparatory labor.

The sixth of the points we have distinguished in Montaigne’s statement is concerned with his sincerity: it is all that he needs to carry out his purpose, and he possesses it. He says so himself, and it is true. He is eminently sincere in all that concerns himself, and he would gladly (as he says here and in several other passages in the Essays, and even in his preface) be a little franker still; but the conventions of social conduct impose some limitation upon him. His critics, however, have at most found fault with his excess of sincerity, never with a lack of it. He speaks about himself a great deal, and the reader becomes acquainted with all the details not only of his intellectual and spiritual life but also of his physical existence. A great deal of information about his most personal characteristics and habits, his illnesses, his food, and his sexual peculiarities, is scattered through the Essays. There is, to be sure, a certain element of self-satisfaction in all this. Montaigne is pleased with himself; he knows that he is in all respects a free, a richly gifted, a full, a remarkably well-rounded human being, and despite all his self-irony he cannot completely conceal this delight in his own person. But it is a calm and self-rooted consciousness of his individual self, free from pettiness, arrogance, insecurity, and coquetry. He is proud of his
forme toute sienne
. But his delight in himself is not the most important nor the most distinctive motif of his sincerity, which applies equally to mind and body. Sincerity is an essential part of his method of depicting his own random life in its entirety. Montaigne is convinced that, for such a portrayal, mind and body must not be separated; and calmly, without accompanying his self-portrayal by any convulsive gestures, he gave his conviction practical form, with an openness and reality such as hardly anyone before him and very few after him attained. He speaks in detail of his body and his physical existence, because it is an essential ingredient of his self, and he has managed to pervade his book with the corporeal savor of his personality without ever arousing a feeling of surfeit. His bodily functions, his illnesses, and his own physical death, of which he talks a great deal in order to accustom himself to the idea of death, are so intimately fused in their concrete sensory effects with the moral-intellectual content of his book that any attempt to separate them would be absurd.

Connected with this in turn is the dislike which, as we mentioned
before, he entertains for the formal systems of moral philosophy. The things he holds against them—their abstraction, the tendency of their methodology to disguise the reality of life, and the turgidity of their terminology—can all be reduced in the last analysis to the fact that partly in theory and partly at least in pedagogical practice they separate mind and body and do not give the latter a chance to have its say. They all, according to Montaigne, have too high an opinion of man; they speak of him as if he were only mind and spirit, and so they falsify the reality of life:
Ces exquises subtilitez ne sont propres qu’au presche; ce sont discours qui nous veulent envoyer touts bastez en l’autre monde. La vie est un mouvement materiel et corporel, action imparfaicte de sa propre essence, et desreglée; je m’emploie à la servir selon elle
… (3, 9, pp. 409-410).

The passages in which he speaks of the unity of mind and body are very numerous and reflect many different aspects of his attitude. At times his ironical modesty predominates: …
moy, d’une condition mixte, grossier …, si simple que je me laisse tout lourdement aller aux plaisirs presents de la loy humaine et generale, intellectuellement sensibles, sensiblement intellectuels
(3, 13, p. 649). Another extremely interesting passage throws light on his attitude toward Platonism and at the same time toward antique moral philosophy in general:
Platon craint nostre engagement aspre à la douleur et à la volupté, d’autant que
(because)
il oblige et attache par trop l’âme au corps; moy plutost au rebours, d’autant qu’il l’en desprend et descloue
(1, 40, pp. 100-101). Because for Plato the body is an enemy of moderation, seducing the soul and carrying it away; for Montaigne the body is naturally endowed with
un juste et modéré tempérament envers la volupté et envers la douleur
, while
ce qui aiguise en nous la douleur et la volupté, c’est la poincte de nostre esprit
. In our connection, however, the most important passages on this point are those which reveal the Christian-creatural sources of his view. In the chapter
de la présomption
(2, 17, p. 615) he writes:

Le corps a une grand’ part à nostre estre, il y tient un grand rang; ainsi sa structure et composition sont de bien juste considération. Ceux qui veulent desprendre nos deux pièces principales, et les sequestrer l’un de l’autre, ils ont tort; au rebours, il les faut r’accupler et rejoindre; il faut ordonner à l’âme non de se tirer à quartier, de s’entretenir à part, de mespriser et abandonner le corps (aussi ne le sçauroit elle faire que par quelque singerie
contrefaicte), mais de se r’allier à luy, de l’embrasser …, l’espouser en somme, et luy servir de mary, à ce que leurs effects ne paraissent pas divers et contraires, ains accordans et uniformes. Les Chrestiens ont une particuliere instruction de cette liaison; ils sçavent que la justice divine embrasse cette société et joincture du corps et de l’âme, jusques à rendre le corps capable des recompenses eternelles; et que Dieu regarde agir tout l’homme, et veut qu’entier il reçoive le chastiment, ou le loyer, selon ses merites.

And he closes with praise of the Aristotelian philosophy:

La secte Peripatetique, de toutes sectes la plus sociable, attribue à la sagesse ce seul soing, de pourvoir et procurer en commun le bien de ces deux parties associées; et montre les autres sectes, pour ne s’estre assez attachez à la considération de ce meslange, s’estre partialisées, cette-cy pour le corps, cette autre pour l’âme, d’une pareille erreur; et avoir escarté leur subject, qui est l’homme; et leur guide, qu’ils advouent en general estre Nature.

Another similarly significant passage occurs at the end of book 3, in the concluding chapter
de l’expérience
(3, 13, p. 663):

A quoy faire demembrons nous en divorce un bastiment tissu d’une si joincte et fraternelle correspondance? Au rebours, renouons le par mutuels offices; que l’esprit esveille et vivifie la pesanteur du corps, le corps arreste la legereté de l’esprit et la fixe. Qui velut summum bonum laudat animae naturam, et tamquam malum naturam carnis accusat, profecto et animam carnaliter appetit, et carnem carnaliter fugit; quoniam id vanitate sentit humana, non veritate divina [from Augustine,
De civitate Dei
, 14, 5]. Il n’y a piece indigne de notre soin, en ce present que Dieu nous a faict; nous en devons conte jusques à un poil; et n’est pas une commission par acquit (roughly: offhand) à l’homme de conduire l’homme selon sa condition; elle est expresse, naifve et très-principale, et nous l’a le Createur donnée serieusement et severement … [Those who would renounce their bodies] veulent se mettre hors d’eux, et eschapper à l’homme; c’est folie; au lieu de se transformer en anges, ils se transforment en bestes; au lieu de se hausser, ils s’abattent. Ces humeurs transcendentes m’effrayent. …

That Montaigne’s unity of mind and body has its roots in Christian-creatural anthropology could be demonstrated even without these testimonies. It is the basis of his realistic introspection; without it the latter would be inconceivable. But such passages (we might also adduce 3, 5, p. 219, with an important remark on the asceticism of the saints) go to show how conscious he was of the connection. He appeals to the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh and Bible texts. In this specific connection he praises the Aristotelian philosophy, of which otherwise he does not think very highly (
Je ne recognois, chez Aristote, la plus part de mes mouvements ordinaires
). He cites one of the many passages where Augustine opposes the dualistic and spiritualistic tendencies of his time. He uses the contrast
ange-bête
which Pascal was to borrow from him. He might easily have added considerably to the number of Christian testimonies in support of his view. Above all he might have called upon the incarnation of the Word itself for support. He did not do so, although the idea undoubtedly occurred to him; in this connection it could not but force itself upon anyone brought up a Christian in Montaigne’s day. He avoided the allusion, obviously intentionally, for it would automatically have given his statements the character of a profession of Christianity, which was far from what he had in mind. He likes to keep away from such ticklish subjects. But the question of his religious profession—which, by the way, I consider an idle question—has nothing to do with the observation that the roots of his realistic conception of man are to be found in the Christian-creatural tradition.