Representative Men — 05: IV: Montaigne, Or, The Skeptic (Part 1)

IV. MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SKEPTIC.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation and, on the other, to morals.

The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

Nothing so thin, but has these two faces; and, when the observer has seen the obverse, he turns it over to see the reverse.

Life is a pitching of this penny,--heads or tails.

We never tire of this game, because there is still a slight shudder of astonishment at the exhibition of the other face, at the contrast of the two faces.

A man is flushed with success, and bethinks himself what this good luck signifies.

He drives his bargain in the street; but it occurs that he also is bought and sold.

He sees the beauty of a human face, and searches the cause of that beauty, which must be more beautiful.

He builds his fortunes, maintains the laws, cherishes his children;

but he asks himself, why?

and whereto?

This head and this tail are called, in the language of philosophy, Infinite and Finite; Relative and Absolute; Apparent and Real; and many fine names beside.

Each man is born with a predisposition to one or the other of these sides of nature; and it will easily happen that men will be found devoted to one or the other.

One class has the perception of difference, and is conversant with facts and surfaces; cities and persons; and the bringing certain things to pass;--the men of talent and action.

Another class have the perception of identity, and are men of faith and philosophy, men of genius.

Each of these riders drives too fast.

Plotinus believes only in philosophers; Fenelon, in saints; Pindar and Byron, in poets.

Read the haughty language in which Plato and the Platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their own shining abstractions: other men are rats and mice.

The literary class is usually proud and exclusive.

The correspondence of Pope and Swift describes mankind around them as monsters; and that of Goethe and Schiller, in our own time, is scarcely more kind.

It is easy to see how this arrogance comes.

The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object.

Is his eye creative?

Does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design--he will presently undervalue the actual object.

In powerful moments, his thought has dissolved the works of art and nature into their causes, so that the works appear heavy and faulty.

He has a conception of beauty which the sculptor cannot embody.

Picture, statue, temple, railroad, steam-engine, existed first in an artist's mind, without flaw, mistake, or friction, which impair the executed models.

So did the church, the state, college, court, social circle, and all the institutions.

It is not strange that these men, remembering what they have seen and hoped of ideas, should affirm disdainfully the superiority of ideas.

Having at some time seen that the happy soul will carry all the arts in power, they say, Why cumber ourselves with superfluous realizations?

and, like dreaming beggars, they assume to speak and act as if these values were already substantiated.

On the other part, the men of toil and trade and luxury,--the animal world, including the animal in the philosopher and poet also,--and the practical world, including the painful drudgeries which are never excused to philosopher or poet any more than to the rest,--weigh heavily on the other side.

The trade in our streets believes in no metaphysical causes, thinks nothing of the force which necessitated traders and a trading planet to exist; no, but sticks to cotton, sugar, wool, and salt.

The ward meetings, on election days, are not softened by any misgivings of the value of these ballotings.

Hot life is streaming in a single direction.

To the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason.

They alone have reason.

Things always bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic, also.

In England, the richest country that ever existed, property stands for more, compared with personal ability, than in any other.

After dinner, a man believes less, denies more; verities have lost some charm.

After dinner, arithmetic is the only science; ideas are disturbing, incendiary, follies of young men, repudiated by the solid portion of society; and a man comes to be valued by his athletic and animal qualities.

Spence relates, that Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in.

"Nephew," said Sir Godfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world."

"I don't know how great men you may be," said the Guinea man, "but I don't like your looks.

I have often bought a man much better than both of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.

Thus, the men of the senses revenge themselves on the professors, and repay scorn for scorn.

The first had leaped to conclusions not yet ripe, and say more than is true; the others make themselves merry with the philosopher, and weigh man by the pound.

--They believe that mustard bites the tongue, that pepper is hot, friction-matches are incendiary, revolvers to be avoided, and suspenders hold up pantaloons; that there is much sentiment in a chest of tea; and a man will be eloquent, if you give him good wine.

Are you tender and scrupulous,--you must eat more mince-pie.

They hold that Luther had milk in him when he said, "Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang," and when he advised a young scholar perplexed with fore-ordination and free-will, to get well drunk.

"The nerves," says Cabanis, "they are the man."

My neighbor, a jolly farmer, in the tavern bar-room, thinks that the use of money is sure and speedy spending.

"For his part," he says, "he puts his down his neck, and gets the good of it."

The inconvenience of this way of thinking is, that it runs into indifferentism, and then into disgust.

Life is eating us up.

We shall be fables presently.

Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.

Life's well enough; but we shall be glad to get out of it, and they will all be glad to have us.

Why should we fret and drudge?

Our meat will taste to-morrow as it did yesterday, and we may at last have had enough of it.

"Ah," said my languid gentleman at Oxford, "there's nothing new or true,--and no matter."

With a little more bitterness, the cynic moans: our life is like an ass led to market by a bundle of hay being carried before him: he sees nothing but the bundle of hay.

"There is so much trouble in coming into the world," said Lord Bolingbroke, "and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis hardly worth while to be here at all."

I knew a philosopher of this kidney, who was accustomed briefly to sum up his experience of human nature in saying, "Mankind is a damned rascal:" and the natural corollary is pretty sure to follow,--"The world lives by humbug, and so will I." The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, there arises a third party to occupy the middle ground between these two, the skeptic, namely.

He finds both wrong by being in extremes.

He labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of the balance.

He will not go beyond his card.

He sees the one-sidedness of these men of the street; he will not be a Gibeonite; he stands for the intellectual faculties, a cool head, and whatever serves to keep it cool; no unadvised industry, no unrewarded self-devotion, no loss of the brains in toil.

Am I an ox, or a dray?

--You are both in extremes, he says.

You that will have all solid, and a world of pig-lead, deceive yourselves grossly.

You believe yourselves rooted and grounded on adamant; and, yet, if we uncover the last facts of our knowledge, you are spinning like bubbles in a river, you know not whither or whence, and you are bottomed and capped and wrapped in delusions.

Neither will he be betrayed to a book, and wrapped in a gown.

The studious class are their own victims; they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption,--pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

If you come near them, and see what conceits they entertain,--they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dreams; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it.

But I see plainly, he says, that I cannot see.

I know that human strength is not in extremes, but in avoiding extremes.

I, at least, will shun the weakness of philosophizing beyond my depth.

What is the use of pretending to powers we have not?

What is the use of pretending to assurances we have not, respecting the other life?

Why exaggerate the power of virtue?

Why be an angel before your time?

These strings, wound up too high, will snap.

If there is a wish for immortality, and no evidence, why not say just that?

If there are conflicting evidences, why not state them?

If there is not ground for a candid thinker to make up his mind, yea or nay,--why not suspend the judgment?

I weary of these dogmatizers.

I tire of these hacks of routine, who deny the dogmas.

I neither affirm nor deny.

I stand here to try the case.

I am here to consider,--to consider how it is.

I will try to keep the balance true.

Of what use to take the chair, and glibly rattle off theories of societies, religion, and nature, when I know that practical objections lie in the way, insurmountable by me and by my mates?

Why so talkative in public, when each of my neighbors can pin me to my seat by arguments I cannot refute?

Why pretend that life is so simple a game, when we know how subtle and elusive the Proteus is?

Why think to shut up all things in your narrow coop, when we know there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, a thousand things, and unlike?

Why fancy that you have all the truth in your keeping?

There is much to say on all sides.

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

Is not marriage an open question when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

And the reply of Socrates, to him who asked whether he should choose a wife, still remains reasonable, "that, whether he should choose one or not, he would repent it."

Is not the state a question?

All society is divided in opinion on the subject of the state.

Nobody loves it; great numbers dislike it, and suffer conscientious scruples to allegiance: and the only defense set up, is, the fear of doing worse in disorganizing.

Is it otherwise with the church?

Or, to put any of the questions which touch mankind nearest,--shall the young man aim at a leading part in law, in politics, in trade?

It will not be pretended that a success in either of these kinds is quite coincident with what is best and inmost in his mind.

Shall he, then, cutting the stays that hold him fast to the social state, put out to sea with no guidance but his genius?

There is much to say on both sides.

Remember the open question between the present order of "competition," and the friends of "attractive and associated labor."

The generous minds embrace the proposition of labor shared by all; it is the only honesty; nothing else is safe.

It is from the poor man's hut alone, that strength and virtue come; and yet, on the other side, it is alleged that labor impairs the form, and breaks the spirit of man, and the laborers cry unanimously, "We have no thoughts."

Culture, how indispensable!

I cannot forgive you the want of accomplishment; and yet, culture will instantly destroy that chiefest beauty of spontaneousness.

Excellent is culture for a savage;

but once let him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to think of Plutarch's heroes.

In short, since true fortitude of understanding consists "in not letting what we know be embarrassed by what we do not know," we ought to secure those advantages which we can command, and not risk them by clutching after the airy and unattainable.

Come, no chimeras!

Let us go abroad; let us mix in affairs; let us learn, and get, and have, and climb.

"Men are a sort of moving plants, and, like trees, receive a great part of their nourishment from the air.

If they keep too much at home, they pine."

Let us have a robust, manly life; let us know what we know, for certain; what we have, let it be solid, and seasonable, and our own.

A world in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Let us have to do with real men and women, and not with skipping ghosts.

This, then, is the right ground of the skeptic,--this of consideration, of self-containing; not at all of unbelief; not at all of universal denying, nor of universal doubting,--doubting even that he doubts;

least of all, of scoffing and profligate jeering at all that is stable and good.

These are no more his moods than are those of religion and philosophy.

He is the considerer, the prudent, taking in sail, counting stock, husbanding his means, believing that a man has too many enemies, than that he can afford to be his own; that we cannot give ourselves too many advantages, in this unequal conflict, with powers so vast and unweariable ranged on one side, and this little, conceited, vulnerable popinjay that a man is, bobbing up and down into every danger, on the other.

It is a position taken up for better defense, as of more safety, and one that can be maintained; and it is one of more opportunity and range; as, when we build a house, the rule is, to set it not too high nor too low, under the wind, but out of the dirt.

The philosophy we want is one of fluxions and mobility.

The Spartan and Stoic schemes are too stark and stiff for our occasion.

A theory of Saint John, and of non-resistance, seems, on the other hand, too thin and aerial.

We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second.

We want a ship in these billows we inhabit.

An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements.

No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea.

The soul of man must be the type of our scheme, just as the body of man is the type after which a dwelling-house is built.

Adaptiveness is the peculiarity of human nature.

We are golden averages, volitant stabilities, compensated or periodic errors, houses founded on the sea.

The wise skeptic wishes to have a near view of the best game, and the chief players; what is best in the planet;

art and nature, places and events, but mainly men.

Everything that is excellent in mankind,--a form of grace, an arm of iron, lips of persuasion, a brain of resources, every one skilful to play and win,--he will see and judge.

The terms of admission to this spectacle are, that he have a certain solid and intelligible way of living of his own; some method of answering the inevitable needs of human life; proof that he has played with skill and success; that he has evinced the temper, stoutness, and the range of qualities which, among his contemporaries and countrymen, entitle him to fellowship and trust.

For, the secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.

Men do not confide themselves to boys, or coxcombs, or pedants, but to their peers.

Some wise limitation, as the modern phrase is; some condition between the extremes, and having itself a positive quality; some stark and sufficient man, who is not salt or sugar, but sufficiently related to the world to do justice to Paris or London, and, at the same time, a vigorous and original thinker, whom cities cannot overawe, but who uses them,--is the fit person to occupy this ground of speculation.

These qualities meet in the character of Montaigne.

And yet, since the personal regard which I entertain for Montaigne may be unduly great, I will, under the shield of this prince of egotists, offer, as an apology for electing him as the representative of skepticism, a word or two to explain how my love began and grew for this admirable gossip.

A single odd volume of Cotton's translation of the Essays remained to me from my father's library, when a boy.

It lay long neglected, until, after many years, when I was newly escaped from college, I read the book, and procured the remaining volumes.

I remember the delight and wonder in which I lived with it.

It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience.

It happened, when in Paris, in 1833, that, in the cemetery of Pere le Chaise, I came to a tomb of Augustus Collignon, who died in 1830, aged sixty-eight years, and who, said the monument, "lived to do right, and had formed himself to virtue on the Essays of Montaigne."

Some years later, I became acquainted with an accomplished English poet, John Sterling; and, in prosecuting my correspondence, I found that, from a love of Montaigne, he had made a pilgrimage to his chateau, still standing near Castellan, in Perigord, and, after two hundred and fifty years, had copied from the walls of his library the inscriptions which Montaigne had written there.

That Journal of Mr. Sterling's, published in the Westminster Review, Mr. Hazlitt has reprinted in the Prolegomenae to his edition of the Essays.

I heard with pleasure that one of the newly-discovered autographs of William Shakspeare was in a copy of Florio's translation of Montaigne.

It is the only book which we certainly know to have been in the poet's library.

And, oddly enough, the duplicate copy of Florio, which the British Museum purchased, with a view of protecting the Shakspeare autograph (as I was informed in the Museum), turned out to have the autograph of Ben Jonson in the fly-leaf.

Leigh Hunt relates of Lord Byron, that Montaigne was the only great writer of past times whom he read with avowed satisfaction.

Other coincidences, not needful to be mentioned here, concurred to make this old Gascon still new and immortal for me.

In 1571, on the death of his father, Montaigne, then thirty-eight years old, retired from the practice of law, at Bordeaux, and settled himself on his estate.

Though he had been a man of pleasure, and sometimes a courtier, his studious habits now grew on him, and he loved the compass, staidness, and independence of the country gentleman's life.

He took up his economy in good earnest, and made his farms yield the most.

Downright and plain-dealing, and abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he was esteemed in the country for his sense and probity.

In the civil wars of the League, which converted every house into a fort, Montaigne kept his gates open, and his house without defense.

All parties freely came and went, his courage and honor being universally esteemed.

The neighboring lords and gentry brought jewels and papers to him for safekeeping.

Gibbon reckons, in these bigoted times, but two men of liberality in France,--Henry IV.

and Montaigne.

Montaigne is the frankest and honestest of all writers.

His French freedom runs into grossness; but he has anticipated all censures by the bounty of his own confessions.

In his times, books were written to one sex only, and almost all were written in Latin; so that, in a humorist, a certain nakedness of statement was permitted, which our manners, of a literature addressed equally to both sexes, do not allow.

But, though a biblical plainness, coupled with a most uncanonical levity, may shut his pages to many sensitive readers, yet the offence is superficial.

He parades it: he makes the most of it; nobody can think or say worse of him than he does.

He pretends to most of the vices; and, if there be any virtue in him, he says, it got in by stealth.

There is no man, in his opinion, who has not deserved hanging five or six times; and he pretends no exception in his own behalf.

"Five or six as ridiculous stories," too, he says, "can be told of me, as of any man living."

But, with all this really superfluous frankness, the opinion of an invincible probity grows into every reader's mind.

"When I the most strictly and religiously confess myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice; and I am afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue (I, who am as sincere and perfect a lover of virtue of that stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened, and laid his ear close to himself, would have heard some jarring sound of human mixture; but faint and remote, and only to be perceived by himself."

Here is an impatience and fastidiousness at color or pretense of any kind.

He has been in courts so long as to have conceived a furious disgust at appearances; he will indulge himself with a little cursing and swearing; he will talk with sailors and gypsies, use flash and street ballads; he has stayed indoors till he is deadly sick; he will to the open air, though it rain bullets.

He has seen too much of gentlemen of the long robe, until he wishes for cannibals; and is so nervous, by factitious life, that he thinks, the more barbarous man is, the better he is.

He likes his saddle.

You may read theology, and grammar, and metaphysics elsewhere.

Whatever you get here, shall smack of the earth and of real life, sweet, or smart, or stinging.

He makes no hesitation to entertain you with the records of his disease; and his journey to Italy is quite full of that matter.

He took and kept this position of equilibrium.

Over his name, he drew an emblematic pair of scales, and wrote, _Que sais-je?

_ under it.

As I look at his effigy opposite the title-page, I seem to hear him say, "You may play old Poz, if you will; you may rail and exaggerate,--I stand here for truth, and will not, for all the states, and churches, and revenues, and personal reputations of Europe, overstate the dry fact, as I see it; I will rather mumble and prose about what I certainly know,--my house and barns; my father, my wife, and my tenants; my old lean bald pate; my knives and forks; what meats I eat, and what drinks I prefer;

and a hundred straws just as ridiculous,--than I will write, with a fine crow-quill, a fine romance.

I like gray days, and autumn and winter weather.

I am gray and autumnal myself, and think an undress, and old shoes that do not pinch my feet, and old friends who do not constrain me, and plain topics where I do not need to strain myself and pump my brains, the most suitable.

Our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough.

One cannot be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight.

Why should I vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon?

So, at least, I live within compass, keep myself ready for action, and can shoot the gulf, at last, with decency.

If there be anything farcical in such a life, the blame is not mine; let it lie at fate's and nature's door."