The Essays Chapter 36

(1, p. 94v-96).Michel de MontaigneC136 De l’vsage de se vestirMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvuMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvu/194v-96
Chapitre 36 :
De l’Usage de Se Vestir.

OV que je vueille donner, il me faut forcer quelque barriere de la
coustume, tant ell’ a soigneusement bridé toutes nos avenues. Je
devisoy, en cette saison frileuse, si la façon d’aller tout nud de ces nations dernierement trouvées, est une façon forcée par la chaude temperature de l’air, comme nous disons des Indiens et des Mores, ou si c’est l’originele des hommes. Les gens d’entendement, d’autant que tout ce qui est soubs le ciel, comme dit la saincte parole, est subject à mesmes loix, ont accoustumé, en pareilles considerations à celles icy, où il faut distinguer les loix
naturelles des controuvées, de
recourir à la generalle police du monde, où il n’y peut avoir rien de
contrefaict. Or, tout estant exactement fourny ailleurs de filet et
d’éguille pour maintenir son estre, il est, à la verité, mécreable
que nous soyons seuls produits en estat deffectueux et indigent, et en
estat qui ne se puisse maintenir sans secours estrangier. Ainsi je
tiens que, comme les plantes, arbres, animaux et tout ce qui vit, se
treuve naturellement equippé de suffisante couverture, pour se
deffendre de l’injure du temps,

Proptereaque ferè res omnes aut corio sunt,
Aut seta, aut conchis, aut callo, aut cortice tectae,

aussi estions nous ; mais, comme ceux qui esteignent par artificielle
lumiere celle du jour, nous avons esteint nos propres moyens par les
moyens empruntez. Et est aisé à voir que c’est la coustume qui nous
faict impossible ce qui ne l’est pas : car, de ces nations qui n’ont
aucune connoissance de vestemens, il s’en trouve d’assises environ
soubs mesme ciel que le
nostre ; et puis la plus delicate partie de nous est celle qui se
tient
tousjours descouverte :

Si nous fussions nez avec condition de cotillons et de greguesques,
il
ne faut faire doubte que nature n’eust armé d’une peau plus espoisse
ce qu’elle eust abandonné à la baterie des saisons, comme elle a
faict le bout des doigts et plante des pieds.

Je ne sçay qui demandoit à un de nos gueux qu’il voyoit en chemise
en plain hyver, aussi scarrebillat que tel qui se tient emmitonné dans
les martes jusques aux oreilles, comme il pouvoit avoir patience : Et
vous, monsieur, respondit-il, vous avez bien la face descouverte ;
or
moy, je suis tout face. Les Italiens content du fol du Duc de
Florence, ce me semble, que son maistre s’enquerant comment, ainsi mal
vestu, il pouvoit porter le froid, à quoy il estoit bien empesché
luy mesme : Suivez, dict-il, ma recepte de charger sur vous tous vos
accoustremens,
comme je fay les miens, vous n’en souffrirez non plus
que moy. Le Roy Massinissa jusques à l’extreme vieillesse ne peut
estre induit à aller la teste couverte, par froid, orage et pluye
qu’il
fit.

Et le roy Agesilaus observa jusques à sa decrepitude de porter
pareille vesture en hyver qu’en esté. Caesar, dict Suetone,
marchoit
tousjours devant sa troupe, et le plus souvent à pied, la teste
descouverte, soit qu’il fit Soleil ou qu’il pleut ; et autant en
dict
on de Hannibal,

tum vertice nudo
Excipere insanos imbres caelique ruinam.

Celuy que les Polonnois ont choisi pour leur Roy apres le nostre,
qui est à la verité un des plus grands Princes de nostre siecle, ne
porte jamais gans, ny ne change, pour hyver et temps qu’il face, le
mesme bonnet qu’il porte au couvert.

Et puis que nous sommes sur le froid, et François accoustumez à
nous biguarrer (non pas moy, car je ne m’habille guiere que de noir
ou
de blanc, à l’imitation de mon pere), adjoustons, d’une autre piece,
que le Capitaine Martin du Bellay dict, au voyage de Luxembourg,
avoir veu les gelées si aspres, que le vin de la munition se coupoit
à coups de hache et de coignée, se debitoit aux soldats par poix, et
qu’ils l’emportoient dans des paniers. Et Ovide, à deux doigts prez :

Nudaque consistunt formam servantia testae
Vina, nec hausta meri, sed data frusta bibunt.

Chapter XXXVI. Of Cato the Younger.

I am not guilty of the common error of judging another by myself. I

easily believe that in another's humour which is contrary to my own; and

though I find myself engaged to one certain form, I do not oblige others

to it, as many do; but believe and apprehend a thousand ways of living;

and, contrary to most men, more easily admit of difference than

uniformity amongst us. I as frankly as any one would have me, discharge

a man from my humours and principles, and consider him according to his

own particular model. Though I am not continent myself, I nevertheless

sincerely approve the continence of the Feuillans and Capuchins, and

highly commend their way of living. I insinuate myself by imagination

into their place, and love and honour them the more for being other than

I am. I very much desire that we may be judged every man by himself, and

would not be drawn into the consequence of common examples. My own

weakness nothing alters the esteem I ought to have for the force and

vigour of those who deserve it:

"Sunt qui nihil suadent, quam quod se imitari posse confidunt."

Crawling upon the slime of the earth, I do not for all that cease to

observe up in the clouds the inimitable height of some heroic souls.

'Tis a great deal for me to have my judgment regular and just, if the

effects cannot be so, and to maintain this sovereign part, at least, free

from corruption; 'tis something to have my will right and good where my

legs fail me. This age wherein we live, in our part of the world at

least, is grown so stupid, that not only the exercise, but the very

imagination of virtue is defective, and seems to be no other but college

jargon:

"Virtutem verba putant, ut

Lucum ligna:"

"Quam vereri deberent, etiam si percipere non possent."

'Tis a gewgaw to hang in a cabinet or at the end of the tongue, as on the

tip of the ear, for ornament only. There are no longer virtuous actions

extant; those actions that carry a show of virtue have yet nothing of its

essence; by reason that profit, glory, fear, custom, and other suchlike

foreign causes, put us on the way to produce them. Our justice also,

valour, courtesy, may be called so too, in respect to others and

according to the face they appear with to the public; but in the doer it

can by no means be virtue, because there is another end proposed, another

moving cause. Now virtue owns nothing to be hers, but what is done by

herself and for herself alone.

In that great battle of Plataea, that the Greeks under the command of

Pausanias gained against Mardonius and the Persians, the conquerors,

according to their custom, coming to divide amongst them the glory of the

exploit, attributed to the Spartan nation the pre-eminence of valour in

the engagement. The Spartans, great judges of virtue, when they came to

determine to what particular man of their nation the honour was due of

having the best behaved himself upon this occasion, found that

Aristodemus had of all others hazarded his person with the greatest

bravery; but did not, however, allow him any prize, by reason that his

virtue had been incited by a desire to clear his reputation from the

reproach of his miscarriage at the business of Thermopylae, and to die

bravely to wipe off that former blemish.

Our judgments are yet sick, and obey the humour of our depraved manners.

I observe most of the wits of these times pretend to ingenuity, by

endeavouring to blemish and darken the glory of the bravest and most

generous actions of former ages, putting one vile interpretation or

another upon them, and forging and supposing vain causes and motives for

the noble things they did: a mighty subtlety indeed! Give me the

greatest and most unblemished action that ever the day beheld, and I will

contrive a hundred plausible drifts and ends to obscure it. God knows,

whoever will stretch them out to the full, what diversity of images our

internal wills suffer under. They do not so maliciously play the

censurers, as they do it ignorantly and rudely in all their detractions.

The same pains and licence that others take to blemish and bespatter

these illustrious names, I would willingly undergo to lend them a

shoulder to raise them higher. These rare forms, that are culled out by

the consent of the wisest men of all ages, for the world's example,

I should not stick to augment in honour, as far as my invention would

permit, in all the circumstances of favourable interpretation; and we may

well believe that the force of our invention is infinitely short of their

merit. 'Tis the duty of good men to portray virtue as beautiful as they

can, and there would be nothing wrong should our passion a little

transport us in favour of so sacred a form. What these people do, on the

contrary, they either do out of malice, or by the vice of confining their

belief to their own capacity; or, which I am more inclined to think, for

not having their sight strong, clear, and elevated enough to conceive the

splendour of virtue in her native purity: as Plutarch complains, that in

his time some attributed the cause of the younger Cato's death to his

fear of Caesar, at which he seems very angry, and with good reason; and

by this a man may guess how much more he would have been offended with

those who have attributed it to ambition. Senseless people! He would

rather have performed a noble, just, and generous action, and to have had

ignominy for his reward, than for glory. That man was in truth a pattern

that nature chose out to show to what height human virtue and constancy

could arrive.

But I am not capable of handling so rich an argument, and shall therefore

only set five Latin poets together, contending in the praise of Cato;

and, incidentally, for their own too. Now, a well-educated child will

judge the two first, in comparison of the others, a little flat and

languid; the third more vigorous, but overthrown by the extravagance of

his own force; he will then think that there will be room for one or two

gradations of invention to come to the fourth, and, mounting to the pitch

of that, he will lift up his hands in admiration; coming to the last, the

first by some space' (but a space that he will swear is not to be filled

up by any human wit), he will be astounded, he will not know where he is.

And here is a wonder: we have far more poets than judges and interpreters

of poetry; it is easier to write it than to understand it. There is,

indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well

enough judge by certain rules of art; but the true, supreme, and divine

poesy is above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of

it with the most assured and most steady sight, sees no more than the

quick reflection of a flash of lightning: it does not exercise, but

ravishes and overwhelms our judgment. The fury that possesses him who is

able to penetrate into it wounds yet a third man by hearing him repeat

it; like a loadstone that not only attracts the needle, but also infuses

into it the virtue to attract others. And it is more evidently manifest

in our theatres, that the sacred inspiration of the Muses, having first

stirred up the poet to anger, sorrow, hatred, and out of himself, to

whatever they will, does moreover by the poet possess the actor, and by

the actor consecutively all the spectators. So much do our passions hang

and depend upon one another.

Poetry has ever had that power over me from a child to transpierce and

transport me; but this vivid sentiment that is natural to me has been

variously handled by variety of forms, not so much higher or lower (for

they were ever the highest of every kind), as differing in colour.

First, a gay and sprightly fluency; afterwards, a lofty and penetrating

subtlety; and lastly, a mature and constant vigour. Their names will

better express them: Ovid, Lucan, Virgil.

But our poets are beginning their career:

"Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Caesare major,"

says one.

"Et invictum, devicta morte, Catonem,"

says the second. And the third, speaking of the civil wars betwixt

Caesar and Pompey,

"Victrix causa diis placuit, set victa Catoni."

And the fourth, upon the praises of Caesar:

"Et cuncta terrarum subacta,

Praeter atrocem animum Catonis."

And the master of the choir, after having set forth all the great names

of the greatest Romans, ends thus:

"His dantem jura Catonem."