Essais Chapitre 54

(1, p. 129v-130v).Michel de MontaigneC154 Des vaines subtilitezMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvuMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvu/1129v-130v
Chapitre 54 :
Des Vaines Subtilitez

IL est de ces subtilitez frivoles et vaines, par le moyen desquelles les hommes cherchent quelquesfois de la
recommandation : comme les poetes qui font des ouvrages entiers de
vers commençans par une mesme lettre : nous voyons des oeufs, des boules, des aisles, des haches façonnées anciennement par les Grecs avec la mesure de leurs vers, en les alongeant ou accoursissant, en maniere qu’ils viennent à représenter telle ou telle figure. Telle estoit la science de celuy qui s’amusa à conter en combien de sortes se pouvoient renger les lettres de l’alphabet, et y en trouva ce nombre incroiable qui se void dans Plutarque. Je trouve bonne l’opinion de celuy à qui on presenta un homme apris à jetter de la main un grain de mil avec telle industrie que, sans faillir, il le passoit tousjours dans le trou d’une esguille, et luy demanda l’on, apres, quelque present pour loyer d’une si rare suffisance : sur-quoy il ordonna, bien
plaisamment, et justement à mon advis, qu’on fit donner à cet ouvrier deux ou trois minots de mil, affin qu’un si bel art ne demeurast sans exercice. C’est un tesmoignage merveilleux de la foiblesse de nostre jugement, qu’il recommande les choses par la rareté ou nouvelleté, ou encore par la difficulté, si la bonté et utilité n’y sont joinctes. Nous venons presentement de nous jouer chez moy à qui pourroit trouver plus de choses qui se tiennent par les deux bouts extremes : comme Sire, c’est un tiltre qui se donne à la plus eslevée personne de nostre estat, qui est le Roy, et se donne aussi au vulgaire, comme aux marchans, et ne touche point ceux d’entre deux. Les femmes de qualité, on les nomme Dames ; les moyennes, Damoiselles ; et Dames encore, celles de la plus basse marche. Democritus disoit que les dieux et les bestes
avoient les sentimens
plus aiguz que les hommes, qui sont au moyen estage. Les Romains
portoient mesme accoutrement les jours de deuil et les jours de feste.
Il est certain que la peur extreme et l’extreme ardeur de courage
troublent également le ventre et le laschent.

La foiblesse qui nous vient de froideur et desgoutement aux exercices
de Venus, elle nous vient aussi d’un appetit trop vehement et d’une
chaleur desreglée. L’extreme froideur et l’extreme chaleur cuisent et
rotissent. Aristote dict que les cueus de plomb se fondent et coulent
de froid et de la rigueur de l’hyver, comme d’une chaleur vehemente.

La bestise et la sagesse se rencontrent en mesme point de sentiment
et
de resolution à la souffrance des accidens humains : les Sages
gourmandent et commandent le mal, et les autres l’ignorent : ceux-cy
sont, par maniere de dire, au deçà des accidens, les autres au delà ;
lesquels, apres en avoir bien poisé et consideré les qualitez, les
avoir mesurez et jugez tels qu’ils sont, s’eslancent au-dessus par la
force d’un vigoureux courage : ils les desdaignent et foulent aux pieds,
ayant une ame forte et solide, contre laquelle les traicts de la
fortune venant à donner, il est force qu’ils rejalissent et
s’emoussent, trouvant un corps dans lequel ils ne peuvent faire
impression : l’ordinaire et moyenne condition des hommes loge entre ces
deux extremitez, qui est de ceux qui apperçoivent les maux, les
sentent, et ne les peuvent supporter. L’enfance et la decrepitude se
rencontrent en imbecillité de cerveau ; l’avarice et la profusion, en
pareil desir d’attirer et d’acquerir.

Mais parce que, apres que le pas a esté ouvert à l’esprit, j’ay
trouvé, comme il advient ordinairement, que nous avions pris pour un
exercice malaisé et d’un rare subject ce qui ne l’est aucunement ; et
qu’apres que nostre invention a esté eschaufée, elle descouvre un
nombre infiny de pareils exemples, je n’en adjousteray que cettuy-cy :
que si ces essays estoyent dignes qu’on en jugeat, il en pourroit
advenir, à mon advis, qu’ils ne plairoient guiere aux esprits communs
et vulgaires, ny guiere aux singuliers et excellens : ceux-là n’y
entendroient pas assez, ceux-cy y entendroient trop ; ils pourroient
vivoter en la moyenne region.

Chapter LIV. Of vain subtleties.

There are a sort of little knacks and frivolous subtleties from which men

sometimes expect to derive reputation and applause: as poets, who compose

whole poems with every line beginning with the same letter; we see the

shapes of eggs, globes, wings, and hatchets cut out by the ancient Greeks

by the measure of their verses, making them longer or shorter, to

represent such or such a figure. Of this nature was his employment who

made it his business to compute into how many several orders the letters

of the alphabet might be transposed, and found out that incredible number

mentioned in Plutarch. I am mightily pleased with the humour of him,

who having a man brought before him that had learned to throw a grain of

millet with such dexterity and assurance as never to miss the eye of a

needle; and being afterwards entreated to give something for the reward

of so rare a performance, he pleasantly, and in my opinion justly,

ordered a certain number of bushels of the same grain to be delivered to

him, that he might not want wherewith to exercise so famous an art. 'Tis

a strong evidence of a weak judgment when men approve of things for their

being rare and new, or for their difficulty, where worth and usefulness

are not conjoined to recommend them.

I come just now from playing with my own family at who could find out the

most things that hold by their two extremities; as Sire, which is a title

given to the greatest person in the nation, the king, and also to the

vulgar, as merchants, but never to any degree of men between. The women

of great quality are called Dames, inferior gentlewomen, Demoiselles, and

the meanest sort of women, Dames, as the first. The cloth of state over

our tables is not permitted but in the palaces of princes and in taverns.

Democritus said, that gods and beasts had sharper sense than men, who are

of a middle form. The Romans wore the same habit at funerals and feasts.

It is most certain that an extreme fear and an extreme ardour of courage

equally trouble and relax the belly. The nickname of Trembling with

which they surnamed Sancho XII., king of Navarre, tells us that valour

will cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear. Those who were

arming that king, or some other person, who upon the like occasion was

wont to be in the same disorder, tried to compose him by representing the

danger less he was going to engage himself in: "You understand me ill,"

said he, "for could my flesh know the danger my courage will presently

carry it into, it would sink down to the ground." The faintness that

surprises us from frigidity or dislike in the exercises of Venus are also

occasioned by a too violent desire and an immoderate heat. Extreme

coldness and extreme heat boil and roast. Aristotle says, that sows of

lead will melt and run with cold and the rigour of winter just as with a

vehement heat. Desire and satiety fill all the gradations above and

below pleasure with pain. Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre

of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents. The

wise control and triumph over ill, the others know it not: these last

are, as a man may say, on this side of accidents, the others are beyond

them, who after having well weighed and considered their qualities,

measured and judged them what they are, by virtue of a vigorous soul leap

out of their reach; they disdain and trample them underfoot, having a

solid and well-fortified soul, against which the darts of fortune, coming

to strike, must of necessity rebound and blunt themselves, meeting with a

body upon which they can fix no impression; the ordinary and middle

condition of men are lodged betwixt these two extremities, consisting of

such as perceive evils, feel them, and are not able to support them.

Infancy and decrepitude meet in the imbecility of the brain; avarice and

profusion in the same thirst and desire of getting.

A man may say with some colour of truth that there is an Abecedarian

ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes

after it: an ignorance that knowledge creates and begets, at the same

time that it despatches and destroys the first. Of mean understandings,

little inquisitive, and little instructed, are made good Christians, who

by reverence and obedience simply believe and are constant in their

belief. In the average understandings and the middle sort of capacities,

the error of opinion is begotten; they follow the appearance of the first

impression, and have some colour of reason on their side to impute our

walking on in the old beaten path to simplicity and stupidity, meaning us

who have not informed ourselves by study. The higher and nobler souls,

more solid and clear-sighted, make up another sort of true believers, who

by a long and religious investigation of truth, have obtained a clearer

and more penetrating light into the Scriptures, and have discovered the

mysterious and divine secret of our ecclesiastical polity; and yet we see

some, who by the middle step, have arrived at that supreme degree with

marvellous fruit and confirmation, as to the utmost limit of Christian

intelligence, and enjoy their victory with great spiritual consolation,

humble acknowledgment of the divine favour, reformation of manners, and

singular modesty. I do not intend with these to rank those others, who

to clear themselves from all suspicion of their former errors and to

satisfy us that they are sound and firm, render themselves extremely

indiscreet and unjust, in the carrying on our cause, and blemish it with

infinite reproaches of violence and oppression. The simple peasants are

good people, and so are the philosophers, or whatever the present age

calls them, men of strong and clear reason, and whose souls are enriched

with an ample instruction of profitable sciences. The mongrels who have

disdained the first form of the ignorance of letters, and have not been

able to attain to the other (sitting betwixt two stools, as I and a great

many more of us do), are dangerous, foolish, and importunate; these are

they that trouble the world. And therefore it is that I, for my own

part, retreat as much as I can towards the first and natural station,

whence I so vainly attempted to advance.

Popular and purely natural poesy

has in it certain artless graces, by which she may come into comparison

with the greatest beauty of poetry perfected by art: as we see in our

Gascon villanels and the songs that are brought us from nations that have

no knowledge of any manner of science, nor so much as the use of writing.

The middle sort of poesy betwixt these two is despised, of no value,

honour, or esteem.

But seeing that the path once laid open to the fancy, I have found, as it

commonly falls out, that what we have taken for a difficult exercise and

a rare subject, prove to be nothing so, and that after the invention is

once warm, it finds out an infinite number of parallel examples. I shall

only add this one - that, were these Essays of mine considerable enough to

deserve a critical judgment, it might then, I think, fall out that they

would not much take with common and vulgar capacities, nor be very

acceptable to the singular and excellent sort of men; the first would not

understand them enough, and the last too much; and so they may hover in

the middle region.