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Montaigne
B O O K O N E : Chapter 26
- On the education of children to Madame Diane de Foix, Comtesse de Gurson
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H A V E never known a father refuse to acknowledge his son however scabby or deformed the boy may be. Y e t this is n o t to say that, unless he is absolutely besotted b y p a t e r n a l S e c t i o n , he does not perceive these defects, but the fact rettiains that it is his own son. I too see, better than anyone else, that these are only the idle musings of a man w h o in his youth j u s t n i b b k d t à e outer crust of learning, and w h o has retained only a general and amorphous impression of it - a little of everything and n o t h i n g thoroughly, after the French fashion. In short, I k n o w that there: is a science of medicine, one of jurisprudence, and four divisions of mathematics, ^and also roughly what their purposes are. I k n o w too, perhaps, h o w much the sciences in general have contributed to our lives. But as for plunging any deeper, o r for biting my nails over the study of Aristotle, the riionarch of modern learning, or stoutly pursuing any particular branch of knowledge, that I have never done. N o r is there any art o f which I could sketch even the elementary outlines. There is n o child in the middle forms w h o cannot lay claim to morelearning than I, w h o am incapable of examining him in his first lessons. A t least I caimot do so in due form and, if I must, am com pelled, ineptly enough, to pick out some matter o f general i n terest, and to judge his natural understanding b y that; t o g i v e him a lesson, in fact, that is as strange to him as his lessons are to me. I have never settled down to any solid b o o k except Plutarch *** 'Whenever a thing changes and alters its nature, at that moment comes the death of what it was before.' Luctetius, ii, 753, and in, 519.**
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and S e n e c a , i n t o w h i c h I dip like the Danaids, filling and empty ing m y cup incessantly. Some part of my reading sticks to this paper, but to myself Httle or nothing sticks.
History is my favourite pursuit, or poetry, for which I have a special affection. For to quote Cleanthes, just as the voice, con fined in the narrow channel of a trumpet, comes out sharper and stronger, so, in m y opinion, a thought, compressed in the strict metres of verse, springs out more briskly and strikes me with a livelier impact. A s for the natural faculties within me, of which my writing is the proof, I feel them bending under the burden. M y ideas and my judgement merely grope their way forward, faltering, tripping, and stumbUng; and when I have advanced as far as I can, I am still not at all satisfied. I can see more country ahead, but with so disturbed and clouded a vision that I can dis tinguish nothing. A n d w h e n I venture to write indifferently of whatever comes into my head, relying only on my own natural resources, I v e r y often light upon the matter I am trying to deal with in some g o o d author, as I did just now in Plutarch, in his discourse on the strength of the imagination. Then I realize how weak and poor, h o w heavy and lifeless I am, in comparison with them,* and feel pity and contempt for myselS., Y e t I take pleasure in the fact that my opinions have often the honour of coinciding with theirs and that I follow them, though far behind, proclaiming their virtues. I am glad too that I have the advantage, w h i c h many have not, of recognizing the great difference between them and myself. A n d yet I allow my o w n ideas to run their course, feeble and trivial as when I first con ceived them, without plastering and patching the defects re vealed to me by this comparison. A man must have strong legs if he intends to keep up with people Uke t h a t T h e injudicious writers o f our century w h o scatter about their valueless works whole passages from old authors, in order to increase their o w n reputations, do just the reverse. For the infinitely greater briUi- ance of the ancients makes their o w n stuff look so pale, dull, and ugly that they lose much more than they gain. Here are t w o contrary points of view. T h e philosopher *** Seneca and Plutarch.**
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B O O K O N E : C H A P T E R 26 finger-tips showing; to compose a worlc from pieces gathered here and there among the ancients - an easy task for a man of learning w h o is treating an ordinary subject - and then to attempt to conceal the theft and pass it all oif as their own; this is in the first place criminal and cowardly, in that having no private resources with which to make a display, they try to boost themselves with other men's wealth; and secondly, it is very fooUsh to be satisfied by gaining the ignorant approbation of the vulgar through trickery, while discrediting oneself in the eyes of the intelligent. For their praise alone carries any weight, and they turn up their noses at all this borrowed decoration. For my part, I would do anything rather than that. I only quote others to make myself more explicit. This criticism does not apply to those centos* which are pub lished as such; and I have seen some very clever ones in my time, among them - not counting the ancients - one published under the name of Capilupus. There are talents that can reveal themselves as well in this way as in any other; Lipsius, for in stance, in his learned and laborious compilation, the Politics. Whatever my borrowings, I mean, and whatever my clumsi ness, I have not set out to conceal them, any more than I would conceal a portrait o f myself, bald and grizzled, in which the painter had presented no ideal countenance; I give them out as my o w n behefs, not as what I expect others to believe. My sole aim is to reveal myself; and I may be different tomorrow if some new lesson changes me. I have no authority to exact beUef, nor do I desire it, for I do not feel myself to be well enough in structed to instruct others. Someone w h o had read the preceding chapter said to me at my house the other day that I ought to have enlarged a Uttle on the subject of children's education. Well, Madame, i f! had any competence on the subject, I could make no better use of it than to present it to that Uttle man who threatens* shortly to make a happy departure from your womb - for you have too noble a nature not to begin with a boy. Having played so large a part in the arrangement of your marriage, I have some right to be *** A poem manufactured ftom fragments of other poems. 5^-**
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interested in the greatness and prosperity o f all that shall spring from it. Besides, I am bound by the oldclaim that you have on my service to desire the honour, welfare, and profit of every thing that concerns you. But really I know nothing about the subject, except that the most difficult and important problem confronting human knowledge seems to be that o f the right rearing and education of children. Just as in agriculture the operations that precede planting, and the planting itself, are certain and easy, but once the plant has taken life there are a variety of ways of cultivation and many difficulties; so with men, it requires Httle skill to plant them, but once they are born, training them and bringing them up de mands care of a very different kind, involving much fear and tribulation. The evidence of their inclinations is so sHght and obscure at that tender age, and their promise so uncertain and deceptive, that it is hard to arrive at any solid judgement of them. L o o k at Cimon, look at Themistocles and a thousand others, h o w greatly they belied their expectations! The young of bears and dogs show their natural dispositions. But men, faUing immediately under the sway of custom, opinion, and law, easily change or assume disguises. Y e t it is difficult to overcome the natural bent; and so it happens that, having chosen the w r o n g course, we often labour to no purpose, and spend much o f our Hves training children up to callings in which they cannot establish themselves. But my advice is that, this being a great difficulty, they should always be directed towards what is best and most profitable, and that we should pay Htde heed to the slight can- jectures and prognostications which w e base on their childish actions. Even Plato in his Republic seems to me to attach t o o much importance to them. Learning is a great ornament, Madame, and a tool of marvel lous utility, particularly to persons raised to such a degree of fortune as yours. In fact, in low and menial hands it is not properly employed. It takes much more pride in lending its powers to the conduct of a war, to the ruHng of a people, to cultivating the friendship of a prince or a foreign nation, than
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for hiffl, sometimes let him do so for himself. I would not have him start everything and do all the talking, but give his pupil a turn and listen to him. Socrates, and after him Arcesilaus, made his pupils speak first and then spoke to them. "The authority o f those who teach is very often a hindrance to those w h o wish to learn.'* It is well for a tutor to make his charge trot in front o f him, so that he may judge his pace and decide to what extent he should himself hold back to keep in step with him. If this adjust ment is not made we spoil everything. But to strike the right proportion and duly to corrform with it is one of the hardest tasks that I know. It takes a lofty and very powerful m i n d to conform with a child's gait and to guide it. I walk with a steadier and firmer step uphill than down. When, according to our c o m mon practice, a teacher undertakes to school several minds o f very different structure and capacity with the same lessons and,^ the same measure of guidance, it is no wonder that, among a whole multitude of children, he scarcely finds two or three who derive any proper profit from their teaching. A tutor must demand an account not just o f the words o f his lesson, but of their meaning and substance, and must judge o f its benefit to his pupil by the evidence not o f the lad's memory but of his Ufe. He must make him consider what he has just learnt from a hundred points of view and apply it to as many different subjects, to see if he has yet understood it and really made it his own; and he must judge his pupil's progress by Plato's dialectical method. It is a sign o f rawness and indi gestion to disgorge our meat the moment w e have swallowed it. The stomach has not performed its function if it has not changed the condition and character of what it was given to digest. Our minds never work except on trust; they are bound and controlled by their appetite for another man's ideas, enslaved and captivated by the authority of his teaching. W e have been so subjected to our leading-strings that w e have lost aE freedom of movement. Our vigour and independence are extinct. ' T h e y *** Cicero,** De Natura Deomm, i, v.
B O O K O N E : C H A P T E R Z 6 n e v e r cease to be under guidance.'* I had some private conversa tion at Pisa with an excellent man, but such an Aristotelean as to accept as his universal dogma, that the touchstone and mea sure for all sound opinion and all truth is its conformity with the teaching of Aristotle, and that outside this there is nothing but illusions and inanities. He believes that Aristode saw and said everything. This standpoint, somewhat too broadly and unfairly interpreted, once brought him, and for a long time kept him, in great danger from the Inquisition at Rome. T h e tutor should make his pupil sift everything, and take nothing into his head on simple authority or trust. Aristode's principles must no more be principles with him than those of the Stoics or the Epicureans. Let their various opinions be put before him; he will choose between them if he can; if not, he will remain in doubt. Only fools are certain and immovable. _Che non 7nen che sapper duhh'iar m'aggrada._ F o r if he embraces the opinions of Xenophon and Plato by his o w n reasoning, they will no longer be theirs but his. Who fol lows another follows nothing. He finds nothing, and indeed is seeking nothing. ' W e are not under a king: each man should look after himself.' if: Let him know what he knows at least; he must imbibe their ways o f thought, not learn their precepts; and he may boldly forget, if he will, where he has learnt his opinions, so long as he can make them his own. Truth and reason are common to all men, and no more belong to the man w h o first uttered them than to him that repeated them after him. It is no more a matter of Plato's opinion than of mine, when he and I understand and see things aUke. The bees steal from this flower and that, but afterwards turn their pilferings into honey, which is their own; it is thyme and marjoram no longer. So the pupil will transform and fuse together the passages that he borrows from others, to make of them something entirely his own; that is to say, his o w n judgement. His education, his labour, and his study have no other aim but to form this. *** Seneca,** Letters^ xxxiii. t 'It pleases me as much to doubt as to know.' Dante, Inform, xi, 93. ij: Seneca, Letters, xxxiii. 56
B O O K ONE^ C H A P T E R 26 Human society is wonderfully adapted to this end, and so is travel in foreign countries, not merely for the sake of recording, as our French nobles do, the exact measurements of the Holy Rotunda, or the embroidery on Signora Livia's drawers, or of noting, like some others, how much longer or broader the face of Nero is on some old ruin than on a medal of equal antiquity, but for the principal purpose of discovering the characteristics and customs of the different nations, and of rubbing and poUsh- ing our wits on those of others. I should like a boy to be sent abroad very young; and first, in order to kill two birds with one stone, to those neighbouring countries whose languages differ most from our own, and to which the tongue cannot adapt itself if it is not trained early. It is also a generally accepted opinion that it is wrong for a child to be reared in its parents' lap; their natural affection makes them too soft and tender, even the wisest of them. Parents are incapable of punishing a child's faults, or .of letting him be brought up roughly and carelessly, as he should be. They carmot bear to see him come back sweating and dusty from his exercise, or drinking when he is hot or when he is cold, or see him on a restive horse, or facing a skilful fencer, foil in hand, or hand- Hng his first musket. But there is no help for it; if one wants to make him into a man of parts, one must certainly not spare him in youth and must often transgress the laws of medicine. vitamque sub dio et trepidis agat in rebus.* It is not enough to harden his mind; we must also toughen his muscles. T h e mind will suffer too much strain if it is not backed up; it is too much for it to perform a double function alone. I know how mine labours in the company of a most delicate and sensitive body that leans so heavily upon it. Often in my reading I have found my masters commending as models of great-heartedness and high courage men who were more re markable, I believe, for a tough skin and hard bones. I have seen men, women, and children so constituted by nature that a *** 'To live under the open sky, and among dangers.' Horace,** Odes, in, il, 5. 58
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beating to them is less than a flick of the finger to me, and w h o do not utter a sound or blink an eyelid under the blows they receive. When athletes ape the endurance o f philosophers, it is rather out of strong nerves than a steadfast heart. T o be used to hard labour is to be used to pain: for 'Labour hardens us against pain'.* A boy must be broken in to liie discomfort and hardship of exercise, in preparation for the discomfort and hardship of a dislocation, the colic, cauteries, gaol, and torture. For he tnight fall a victim even to these last two which, as the times- are, threaten the good as well as the bad. W e are experiencing this at the present day, for when people fight against the law, even the best of men are threatened with a whipping and the halter.
Moreover, the tutor's authority, which ought to be supreme with the child, is checked and hindered by the presence of parents. I might add too that the respect paid to him by the household, and his consciousness of the power and greatness of his house are, in my opinion, considerable disadvantages at that age. In this school of human intercourse there is one vice that I have often noted; instead of paying attention to others, w e make it our whole business to call attention to ourselves, and are more concerned to sell our wares than to acquire a new stock. Silence and modesty are very proper qualities in human rela-^ tions. The boy will be trained to be sparing and economical with his accomplishments, when he has acquired them, and not to contradict the idle sayings or silly stories that are spoken in his presence. For it is botia rude and tiresome to quarrel with everything that is not to our liking. He should be content to correct himself, and not seem to condemn in others everything that he would not himself do, or to set himself u p in opposition to general custom. ' A man can be wise without display and without arousing enmity.'f Let him avoid these overbearing and discourteous airs, also the puerile ambition of trying to ap pear cleverer because he is different, and of getting a name for censoriousness and originality. A s it is unbecoming for any but *** Cicero,** r »/w/aw, 11, IJ. f Seneca, I ,^/i?rj, cnr.*
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Tlie pupil's conscience and viitue should shine out in his speech, and should take reason alone for their guide. I t must b e explained to him that to admit any mistake he may find in what he has said, even though no one has noticed it but himself, is an act of good judgement and sincerity, the chief virtues that he is pursuing; that obstinacy and contentiousness are common qualities, generally to be found in the meanest minds; and that to change one's opinion and correct oneself, to give up a false position at the climax of a heated exposition, is a rare, strong, and philosophical virtue. He must be warned that when in company he shordd have his eyes everywhere. For I find that the highest places are usually seized by the least capable men, and that great fortune and ability are seldom found together. I have been present when those at the head of the table were chatting about the tapestry or the taste of the malmsey, while many fine sayings were lost at the other end. He must sound every man's capacity. A herds man, a mason, a passing stranger, he must draw upon them all and borrow from each according to his wares, for everything has some household use. Even other men's folly and weakness will be instructive to him. B y noting each one's graces and manners, he will foster in himself a liking for g o o d manners and a dislike for bad. Let an honest curiosity be instilled in him, so that he may inquire into everything; if there is anydiing remarkable in his neighbourhood let him g o to see it, whether it is a building, a fountain, a man, the site of an ancient battle, or a place visited by Caesar or Charlemagne: Quae tellus sit lent a gelu, quae putris ab aestu, ventus in Italt'a/n qui bene vela feraf.* Let him inquire into the characters, resources, and alliances o f this prince and that. Such things are very interesting to learn, and very useful to know. In this study of man I would have him include, most parti cularly, those men w h o live only by the memories they have *** 'What land is benumbed with cold, what land crumbling with heat, and which is the fair wind that blows towards Italy.' Propettius, rv, iii, 39.**
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left in books. By means of histories, he will be in touch with the great minds of the best ages. It is a profitless study if one makes it so; but if one has the will, it can also be of inestimable value. It was the only study, as Plato tells us, that the Lacedaemonians thought worth while. What profit will he not reap in this respect by reading the Lives of our favourite Plutarch? But let his tutor remember the purpose of his duties, and impress upon his pupil the quahties of Hannibal and Scipio rather than the date of the fall of Carthage, and not so much where Marcellus died as why it was inconsistent with his duty that he should die there. Let him be taught not so much the facts of history as how to judge them. It is, I believe, of all subjects the one to which our minds apply themselves in the most various ways. I have read a hun dred things in Livy that another has not. Plutarch read a hundred more in him than ever I have found, or than the historian ever put in, perhaps. T o some it is a purely grammatical study, to some the anatomy of philosophy by which the deepest parts of our nature can be explored. There are in Plutarch many extended reflecdons that richly deserve study. He is, in my opinion, the master craftsman in this field. But there are a thousand others on which he barely touches; he merely points with his finger to the way that we can g o , if we please, and is sometimes content to make a single thrust at the heart of a question. We must draw out his points and bring them to full view. Take as an example, that remark of his that the peoples of Asia were subject to one man because they did not know how to pronounce the single syllable, No; which perhaps gave la Bo^tie the idea and the material for his Voluntary Servitude. Only to see Plutarch pick out some sUght action in a man's life, or a remark that seems of no significance, is a treatise in itself. It is a pity that men of understanding are so fond of brevity; no doubt their reputations profit by it, but the loss is ours. Plutarch would rather have us applaud his judge ment than his knowledge; he prefers to leave us not satiated but still hungry for more. He knew that even on the greatest subjects too much can be said, and that Alexandridas was right to reproach the man who made an excellent speech before the
B O O K O N E : C H A P T E R 26 example of a whole genus, is the mirrot into which we must look if w e are to behold ourselves from the proper standpoint. In fact, I would have this be my pupil's book. So many dispositions, sects, judgements, opinions, laws, and customs teach us to judge sanely of our own, and teach our understanding how to re cognize its imperfections and natural weaknesses; which is no trivial lesson. So many national revolutions and changes of pubHc fortune teach us to consider our own no great miracle. So many names, so many victories, so many conquests buried in oblivion, render ridiculous our hope of eternalizing our own names by the capture of ten insignificant troopers or of a hen roost, known only by the fact of its fall. The pride and arrogance of so much foreign display, the swollen majesty of so many courts and great houses, steadies us and enables our eyes to en dure the brilliance of our o w n without bUnking. A l l those mil lions of men buried before our time encourage us not to fear our departure to another world where we shall find so much good company. A n d so with all the rest. O u r Hfe, said Pythagoras, is Uke the great and crowded as sembly at the Olympic games. Some exercise the body in order
to win glory in the contests; others bring merchandise there to
sell for profit. There are some - and these are not the worst - whose only aim is to observe how and why everything is doné, and to be spectators of other men's Hves, in order to judge and regulate their own. Fit examples can be chosen for all the most profitable teach ings of philosophy to which human actions ought to be re ferred, as to a standard. Our pupil should be told: quid fas optare, quid asper utile nummus habet, patriae carisque propinquis quantum elargiri deceat, quern te deus esse iussit et humana qua parte locatus es in re, ... quid sumus et quidnam victuri gignimur,* *** 'What it is right to desire, what hard-earned money is useful for, how much should be bestowed on country and dear kindred, what sort of man God intended you to be, and for what place in the commonwealth he marked you out... what we are and what life we are born to lead.' Persius,** Satires, III, 69-72 and 67. 64
O N T H E E D U C A T I O N O F C H I L D R E N what it is to Icnow and not to know, what the aim o f his study should be; what courage, temperance, and justice are; what the difference is between ambition and greed, servitude and sub mission, Hcence and Hberty; by what signs one may recognize genuine and soHd contentment; to what extent w e should fear death, suffering, and shame, ,
Et quo quemque modo jugiatque feratque laborem* by what springs We move; and the reason for aU the different impulses within us. For it seems to me that the first ideas which his mind should be made to absorb must be those that regulate his behaviour and morals, that teach him to know himself,, and to Icnow how to die well and Hve well. Among the liberal arts, let us start with the one that makes us free. They are all of some service in teaching us h o w to Hve and employ our Hves, as is everything else to a certain extent. But let US choose the one that serves us directly and professedly. If we knew how to restrict our life-functions within their just and natural Hmits, we should find that most o f the branches of knowledge in current usage are valueless to us; and that even in those which are valuable, there are quite profitless stretches and depths which we should do better to avoid. Following Socrates' instructions, we must limit the extent of our studies in those branches which' are lacking in utiHty. sapere aude: incipe. qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, rusticus expec.tat dum defluat amnis: af ilk labitur et labeiurin omne voJubilis aevum.^ It is very fooHsh to teach our children Quid movemt Pisces animosaque signa Leonis, lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua ,X *** 'And how to avoid or endure each kind of hardship.' Virgil,** Aeneid, III, 4^^ {tightly fUgiasqueferasque). t 'Dare to be wise! Begin now. The man who puts off the day when he will live righdy is like the peasant who waits for the river to drain away. • But it flows on, and will flow on for ever.' Horace, Epistles, i, ii, 40. % 'What is the influence of Pisces, and of the fierce constellation of the Lion, and of Capricorn bathed in the Hesperian Sea.' Propertius, rv, i, 85. 6 j
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quibblicgs which have blocked the approach to it. It is very- wrong to describe it to children as the unapproachable study, and as frowning, grim, and terrible of aspect. W h o has dis guised it in this wan and hideous mask? Nothing can be gayer, more agile, more cheerful, and I might almost say more sportive. It preaches nothing but joUity and merry-making. A sad and dejected air shows that here philosophy is not at home. W h e n Demetrius the grammarian found a bunch o f philosophers seated together in the temple at Delphi, he said to therm ' T o judge by your serene and cheerful faces, I should say that y o u are engaged in no deep discourse.' T o which one o f them, Heradeon of Megara, replied: T t is for those w h o inquire whether the future of the verb jSóAAcu should have a double A, or who seek the derivation of the comparatives xeXpov and ^éXriov, and of the superlatives x^ípiarov and ^éXnarov to wrinkle their brows as they discuss their subject. But philo sophical conversation quickly etüivens and delights those w h o take part in it; it does not depress them or make them sad.* Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro corpore, deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque inde habttumfactes,* The mind that harbours philosophy should, by its soundness, make the body sound also. It should make its tranquillity and joy shine fordi; it should mould the outward bearing to its shape, and arm it therefore with a gracious pride, with an active and sprighdy bearing, with a happy and gracious countenance. The most manifest sign of wisdom is a constant happiness; its state is like that of things above the moon: always serene. It is Baroco and BaraUptonf that make their servants so dirty and smoke-begrimed; not philosophy, which they k n o w otdy b y hearsay. Why, philosophy's object is to calm the tempests of the soul, to teach hunger and fever h o w to laugh, not b y a few imaginary epicycles^ but by natural, and palpable argumentsl *** "You can detect the mental totments concealed within a sick body, and you can also detect joy: the face reflects both states.' Juvenal,** Satires, IX, i8.' f Terms of the old scholastic logic. Scientific term of the sixteenth century.
B O O K O N E : C H A P T E R 2 6 Its aim is virtue, which does not, as the schoohnen allege, stand on the top of a sheer mountain, rugged and inaccessible. Those w h o have approached it have found it, on the contrary, dwelling on a fair, fertile plateau, from which it can clearly sec all things below it. But anyone who knows the way can get there by shady, grassy, and sweetly flowering paths, pleasantly and up an easy and smooth inchne, Ике that of the vault of heaven. T h r o u g h unfamiliarity with this sovereign, beautiful, triumph ant virtue, which is both delicate and courageous, which is the professed and irreconcilable enemy of bitterness, trouble, fear, and constraint; and which has nature for guide, and good- fortune and dehght for companions, they have created in their feeble imaginations this absurd, gloomy, querulous, grim, threatening, and scowling image, and placed it on a rock apart, among brambles, as a bogey to terrify people. My tutor, w h o knows that he should fill his pupil's mind as much - or rather more - with affection for virtue than with respect for it, will tell him that poets have the feelings of com mon men. He will give him palpable proof that the gods have made it a sweatier toil to approach to the chambers of Venus than those of Minerva. Then when the lad comes to be self- critical, and is offered the choice between Bradamante and AngeHca* as a mistress to be enjoyed - a natural, vigorous, spirited beauty, not mannish but manly, in contrast to a soft, affected, delicate, and artificial one, the former dressed as a boy, with a gUttering helmet on her head, the latter in girlish clothes and adorned with a pearl head-dress - his tutor will judge even his love to be a manly one if he differs entirely in his choice from the effeminate shepherd of Phrygia.f He will then teach his pupil this new lesson: that the value and height of true virtue Ues in the ease, the profit, and the pleasure of its practice, which is so far from being difficult that it is within the reach of children as well as men, of the simple as well as the subtle. Moderation as its instrument, not force. Socrates, virtue's first favourite, deliberately renounced all *** See Ariosto,** Orlando furioso. t Paris, who chose Venus rather than Juno or Minerva. 68
