BOOK III

BOOK III

1. On the useful and the honourable

[Montaigne’s conception of the ‘useful’ is, as it often was in his day, one at home in moral philosophy: here it embraces notions which include both what is profitable to a man or to his country and every sort of public and private interest. The moral dilemma caused by the clash between private morality, piety, benevolence and social ethics on the one hand, and raisons d’état on the other is always a problem in war, and never more so than in civil wars. Cicero considers such problems in De officiis (On Duties) in which he weighs the duties of goodness, expediency and their conflicting claims. Montaigne strongly defends the claims of kinship, loving friendship, personal integrity and humanity, even during the horrors of the Wars of Religion which were marked by almost unparalleled acts of cruelty and treachery. His hero Epaminondas is presented as a model who can serve to counteract the examples of impiety which, in his more barbarous times, risk becoming the norm.

In the Renaissance the word honneste had many interlocking meanings including ‘honourable’ and ‘decent’.]

[B] No one is free from uttering stupidities. The harm lies in doing it meticulously:

Nae iste magno conatu magnas nugas dixerit. [Of course that chap will make enormous efforts to say enormous trifles!]1

That does not apply to me. My trifles escape me with as little gravity as they deserve. Good luck to them for that. I would part with them at once, however low their price. I do not buy and sell them for more than they weigh. I speak to my writing-paper exactly as I do to the first man I meet. Here is proof that what I say is true.

Is there anyone for whom treachery should not be loathsome when even Tiberius rejected it at some cost to himself! Tiberius received word from Germany that, if he approved, Ariminius could be got rid of by poison. (Ariminius was the most powerful of the enemies facing the Romans: he had humiliated them under Varus and alone was preventing Tiberius from extending his dominion over that territory.) He replied that the Roman People were in the habit of avenging themselves on their enemies sword in hand, by overt means not by trickery and covert ones.2

He renounced what was useful for what was honourable.

You may reply that he was a hypocrite. I believe he was – hardly a miracle in a man of his line of business. But virtue carries no less far for being professed on the lips of a man who loathes it: indeed truth tears it from him by force, so that even if he does not welcome it inwardly he hides behind it as an adornment.

Both in public and in private we are built full of imperfection. But there is nothing useless in Nature – not even uselessness. Nothing has got into this universe of ours which does not occupy its appropriate place. Our being is cemented together by qualities which are diseased. Ambition, jealousy, envy, vengeance, superstition and despair lodge in us with such a natural right of possession that we recognize the likeness of them even in the animals too – not excluding so unnatural a vice as cruelty; for in the midst of compassion we feel deep down some bitter-sweet pricking of malicious pleasure at seeing others suffer. Even children feel it:

Suave, mari magno, turbantibus æquom ventis,E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.

[Sweet it is during a tempest when the gales lash the waves to watch from the shore another man’s great striving.]3

If anyone were to remove the seeds of such qualities in Man he would destroy the basic properties of our lives. So, too, in all polities there are duties which are necessary, yet not merely abject but vicious as well: the vices hold their rank there and are used in order to stitch and bind us together, just as poisons are used to preserve our health. If vicious deeds should become excusable insofar as we have need of them, necessity effacing their true qualities, we must leave that role to be played by citizens who are more vigorous and less timorous, those prepared to sacrifice their honour and their consciences, as men of yore once sacrificed their lives: for the well-being of their country. Men like me are too weak for that: we accept roles which are easier and less dangerous. The public interest requires men to betray, to tell lies [C] and to massacre;4 [B] let us assign that commission to such as are more obedient and more pliant.

I have certainly been moved to anger at seeing judges use fraud and false hopes of favour or of pardon to tempt criminals to reveal what they have done, even using barefaced lies. It would be helpful to justice (and to Plato, too, who is in favour of that practice)5 to furnish me with other methods, more in keeping with myself. Such justice is crafty: I reckon that it is no less wounded by others than by itself. Not long ago I replied that. I would hardly be one to betray my Prince for a private citizen when I would be deeply grieved to betray any private citizen for my Prince; I not only loathe to deceive, I also loathe others to be deceived about me: I am unwilling even to provide matter or occasion for it. In the little I have had to do with negotiations between our Princes during these disputes and sub-disputes which tear us apart nowadays, I have scrupulously stopped anyone from ‘running himself through with my visor’ – from being deceived by my position. Those in the business hide as much as they can: they present themselves as being as moderate as possible and pretend that their views are very close. For my part I recommend myself by my liveliest opinions and by the manner which is most truly mine. I am a tender novice at negotiating: I would rather let down my negotiations than let down myself. I have been very lucky though so far – and luck certainly plays the major part in this; few men have gone from one armed band to another with less suspicion or more favour and courtesy.

I have an open manner, readily striking up acquaintance and being trusted from the first encounter. Simpleness and unsullied truth are always opportune and acceptable in any period whatsoever. And then frank speech is less suspect or offensive in men who are not working for some private gain and who can with truth make the reply that Hyperides made to the Athenians who complained of his blunt way of speaking: ‘Gentlemen, do not consider only my frankness but that I am frank without having anything to gain, without restoring my own fortunes.’6 My own frankness, by its vigour, has quickly freed me too from suspicion of deceitfulness (since I do not spare men anything, however hurtful or oppressive, which could be put worse behind their backs); and also by showing my frankness to be simple and unbiased. All I want to gain from doing anything is the fact of having done it: I do not attach distant corollaries and pleadings to it; each thing I do does its job separately: let it succeed if it can.

I feel, by the way, no driving passion about the great of the land, neither love nor hatred: nor has my will in this matter been throttled by private injury or obligation. [C] I think of our Kings with the simple loyal affection of a subject, neither encouraged nor discouraged by personal interest. I feel pleased with myself over that. [B] I am only moderately devoted to public affairs, and only dispassionately to just ones. I am not enslaved by deep-seated pledges and intimate engagements. Anger and hatred go beyond the duty of justice; they are passions which merely serve those who are not held to their duty uniquely by reason. All loyal and equitable purposes are loyal and equitable in themselves; if they are not so they are soon corrupted into sedition and disloyalty.

That is what makes me stride forward, head erect, open-faced and open-hearted. I tell you truly that I am not afraid to admit that, if only I could, I would readily follow that old crone’s plan and offer a candle to St Michael and another to his dragon.7 I shall support the good side as far as (but, if possible, excluding) the stake: let Montaigne, my seat, be engulfed in the collapse of the commonwealth if needs be; but, if needs not be, I shall be grateful to Fortune for preserving it. Was it not Atticus who held to the just side, to the losing side, yet saved himself by his moderation in that universal shipwreck of the world among so many schisms and upheavals?

It is easier for private citizens like he was: in such sorts of turmoil I find that you can, with justice, not be ambitious to get involved unless you are invited to. But I find that to remain vacillating and mongrel, or to keep one’s affections in check, unmoved by civil strife in one’s country and having no preference when the State is divided, is neither beautiful nor honourable: [C] ‘Ea non media, sed nulla via est, velut eventum expectantium quo fortunae consilia sua applicent.’ [That is not the way of moderation: it is no way at all. It is simply awaiting the outcome so as to support those who happen to win.]8 That can be permissible towards the affairs of neighbouring countries: Gelon, the Tyrant of Syracuse, refrained from supporting either side in the war of the Barbarians against the Greeks, keeping an envoy in readiness at Delphi, bearing gifts but waiting to see which side Fortune would favour before seizing the occasion when it was ripe for an alliance with the victor. But it would be a species of treachery to act thus in civil strife at home, in which of necessity [B] we must decide to join one side or other. But (even though I do not exploit it myself) I do find it to be more excusable in a man who has received no express command or office if he does not actually get embroiled in the strife, except in the case of foreign wars (in which however, by our own laws, no man is involved save by choice). Nevertheless even those who become totally committed can still do so with such order and moderation that the storm may pass over their heads without battering them. Were we not right to think that way about the late Bishop of Orleans, the Sieur de Morvilliers?9 And some others that I know, who are now struggling valiantly, have manners which are so equable and gentle that they are the kind who will remain upright no matter what destructive upheavals and collapses Heaven may have in store for us.

I hold that it is the property of kings alone to feel animosity towards other kings, and I laugh at the types of mind which gaily volunteer for quarrels which are so disproportionate: for a man has no private quarrel with a prince when he marches openly and courageously against him, honourably doing his duty. He may not love that great person but he does something better: he esteems him. And there is always this in favour of the cause of legitimacy, of the defence of the traditional institution: the very ones who disturb it for their personal ends can excuse those who defend it, even though they do not honour them. But we must not (as we do every day) give the name of duty to an inward bitter harshness born of self-interested passion, nor that of courage to malicious and treacherous dealings. What they call zeal is their propensity to wickedness and violence: it is not the cause which sets them ablaze but self-interest: they stoke up war not because it is just but because it is war.

Nothing stops us from behaving properly even when among mutual enemies – nor loyally either. Comport yourself among them not with an equal good-will (for good-will can allow of varying degrees) but at least with a temperate one, so that you do not become so involved with one of those mutual enemies that he can demand of you your all. Be satisfied too with a modest degree of their favour: do not fish in troubled waters, glide through them!

The other way, that of offering one’s services to both sides, savours even less of wisdom than it does of morality. The man to whom you betray another’s secrets although you are equally favoured by both realizes, does he not, that you will do the same by him when his turn comes? He listens to you, gets what he can out of you, turns your treachery to his advantage, but regards you as a bad man: men of duplicity are useful for what they bring, but mind you see that they take as little away as possible!

I never say anything to one side which I cannot say to the other when the time comes, merely changing the emphasis a little. I bring only such information as is already available, or indifferent or useful to all in common. There is no advantage whatsoever for which I would permit myself to lie to them.

I scrupulously conceal whatever has been entrusted to my silence, but I take care to have as little as possible to conceal. Guarding the secrets of princes when it is not your job to do so is far too much bother. The bargain I am prepared to offer is that, as long as they make few confidences to me, they can certainly place full confidence in whatever I bring with me.

I have always known more about such things than I wanted to. [C] Open talk opens the way to further talk, as wine does or love. [B] Phillipides replied wisely to King Lysimachus who asked him, ‘Which of my possessions shall I share with you?’ – ‘Whatever you like, provided it be none of your secrets.’10

I know that everyone rebels if the deeper implications of the negotiations he is employed on are concealed from him and if some ulterior motive is secreted away. Personally I am glad if princes tell me no more than they want me to get on with; I have no desire that what I know should impede or constrain what I have to say. If I have to serve as a means of deception let at least my own conscience be safeguarded. I do not want to be judged so loyal and loving a servant that I would be good for betraying any man. If a man does not keep faith with himself he can pardonably not do so to his master. But these princes will not accept half a man and despise services limited by conditions. There is no other remedy than frankly to state where your boundaries lie: only to Reason should I be a slave – and I can barely do that properly. [C] They are also wrong to require a free man to be as abjectly bound to their service as a man they have bought and made, or whose fate is expressly and individually tied to theirs. [B] Our laws have freed me from great anguish: they have chosen my party for me and have given me a master: all other superior authority is related to the authority of that law; all other obligations are restrained by it. That does not mean that if my affections inclined to the other side that I would immediately lend it my support: our wills and desires are laws unto themselves but our actions must accept law as ordained by the State.

This way of mine of proceeding jars a bit with our customs; it is not made to achieve great effects nor to endure very long. Innocence herself could not have commerce among us without deception, nor do her business without lying. So public employments are not for my game-bag. Whatever my profession requires of me in such matters I provide in the most private way I can. As a boy I was immersed in politics right up to my ears: it succeeded all right, but I quickly struggled free. Subsequently I have often got out of such engagements, rarely accepted them and never begged for them; I keep my back turned towards ambition – not perhaps like oarsmen who actually proceed backwards but in such a way that my not having embarked upon such a career is less due to my resolve than to my good fortune. For there are paths which are less inimical to my taste and more in conformity with my capacities: if Fortune had ever summoned me to follow those paths towards political service and advancement in worldly renown I know that I would have skipped over my reasoned opinions and followed her.

Those who counter what I profess by calling my frankness, my simplicity and my naturalness of manner mere artifice and cunning – prudence rather than goodness, purposive rather than natural, good sense rather than good hap – give me more honour than they take from me. They certainly make my cunning too cunning. If any one of those men would follow me closely about and spy on me, I would declare him the winner if he does not admit that there is no teaching in his sect which could counterfeit my natural way of proceeding and keep up an appearance of such equable liberty along such tortuous paths, nor of maintaining so uncompromising a freedom of action along paths so diverse, and concede that all their striving and cleverness could never bring them to act the same. The way of truth is one and artless: the way of private gain and success in such affairs as we are entrusted with is double, uneven and fortuitous.

I have often seen that counterfeit artful frankness in practice: it is most often unsuccessful. It readily recalls that donkey in Aesop which, to rival the dog, went and gaily threw both its forefeet round its master’s neck: but for such a welcome the wretched donkey received twice as many blows as the dog did caresses.11 [C] ‘Id maxime quemque decet quod est cujusque suum maxime.’ [What best becomes a man is whatever is most peculiarly his own.]

[B] I do not want to deprive wiliness of its rank: that would be to misunderstand the world. I know that it has often proved profitable and that it feeds and maintains most of the avocations of men. Some vices are legal, just as some deeds are good or pardonable yet illegal. That justice which of itself is natural and universal is ordered differently and more nobly than that other sort of justice, which is [C] particular to one nation and [B] confined by our political necessities. [C] ‘Veri juris germanæque justifiæ solidam et expressam effigiem nullam tenemus; umbra et imaginibus utimur.’ [We possess no expressly sculptured portrait of true Law and absolute Justice: we enjoy mere sketches and shadows];12 [B] so that when Dandamys the Wise heard accounts of the lives of Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes, he said that they were in every way great personalities, except for their being too subject to venerating the Law: for, to support Law with its authority, true virtue must doff much of its original vigour; and many vicious deeds are done not merely with the Law’s permission but at its instigation:13 [C] ‘Ex senatusconsultis plebisque scitis scelera exercentur.’ [There are crimes authorized by decrees of the Senate and by plebiscites.] [B] I adopt the ordinary usage which differentiates between things useful and things decent and which leads to certain natural functions, which are not merely useful but necessary, being termed indecent or foul.

But let us get on with exemplifying treachery.

Two pretenders to the kingdom of Thrace had fallen into a quarrel over their claims. The Emperor stopped their coming to blows; but one of them, under the pretext of a meeting to establish loving harmony between them, arranged for his rival to feast in his house; he then had him imprisoned and killed. Justice required that the Romans should avenge this crime, but difficulties lay in doing so the normal way: what the Romans could not legally achieve without the hazard of war they therefore undertook to do by treachery. They could not do so ‘honourably’, but they did so ‘usefully’. A certain Pomponius Flaccus was deemed the very man for the job; he ensnared that other pretender with feigned words and assurances and, instead of the honour and favour which he promised him, he dispatched him to Rome bound hand and foot. Here we have one traitor betraying another, which goes against the usual pattern, for traitors are full of mistrust and it is hard to catch them out by cunning like their own – witness the painful experience we have just had.14

Let whoever will be a Pomponius Flaccus – and there are plenty who would. In my case my word and my bond, like all the rest, form limbs of our commonwealth: they are best employed in serving the State. I take that as granted. But if I were commanded to assume responsibility for the Palace of Justice and its pleas I would reply: ‘I know nothing at all about such things’; if commanded to oversee a corps of pioneers I would say: ‘I am called to play a more honourable role.’ Similarly if anyone should wish to employ me to tell lies, to be treacherous or to perjure myself in some important cause (not to mention assassinations or poisonings), I would say, ‘If I have robbed anyone or stolen anything, send me rather to the galleys.’ It is licit for a man of honour to speak as the Spartans did when, defeated by Antipater, they were agreeing terms with him: ‘You may command us to accept conditions which are as grievous and as damaging as you please: but you will waste your time if you command us to accept shameful and dishonourable ones.’15

Each of us ought to have sworn to himself the oath which the kings of Egypt made their judges solemnly swear: that as judges they would never stray from their conscience for any command which even they their kings might give.

There are such evident signs of disapprobation and ignominy in those other commissions; the one who gives them to you is condemning you and, if you grasp it aright, is giving it to you as an accusation and a punishment. The more the affairs of State are mended by your exploit, the worse it goes for your own affairs: the better you do, the worse it is. And it would not be for the first time if the very man who set you the task chastised you for doing it – not without some appearance of justice.

[C] In some particular case betrayal of trust may be excusable, but only when used to betray and punish another betrayal of trust. [B] There are plenty of treacherous deeds which have been not only disowned but punished by the very ones on whose behalf they were perpetrated. Who does not know the judgement which Fabricius pronounced against the physician of Pyrrhus?16 But further still, there are cases when the very one who ordered the deed has exacted rigorous revenge on the man whom he employed to do it, disclaiming to have had such authority and power and disowning so abandoned a servility and so cowardly an obedience.

A Russian duke called Jaropelc bribed an Hungarian nobleman to betray the King of Poland, Boleslaus, either by killing him or by providing the Russians with the means of doing him some resounding harm. That Hungarian acted the honest man and devoted himself to the service of that king; he succeeded in becoming one of his advisers – among the most trusted. Taking advantage of this and choosing an opportune moment when his master was absent, he betrayed Wielickzka to the Russians; that great and flourishing city was entirely burnt and sacked by them; not only did they slaughter the entire population of whatever age or sex but also a large number of noblemen from the surrounding area whom he had assembled there with that end in view.

Jaropelc, his vengeance and his anger assuaged – and they were not unjustified, since Boleslaus had greatly injured him in a similar manner – was satiated by the fruits of that treacherous deed. He came to reflect on its naked, simple ugliness, seeing it with a saner vision no longer obscured by passion; he was seized with so great revulsion and remorse that he put out the eyes of the perpetrator, cut off his tongue and gelded him.17

Antigonus persuaded the Argyraspidian guards of his adversary Eumenes (who was their Captain-General) to betray him to him. No sooner did he have him killed after being delivered into his power than he himself desired to become the agent of divine Justice in punishing so loathsome a crime; he gave written orders for those guards to be handed over to the Provincial Governor, expressly commanding him to wipe them out, making their end as horrible as he could. Out of that great multitude not one ever breathed again the air of Macedonia. The greater the service they had done him, the more wicked he judged it to be and the more punishable.

[C] The slave who betrayed the hiding-place of his master Publius Sulpicius was set free, in accordance with the promise of Sylla’s proclamation; but in accordance with State policy, freeman as he was, he was cast down from the Tarpeian Rock. They have such men hanged with their gains slung in a purse round their necks: they first fulfil their secondary, special sort of promise, and then they fulfil the general one, the primary one.18

Mahomet II, jealous of his power in accordance with his family tradition, wanted to rid himself of his brother. He employed one of his officers to do so, who choked him by forcing him to imbibe a great quantity of water all at once. After this was done Mahomet II, to expiate the crime, handed the murderer over to the dead man’s mother – they were brothers only by their father. She, in his presence, slit open the murderer’s bosom and, hot with passion, fumbled inside, tore out his heart and threw it to the dogs.19 And our own King Clovis had the three servants of Cannacre hanged after they had betrayed their master: yet he had bribed them to do so. [B] Even worthless men find it pleasant, once they have profited from a vicious deed, to go and quite safely fasten upon it some mark of goodness and of justice, as though their conscience wished to make up for it and put things right. [C] To which may be added the fact that the agents of such horrific wickedness are a reproach to them: so they seek through their deaths to smother any knowledge witnessing to such conspiracies.

[B] Now even if it should happen that you do get a reward so as not to deprive raison d’état of so extreme and desperate a remedy, the one who rewards you will not fail to regard you as a man accursed and abominable – unless that is he is one himself. And he will think you a bigger traitor than does the man you betrayed; for he proves the malevolence of your heart at the touchstone of your hands, with no possible denial or objection. He exploits you just as we do those degraded men, Public Executioners of High Justice – an office as useful as it is shameful.

Apart from the baseness of such commissions, there is the prostitution of your conscience. Since the daughter of Sejanus was a virgin and therefore not punishable by death according to a specific judicial formula in Rome, in order to have scope to apply the law she was raped by the hangman before he strangled her: not merely his hand but his mind was the slave of the interests of State.20

[C] When Amurath I, to increase the severity of his punishment of those subjects who had supported the sacrilegious revolt of his son against him, commanded that their closest kinsmen should take part in their execution, I find it most honourable in some of them to have preferred to be held, with gross injustice, guilty of another’s sacrilege rather than to serve another’s justice by sacrilege of their own. And in my own time when I have seen some rabble, after we have stormed their wretched hovels, saving their own skins in return for the hanging of their friends and relatives, I have always thought that they were worse off than the ones we hanged. It is said that in former days Prince Vitold of Lithuania proclaimed as law that condemned criminals must execute their sentences by their own hand, finding it monstrous that a third party, who was innocent of their crime, should be burdened with the task of homicide.

[B] As for a prince, whenever some urgent necessity or some violent unforeseeable event affecting the needs of his State obliges him to go back on his pledged word, or otherwise forces him from the ordinate path of duty, he must consider it as a scourging by the rod of God; vice it is not, for he has abandoned his own right-reason for a more powerful universal one: but it is indeed a calamity. So when I was asked, ‘What remedy is there?’ I replied, ‘None: if the prince was really torn between those two extremes, then he had to do it’ – [C] ‘Sed videat ne quaeratur latebra perjurio’ [But let him be sure not to seek any pretexts for such perjury]21 – [B] ‘But if he had no regrets about doing it, if it did not weigh upon him, then that is a sign that his conscience has gone astray.’

[C] (Even if a Prince could be found with so tender a conscience that no cure seemed worth such a grievous remedy, I would not think any the less of him. He could never lose out more excusably or more decorously. We cannot do everything. Come what may we are often obliged to commit our ship to the sole guidance of Heaven as our ultimate refuge. For what more just necessity is that Prince keeping himself in store? Is there anything more impossible for him to do than what he can only do at the expense of his faith and his honour, attributes which ought perhaps to be dearer to him than his own preservation – and indeed the preservation of his people? If he should simply fold his arms and call on God for help, would he not have grounds to hope that God in his goodness is not such as to refuse the favour of his hand, beyond the normal Order, to a hand so pure and just?)

[B] Those are dangerous examples, rare and sick exceptions to our rules of nature. Yield to them we must, but with great moderation and circumspection. No private good is worth our doing such violence to our consciences; the common good: well, all right, when it is most apparent and when it really matters.

[C] Timoleon with the tears he shed rightly saved himself from the monstrous quality of his deed, remembering that he had killed the tyrant with the hand of a brother; and it rightly pricked his conscience that he had been obliged to purchase the common good at the price of his moral honour. The very Senate which he served to free from slavery dared not plainly make up its mind about so deep a deed which presented two such grievous and contrary faces: when the citizens of Syracuse opportunely, at that very moment, send to beg protection from the Corinthians, asking for a leader worthy of restoring their city to its former splendour and of cleansing Sicily of the many petty tyrants which oppressed it, the Senators deputed Timoleon, declaring, with a new ruse, that their decision would be in favour of the liberator of his country or against the murderer of his brother depending on whether he acquitted himself of his charge well or badly.22

That fanciful verdict did however have the excuse of the dangerous nature of his example and the implications of so self-contradictory a deed; they did well to free their judgement of such a burden and to base it on some other independent considerations. Now Timoleon’s behaviour during that expedition soon threw light on his case, so worthily and so virtuously did he act in every way; and the good fortune which accompanied him during the hardships he had to overcome in that noble task seemed to them to have been sent by the gods, united in favour of vindicating him.

If ever an aim was worthy of pardon, that aim was Timoleon’s. But the convenience of increasing the State revenue, which served as a pretext to the Roman Senate in the filthy decree that I am about to relate, is not strong enough to warrant such an injustice. Certain cities had ransomed themselves for cash and regained their freedom from Lucius Scylla by the permission and decree of the Senate. Their case, it so happened, had to be considered afresh: the Senate condemned them to be taxable as before, declaring that the money used for their ransom should be forfeited.23

Civil wars often produce base examples of our punishing private citizens for trusting in us when we once thought differently, and the very same magistrate makes someone who had nothing to do with it bear the penalty of his own change of mind. The master flogs the pupil because he was willing to learn, and the guide flogs the blind man. A horrifying image of our justice. There are rules in philosophy which are false and weak. The example which it propounds to us to enable private advantage to prevail over our plighted troth is not sufficiently justified by the weight of the attendant circumstances: ‘Thieves have captured you; they have set you free after exacting from you an oath to pay a certain sum.’ It would be quite wrong to say that a good man, once out of their hands, would be free of his oath without paying up! He is nothing of the sort! Whatever fear has made me want to do once, I am obliged to want to do when freed from that fear. And if fear had merely forced my tongue without my will, I am still bound by my word down to the last farthing. In my own case when my tongue has, without reflection, gone beyond my intentions, it has been a point of conscience not to disavow it for that reason. Otherwise, step by step, we will reach the point where it will overthrow any right that a third party acquires by our promises and our oaths: ‘Quasi vero forti viro vis possit adhiberi.’ [As though force could be used against a man of fortitude.]24 In one thing alone does private interest excuse our failure to keep a promise: if we have promised something which is wicked and iniquitous in itself; for the right of virtue must take precedence over the rights of our obligation.

I have already placed Epaminondas among the foremost ranks of outstanding men and I have no wish to unsay what I said.25 How far would he go, out of consideration for his private duty? He never killed a man he had vanquished; he scrupled to kill, without due form of law, a tyrant [C] or his accomplices, [B] even for the inestimable good of restoring freedom to his country; he thought it wicked of a man, no matter how good a citizen he might be, if he did not spare his friend and host among his enemies even in battle. There you have a soul compounded of noble elements! To the harshest and most violent of human activities he married goodness and humanity – indeed the most exquisite to be found in the school of philosophy. That mind so great, so rigid and so obstinate in the face of pain, death and poverty: was it nature or art which had made it tender to the point of extreme gentleness and of affability of humour? Terrifying with blood and sword, he goes smashing and shattering a nation unbeatable save by him alone, only to turn aside in the midst of the melee when he comes upon his friend and host. Truly that man was genuinely in command of War when he compelled her mouth to answer to the bit of his kindness at the highest point of her most blazing ardour, all enflamed as she was and foaming with frenzy and slaughter. It is a miracle to bring even the image of Justice into actions such as that: to the righteous Epaminondas alone it belonged to bring in mildness, most gentle-mannered benevolence [C] and pure innocence.26

[B] Whereas one leader said to the Mammertines that statute-law did not apply to men under arms; whereas another said to the Tribune of the People that the times of war and of justice were two different things, while a third declared that the din of arms prevented his hearing the voice of the laws:27 Epaminondas was never prevented from hearing the laws of kindness and of unsullied courtesy. Had he not borrowed from his enemies the practice of sacrificing to the Muses as he went to war in order to temper by their gentleness and gaiety the harshness and frenzy of Mars?28 After so great a preceptor let us not fear to think [C] that some things are unlawful even when done to enemies or [B] that the common interest cannot require all men to sacrifice all private interest always, [C] ‘manente memoria etiam in dissidio publicorum foederum privati juris’ [the memory of individual rights subsisting even in the strife of public abominations] ;29

[B] et nulla potentia vires Præstandi, ne quid peccet amicus, habet;

[no might has the power to authorize a friend to act wickedly;]

and that not all things are legitimate to a man of honour at the service [C] of his king or [B] of the cause of the commonwealth and its laws. [C] ‘Non etiam patria praestat omnibus officiis, et ipsi conducit pios habere cives in parentes.’ [The claims of our country are not paramount over all other duties: it is good for it to have citizens who are dutiful to their kindred.]

[B] There you have a lesson proper to our own times. It is enough that the ironplate of our armour should give us calloused shoulders: there is no need to allow it to make our minds callous as well; it is enough to plunge our pens in ink without plunging them in blood. If it is greatness of mind and a deed of rare and special virtue to hold in contempt the bonds of love, our private obligations, our word and our kinsfolk in the interests of the common good and of obedience to officers of State, then for us to decline such greatness it suffices that it cannot find lodging within the greatness of mind of Epaminondas.

I hold in abomination the frenetic exhortations of that other man with his disordered mind:

dum tela micant, non vos pietatis imago Ulla, nec adversa conspecti fronte parentes Commoveant; vultus gladio turbate verendos.

[while your weapons flash, let no thought of duty to your parents move you, nor the sight of your fathers on the other side: slash with your swords at the faces which you should venerate.]30

Let us deprive wicked treacherous natures, athirst for blood, of such a pretext of justification. Let us cast aside such abnormal and insane justice and cling to models which are more humane. Think what examples can do over time! In an engagement against Cinna during the Civil War, one of Pompey’s soldiers unintentionally killed his brother on the other side; from shame and sorrow he killed himself then and there on the field; yet a few years later, in another Civil War between the same nations, a soldier killed his brother and then asked his officers for a reward for doing so.31 We wrongly adduce the honour and beauty of an activity from its usefulness, and our conclusion is wrong if we reckon that all are bound to perform it, [C] and that it is honourable for each to do so, [B] provided it be useful:

[C] Omnia non pariter rerum sunt omnibus apta. [Not all things are equally fitted to all men.]

[B] Select the most necessary, the most useful activity of human society: that will be marriage. Yet the counsel of the Saints finds the opposing party to be more worthy of honour and excludes from marriage the vocation which is most to be revered among men, just as we assign to our studs the beasts we value less.32