39

39. On solitude

[Montaigne himself had withdrawn in solitude to his estates, as many an ancient philosopher and statesman had done, with leisure to seek after wisdom, goodness and tranquillity of mind. His advice that we should set aside for ourselves a ‘room at the back of the shop’ is a reminder that true solitude is a spiritual withdrawal from the world. Living in solitude did not mean living as a hermit but living with detachment – if possible away from courts and the bustle of the world. Living as though always in the presence of a great and admired figure was a Renaissance practice (Sir Thomas More lived as though always in the company of the elder Pico). Montaigne draws a sharp distinction between the solitude of rare saintly ecstatics and that of ordinary men.]

[A] Let us leave aside those long comparisons between the solitary life and the active one;1 and as for that fine adage used as a cloak by greed and ambition, ‘That we are not born for ourselves alone but for the common weal,’2 let us venture to refer to those who have joined in the dance: let them bare their consciences and confess whether rank, office and all the bustling business of the world are not sought on the contrary to gain private profit from the common weal. The evil methods which men use to get ahead in our century clearly show that their aims cannot be worth much.

Let us retort to ambition that she herself gives us a taste for solitude, for does she shun anything more than fellowship? Does she seek anything more than room to use her elbows?

The means of doing good or evil can be found anywhere, but if that quip of Bias is true, that ‘the evil form the larger part’, or what Ecclesiasticus says, ‘One good man in a thousand have I not found’3 –

[B] Rari quippe boni: numero vix sunt totidem, quot Thebarum portæ, vel divitis ostia Nili.

[Good men are rare: just about as many as gates in the walls of Thebes or mouths to the fertile Nile.] –

[A] then contagion is particularly dangerous in crowds. Either you must loathe the wicked or imitate them. It is dangerous both to grow like them because they are many, or to loathe many of them because they are different.

[C] Sea-going merchants are right to ensure that dissolute, blasphemous or wicked men do not sail in the same ship with them, believing such company to be unlucky. That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: ‘Shut up,’ he said, ‘so that they do not realize that you are here with me.’4 And (a more pressing example) when Albuquerque, the Viceroy of India for Emmanuel, King of Portugal, was in peril from a raging tempest, he took a boy on his shoulders for one reason only: so that by linking their fates together the innocence of that boy might serve him as a warrant and intercession for God’s favour and so bring him to safety.

[A] It is not that a wise man cannot live happily anywhere nor be alone in a crowd of courtiers, but Bias says that, if he has the choice, the wise man will avoid the very sight of them. If he has to, he will put up with the former, but if he can he will choose the other. He thinks that he is not totally free of vice if he has to contend with the vices of others. [B] Those who haunted evil-doers were chastised [C] as evil [A] by Charondas.5

[C] There is nothing more unsociable than Man, and nothing more sociable: unsociable by his vice, sociable by his nature. And Antisthenes does not seem to me to have given an adequate reply to the person who reproached him for associating with the wicked, when he retorted that doctors live among the sick: for even if doctors do help the sick to return to health they impair their own by constantly seeing and touching diseases as they treat them.6

[A] Now the end I think is always the same: how to live in leisure at our ease. But people do not always seek the way properly. Often they think they have left their occupations behind when they have merely changed them. There is hardly less torment in running a family than in running a whole country. Whenever our soul finds something to do she is there in her entirety: domestic tasks may be less important but they are no less importunate. Anyway, by ridding ourselves of Court and market-place we do not rid ourselves of the principal torments of our life:

ratio et prudentia curas, Non locus effusi late maris arbiter, aufert.

[it is reason and wisdom which take away cares, not places affording wide views over the sea.]7

Ambition, covetousness, irresolution, fear and desires do not abandon us just because we have changed our landscape.

Et post equitem sedet atra cura.

[Behind the parting horseman squats black care.]8

They often follow us into the very cloister and the schools of philosophy. Neither deserts nor holes in cliffs nor hair-shirts nor fastings can disentangle us from them:

haerit lateri letalis arundo.

[in her side still clings that deadly shaft.]9

Socrates was told that some man had not been improved by travel. ‘I am sure he was not,’ he said. ‘He went with himself!’10

Quid terras alio calentes Sole mutamus? patria quis exul Se quoque fugit?

[Why do we leave for lands warmed by a foreign sun? What fugitive from his own land can flee from himself?]11

If you do not first lighten yourself and your soul of the weight of your burdens, moving about will only increase their pressure on you, as a ship’s cargo is less troublesome when lashed in place. You do more harm than good to a patient by moving him about: you shake his illness down into the sack, [Al] just as you drive stakes in by pulling and waggling them about. [A] That is why it is not enough to withdraw from the mob, not enough to go to another place: we have to withdraw from such attributes of the mob as are within us. It is our own self we have to isolate and take back into possession.

[B] Rupi jam vincula dicas: Nam luctata canis nodum arripit; attamen illi, Cum fugit, a collo trahitur pars longa catenæ.

[‘I have broken my chains,’ you say. But a struggling cur may snap its chain, only to escape with a great length of it fixed to its collar.]12

We take our fetters with us; our freedom is not total: we still turn our gaze towards the things we have left behind; our imagination is full of them.

Nisi purgatum est pectus, quæ prælia nobis Atque pericula tunc ingratis insinuandum? Quantæ conscindunt hominem cuppedinis acres Sollicitant curæ, quantique perinde timores? Quidve superbia, spurcitia, ac petulantia, quantas Efficiunt clades? quid luxus desidiesque?

[But if our breast remains unpurged, what unprofitable battles and tempests we must face, what bitter cares must tear a man apart, and then what fears, what pride, what sordid thoughts, what tempers and what clashes; what gross gratifications; what sloth!]13

[A] It is in our soul that evil grips us: and she cannot escape from herself:

In culpa est animus qui se non effugit unquam.

[That mind is at fault which never escapes from itself.]14

So we must bring her back, haul her back, into our self. That is true solitude. It can be enjoyed in towns and in kings’ courts, but more conveniently apart.

Now since we are undertaking to live, without companions, by ourselves, let us make our happiness depend on ourselves; let us loose ourselves from the bonds which tie us to others; let us gain power over ourselves to live really and truly alone – and of doing so in contentment.

Stilpo had escaped from the great conflagration of his city in which he had lost wife, children and goods; when Demetrius Poliorcetes saw him in the midst of so great a destruction of his homeland, yet with his face undismayed, he asked him if he had suffered no harm. He said, No. Thank God he had lost nothing of his.15 [C] The philosopher Antisthenes put the same thing amusingly when he said that a man ought to provide himself with unsinkable goods, which could float out of a shipwreck with him.16

[A] Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.

When the city of Nola was sacked by the Barbarians, the local Bishop Paulinus lost everything and was thrown into prison; yet this was his prayer: ‘Keep me O Lord from feeling this loss. Thou knowest that the Barbarians have so far touched nothing of mine.’ Those riches which did enrich him and those good things which made him good were still intact.17

There you see what it means to choose treasures which no harm can corrupt and to hide them in a place which no one can enter, no one betray, save we ourselves. We should have wives, children, property and, above all, good health… if we can: but we should not become so attached to them that our happiness depends on them. We should set aside a room, just for ourselves, at the back of the shop, keeping it entirely free and establishing there our true liberty, our principal solitude and asylum. Within it our normal conversation should be of ourselves, with ourselves, so privy that no commerce or communication with the outside world should find a place there; there we should talk and laugh as though we had no wife, no children, no possessions, no followers, no menservants, so that when the occasion arises that we must lose them it should not be a new experience to do without them. We have a soul able able to turn in on herself; she can keep herself company; she has the wherewithal to attack, to defend, to receive and to give. Let us not fear that in such a solitude as that we shall be crouching in painful idleness:

[B] in solis sis tibi turba locis.

[in lonely places, be a crowd unto yourself.]18

[C] ‘Virtue,’ says Antisthenes, ‘contents herself, without regulations, words or actions.’ [A] Not even one in a thousand of our usual activities has anything to do with our self.

That man you can see over there, furiously beside himself, scrambling high up on the ruins of that battlement, the target of so many volleys from harquebuses; and that other man, all covered with scars, wan, pale with hunger, determined to burst rather than open the gate to him: do you think they are in it for themselves? It could well be for someone they have never seen, someone plunged meanwhile in idleness and delights, who takes no interest in what they are doing. And this man over here, rheumy, filthy and blear-eyed, whom you can see coming out of his work-room at midnight! Do you think he is looking in his books for ways to be better, happier, wiser? Not a bit. He will teach posterity how to scan a verse of Plautus and how to spell a Latin word, or else die in the attempt.

Is there anyone not willing to barter health, leisure and life itself against reputation and glory, the most useless, vain and counterfeit coinage in circulation? Our own deaths have never frightened us enough, so let us burden ourselves with fears for the deaths of our wives, children and servants. Our own affairs have never caused us worry enough, so let us start cudgelling and tormenting our brains over those of our neighbours and of those whom we love.

Vah! quemquamne hominem in animum instituere, aut Parare, quod sit charius quant ipse est sibi?

[Eh? Should a man prepare a settled place in his soul for something dearer than himself!]19

[C] It seems to me that solitude is more reasonable and right for those who, following the example of Thales, have devoted to the world their more active, vigorous years.

[A] We have lived quite enough for others: let us live at least this tail-end of life for ourselves. Let us bring our thoughts and reflections back to ourselves and to our own well-being. Preparing securely for our own withdrawal is no light matter: it gives us enough trouble without introducing other concerns. Since God grants us leave to make things ready for our departure, let us prepare for it; let us pack up our bags and take leave of our company in good time; let us disentangle ourselves from those violent traps which pledge us to other things and which distance us from ourselves. We must unknot those bonds and, from this day forth, love this or that but marry nothing but ourselves. That is to say, let the rest be ours, but not so glued and joined to us that it cannot be pulled off without tearing away a piece of ourselves, skin and all. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.

[C] It is time to slip our knots with society now that we can contribute nothing to it. A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing. Our powers are failing: let us draw them in and keep them within ourselves. Whoever can turn round the duties of love and fellowship and pour them into himself should do so. In that decline which makes a man a useless encumbrance importunate to others, let him avoid becoming an encumbrance, importunate and useless to himself. Let him pamper himself, cherish himself, but above all control himself, so respecting his reason and so fearing his conscience that he cannot stumble in their presence without shame: ‘Rarum est enim ut satis se quisque vereatur.’ [It is rare for anybody to respect himself enough.]20 Socrates says that youth must get educated; grown men employ themselves in good actions; old men withdraw from affairs, both civil and military, living as they please without being bound to any definite duties.21

[A] There are complexions more suited than others to these maxims [C] about retirement. [A] Those who hold on to things slackly and weakly, and whose will and emotions are choosy, accepting neither slavery nor employment easily – and I am one of them, both by nature and by conviction – will bend to this counsel better than those busy active minds which welcome everything with open arms, which take on everything, get carried away about everything and which are always giving themselves, offering themselves, putting themselves forward. When any good things happen to come to us from outside we should make use of them, so long as they remain pleasurable; we must not let them become our principal base, for they are no such thing: neither reason nor Nature will have them so. Why do we go against Nature’s laws and make our happiness a slave in the power of others?

Yet to go and anticipate the injuries of Fortune, depriving ourselves of such good things as are still in our grasp, as several have done out of devotion and a few philosophers out of rational conviction, making slaves of themselves, sleeping rough, poking out their own eyes, chucking their wealth into rivers, going about looking for pain – the first to acquire blessedness in the next life because of torment in this one, the others to ensure against tumbling afresh by settling for the bottom rung – are actions of virtue taken to excess. Let tougher sterner natures make even their hiding-places glorious and exemplary.

tuta et parvula laudo, Cum res deficiunt, satis inter vilia fortis: Verum ubi quid melius contingit et unctius, idem Hos sapere, et solos aio bene vivere, quorum Conspicitur nitidis fundata pecunia villis.

[When I lack money, I laud the possession of a few things which are sure; I show fortitude enough among paltry goods: but – still the same person – when anything better, more sumptuous, comes my way, then I say that that only they are wise and live right well whose income is grounded in handsome acres.]22

I have enough to do without going that far. When Fortune favours me, it is enough to prepare for her disfavour, picturing future ills in comfort, to the extent that my imagination can reach that far, just as we train ourselves in jousts and tournaments, counterfeiting war in the midst of peace. [C] I do not reckon that Arcesilaus the philosopher had reformed his mind any the less because I know he used such gold and silver vessels as the state of his fortune allowed: for using them frankly and in moderation I hold him in greater esteem than if he had got rid of them.

[A] I know how far our natural necessities can extend; and when I reflect that the indigent beggar at my door is often more merry and healthy than I am, I put myself firmly in his place and make an assay at giving my soul a slant like his. Then by running similarly through other examples, though I may think that death, poverty, contempt and sickness are dogging my heels, I can readily resolve not to be terrified by what a man of lesser estate than mine can accept with such patience. I cannot believe that a base intelligence can do more than a vigorous one or that reason cannot produce the same effects as habit. And since I realize how insecure these adventitious comforts are, my sovereign supplication, which I never fail to make to God, is that, even while I enjoy them fully, He may make me content with myself and with such goods as are born within me. I know healthy young men who travel with a mass of pills in their baggage to swallow during an attack of rheum, fearing it less since they know they have a remedy to hand. That is the way to do it, only more so: if you know yourself subject to some grave affliction, equip yourself with medicines to benumb and deaden the part concerned.

The occupation we must choose for a life like this one should be neither toilsome nor painful (otherwise we should have vainly proposed seeking such leisure). It depends on each man’s individual taste. My taste is quite unsuited to managing my estates: those who do like it, should do it in moderation:

Conentur sibi res, non se submittere rebus.

[They should try to subordinate things to themselves, not themselves to things.]23

Otherwise management, as Sallust puts it, is a servile task.24 (Some aspects of it are more acceptable, such as an interest in gardening – which Xenophon attributes to Cyrus.)25 A mean can be found between that base unworthy anxiety, full of tension and worry, seen in those who immerse themselves in it, and that profound extreme neglect one sees in others, who let everything go to rack and ruin:

Democriti pecus edit agellos Cultaque, dum peregre est animus sine corpore velox.

[Democritus left his herds to ravage fields and crops, while his speeding soul was wandering outside his body.]26

But let us just listen to the advice about solitude which Pliny the Younger gave to his friend Cornelius Rufus: ‘I counsel you in that ample and thriving retreat of yours, to hand the degrading and abject care of your estates over to those in your employ, and to devote yourself to the study of letters so as to derive from it something totally your own.’27 By that, he means a good reputation, his humour being similar to Cicero’s who said he wanted to use his withdrawal and his repose from the affairs of State to gain life everlasting through his writings!

[B] Usque adeo ne Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?

[Does knowing mean nothing to you, unless somebody else knows that you know it?]28

[C] It seems logical that when you talk about withdrawing from the world you should be contemplating things outside it; they only half do that: they do indeed arrange their affairs for when they will no longer be in the world, yet the fruits of their project they claim to draw from the world they have left: a ridiculous contradiction.

The thought of those who seek solitude for devotion’s sake, filling their minds with the certainty of God’s promises for the life to come, is much more sane and appropriate. Their objective is God, infinite in goodness and power: the soul can find there matters to slake her desires in perfect freedom. Pains and afflictions are profitable to them, being used to acquire eternal healing and joy; death is welcome as a passing over to that perfect state. The harshness of their Rule is smoothed by habit; their carnal appetites are rejected and lulled asleep by their denial – nothing maintains them but practising them and using them. Only this end, another life, blessedly immortal, genuinely merits our renunciation of the comforts and sweetnesses of this life of ours. Whoever can, in reality and constancy, set his soul ablaze with the fire of this lively faith and hope, builds in his solitude a life of choicest pleasures, beyond any other mode of life.

[A] Neither the end, then, nor the means of Pliny’s counsel satisfy me: we are always jumping from feverish fits into burning agues. Spending time with books has its painful side like everything else and is equally inimical to health, which must be our main concern; we must not let our edge be blunted by the pleasure we take in books: it is the same pleasure as destroys the manager of estates, the miser, the voluptuary and the man of ambition.

The wise men teach us well to save ourselves from our treacherous appetites and to distinguish true wholesome pleasures from pleasures diluted and crisscrossed by pain. Most pleasures, they say, tickle and embrace us only to throttle us, like those thieves whom the Egyptians called Philistae.29 If a hangover came before we got drunk we would see that we never drank to excess: but pleasure, to deceive us, walks in front and hides her train. Books give pleasure: but if frequenting them eventually leads to loss of our finest accomplishments, joy and health, then give up your books. I am one who believes that their fruits cannot outweigh a loss such as that.

As men who have long felt weakened by illness in the end put themselves at the mercy of medicine and get that art to prescribe a definite diet never to be transgressed: so too a man who withdraws pained and disappointed with the common life must rule his life by a diet of reason, ordering it and arranging it with argument and forethought. He should have taken leave of toil and travail, no matter what face they present, and should flee from all kinds of passion which impede the tranquillity of his body and soul, [B] and choose the way best suited to his humour.

Unusquisque sua noverit ire via.

[Let each man choose the road he should take.]30

[A] Whether we are running our home or studying or hunting or following any other sport, we should go to the very boundaries of pleasure but take good care not to be involved beyond the point where it begins to be mingled with pain. We should retain just enough occupations and pursuits to keep ourselves fit and to protect ourselves from the unpleasantness which comes in the train of that other extreme: slack and inert idleness.

There are branches of learning both sterile and prickly, most of them made for the throng: they may be left to those who serve society. Personally I only like pleasurable easy books which tickle my interest, or those which console me and counsel me how to control my life and death.

Tacitum sylvas inter reptare salubres, Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est.

[Walking in silence through the healthy woods, pondering questions worthy of the wise and good.]31

Wiser men with a strong and vigorous soul can forge for themselves a tranquillity which is wholly spiritual. Since my soul is commonplace, I must help sustain myself with the pleasures of the body – and since age has lately robbed me of those more pleasing to my fancy I am training and sharpening my appetite for those which are left, more suited to my later season. We must cling tooth and claw to the use of the pleasures of this life which the advancing years, one after another, rip from our grasp.

[B] Carpamus dulcia; nostrum est Quod vivis: cinis et manes et fabula fies.

[Let us pluck life’s pleasures: it is up to us to live; you will soon be ashes, a ghost, something to tell tales about.]32

[A] As for glory – the end proposed by Pliny and Cicero – that is right outside my calculations. Ambition is the humour most contrary to seclusion. Glory and tranquillity cannot dwell in the same lodgings. As far as I can see, those authors have withdrawn only their arms and legs from the throng: their souls, their thoughts, remain even more bound up with it.

[B] Tun’, vetule, auriculis alienis colligis escas?

[Now then, old chap, are you collecting bait to catch the ears of others?]33

[A] They step back only to make a better jump, and, with greater force, to make a lively charge through the troops of men.

Would you like to see how they fall just a tiny bit short of the target? Let us weigh against them the counsels of two philosophers – and from two different schools at that – one of them writing to his friend Idomeneus and the other to his friend Lucilius, to persuade them to give up the management of affairs of state and their great offices and to withdraw into solitude:34

‘You have (they said) lived up to the present floating and tossing about; come away into the harbour and die. You have devoted your life to the light: devote what remains to obscurity. It is impossible to give up your pursuits if you do not give up their fruits. Renounce all concern for name and glory. There is the risk that the radiance of your former deeds may still cast too much light upon you and pursue you right into your lair. Among other gratifications give up the one which comes from other people’s approval. As for your learned intelligence, do not worry about that: it will not lose its effect if you yourself are improved by it. Remember the man who was asked why he toiled so hard at an art which few could ever know about: “For me a few are enough; one is enough; having none is enough.” He spoke the truth. You and one companion are audience enough for each other; so are you for yourself. For you, let the crowd be one, and one be a crowd. It is a vile ambition in one’s retreat to want to extract glory from one’s idleness. We must do like the beasts and scuff out our tracks at the entrance to our lairs. You should no longer be concerned with what the world says of you but with what you say to yourself. Withdraw into yourself, but first prepare yourself to welcome yourself there. It would be madness to entrust yourself to yourself, if you did not know how to govern yourself. There are ways of failing in solitude as in society. Make yourself into a man in whose sight you would not care to walk awry; feel shame for yourself and respect for yourself, – [C] “observentur species honestae animo” [let your mind dwell on examples of honour];35 until you do, always imagine that you are with Cato, Phocion and Aristides, in whose sight the very madmen would hide their faults; make them recorders of your inmost thoughts, which, going astray, will be set right again out of reverence for them.36

‘The path they will keep you on is that of being contented with yourself, of borrowing all from yourself, of arresting and fixing your soul on thoughts contained within definite limits where she can find pleasure; then, having recognized those true benefits which we enjoy the more the more we know them, content yourself with them, without any desire to extend your life or fame.’

That is the advice of a philosophy which is natural and true, not like that of those other two,37 all verbiage and show.