12

12. On constancy

[Constancy is a Stoic virtue, but even Stoics have to confess that a Sage can be startled. Like Rabelais before him, Montaigne considers the limits of Stoic doctrine – basing himself partly on his own experience in the Wars of Religion.]

[A] Resolution and constancy do not lay down as a law that we may not protect ourselves, as far as it lies in our power to do so, from the ills and misfortunes which threaten us, nor consequently that we should not fear that they may surprise us. On the contrary, all honourable means of protecting oneself from evils are not only licit: they are laudable. The role played by constancy consists chiefly in patiently bearing1 misfortunes for which there is no remedy. Likewise there are no evasive movements of the body and no defensive actions with any weapons in our hands which we judge wrong if they serve to protect us from the blows raining down on us.

[C] Many highly warlike nations included flight as one of their main tactical resources: when they turned their backs that was more risky to the enemy than when they showed their faces. The Turks still retain this to some extent.

In Plato Socrates mocked Laches for defining fortitude as ‘standing firm in line in the face of the enemy’. ‘What,’ he said, ‘would it be cowardice to defeat them by giving ground?’ And he cited Homer who praised Aeneas for knowing when to flee. And once Laches had corrected himself and allowed that the Scythians did use that method as do cavalrymen in general, he then went on to cite the example of those foot-soldiers of Sparta, a nation trained above all to stand their ground: during the battle of Plataea they found that they could not penetrate the Persian phalanx and so decided to disengage and fall back in order that it should be thought that they were in full flight; that would lead to the breaking up of the Persians’ dense formation which would fall apart as it pursued them. By which means they obtained the victory.2

While on the subject of the Scythians, it is said that after Darius had set out to subjugate them, he sent many reproaches to their king when he saw him always withdrawing and avoiding battle. To this Indathyrsez (for that was the king’s name) replied that he was not afraid of him nor of any man alive, but that this was the practice of his people, since they possessed no arable lands, no towns and no houses to defend for fear that an enemy might make use of them: but if Darius really was yearning to sink his teeth into a battle, then let him try to get near to their ancient burial grounds: he would find somebody to talk to there!3

[A] Nevertheless once a man’s post is the target of cannon-fire (as the chances of war often require it to be) it is unbecoming for him to waver before the threatening cannon-balls, all the more so since we hold that they have such speed and such impetus that you cannot take evasive action. There are many cases of soldiers at least providing their comrades with a good laugh by shielding behind their arms or ducking their heads.

Yet in the expedition which the Emperor Charles V led against us in Provence, when the Marquis de Guast went to reconnoitre the city of Arles and suddenly appeared from behind a windmill under cover of which he had made his advance, he was spotted by the Seigneur de Bonneval and the Lord Seneschal d’Agenois who were strolling along the top of the amphitheatre. They pointed him out to the Seigneur de Villier, Master of the Ordnance, who aimed a culverin so accurately that if the Marquis had not seen the match applied to the fuse and jumped aside it was thought he would have been struck in the body.4 Similarly a few years before, when Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Duke of Urbino and the father of our Queen Mother, was laying siege to Mondolfo (a fortress in Italy in the territory they call the Vicariate) he saw the fire applied to a cannon which was pointing right at him and ducked; luckily for him, for otherwise the shot, which only grazed the top of his head, would have certainly struck him in the chest.5

To tell the truth I do not believe that such movements arise from reflexion: for in so sudden a matter how can you judge whether the aim is high or low? It is far easier to believe that fortune looked favourably on their fear but that another time they might have jumped into the path of the shot not out of it.

[B] Personally I cannot stop myself from trembling if the shattering sound of a harquebus suddenly strikes my ear in a place where I could not have expected it; I have seen that happen to more valorous men than I am. [C] Not even the Stoics claim that their sage can resist visual stimuli or ideas when they first come upon him; they concede that it is, rather, part of man’s natural condition that he should react to a loud noise in the heavens or to the collapse of a building by growing tense and even pale. So too for all other emotions, provided that his thoughts remain sound and secure, that the seat of his reason suffer no impediment or change of any sort, and that he in no wise give his assent to his fright or pain. As for anyone who is not a sage, the first part applies to him but not the second. For in his case the impress of the emotions does not remain on the surface but penetrates through to the seat of his reason, infecting and corrupting it: he judges by his emotions and acts in conformity with them.

The state of the Stoic sage is fully and elegantly seen in the following:

Mens immota manet, lachrimae volvuntur inanes.[His mind remains unmoved: empty tears do flow.]

The Aristotelian sage is not exempt from the emotions: he moderates them.6