18

18. On giving the lie

[The first version of this chapter (which is indebted to the Roman satirists) insists that the self-portrait of Montaigne is destined for friends and descendants. It has been printed not for the public but because printing is more easy than copying manuscripts. The additions in [C] take a different line, as will the chapter ‘On repenting’ (III, 2): Montaigne insists on the moral value of his work and of telling the truth.]

[A] Yes. But somebody will tell me that my project of using myself as a subject to write about would be pardonable in exceptional, famous men who by their reputations had given us the desire to know them. That is certainly true: I admit it; I am aware that a mere craftsman will scarcely glance up from his work to look at a man of the common mould, whereas shops and work-places are emptied to look at a great and famous personality arriving in town. It is unseemly for anyone to make himself known except he who can provide some example and whose life and opinions can serve as a model. Caesar and Xenophon could firmly base their narrations on the greatness of their achievements which formed a just and solid foundation. So we can regret the loss of the diaries of Alexander the Great and of the commentaries on their own actions which Augustus, [C] Cato, [A] Sylla, Brutus and others left behind them. We love to study the faces of such men even in bronze and stone.

That rebuke is very true: but it hardly touches on me:

Non recito cuiquam, nisi amicis, idque rogatus, Non ubivis, coramve quibuslibet. In medio qui Scripta foro recitent, sunt multi, quique lavantes.

[I do not read this to anyone except my friends; even then they have to ask me; I do not do so anywhere or to anyone. Some men read their works to the public in the Forum or in the baths!]1

I am not preparing a statue to erect at a city crossroads nor in a Church or some other public place:

[B] Non equidem hoc studeo, bullatis ut mihi nugis Pagina turgescat.Secreti loquimur.

[I do not intend to puff up my pages with inflated trifles: we are talking in private.]

[A] It is [C] for some corner of a library and as a pastime [A] for a neighbour,2 a relative or a friend who will find pleasure in meeting me and frequenting me again through this portrait. Those others took heart to speak of themselves because they found their subject rich and worthwhile: I on the contrary because I find it so sterile and meagre that no suspicion of ostentation can fall upon me. [C] I readily make judgements on other men’s actions: I give little grounds for judging mine because of their nothingness. [B] I do not find so much good in me that I may not tell of it without blushing.

[A] What happiness it would afford me to hear someone giving me such an account of the manners, [B] the look and the expressions, the ordinary talk [A] and the fortunes of my forebears! How attentive I would be. It would indeed come from an evil nature if we were to despise the actual portraits of our beloved ancestors, [C] the style of their clothes and their armour. I preserve the escritoire, the seal, the prayer-book and a special sword which they used, and I have never banished from my own room the long canes that my father used to hold in his hands. ‘Paterna vestis et annulus tanto charior est posteris, quanto erga parentes major affectus.’ [A father’s clothes or ring are dearer to his descendants the more they loved him.]3

[A] However, if my own descendants have different tastes, I shall have the means of giving as good as I get, since when that time comes they cannot possibly have less concern for me than I will for them! The only commerce I have with the public at large is my borrowing their printing-tools, which are more ready and convenient.4 In exchange [C] I may provide wrapping-paper to stop some slab of butter from melting in the market:

[A] Ne toga cordyllis, ne penula desit olivis; [Lest they are short of wrappings for their tunny-fish or their olives;][B] Et laxas scombris saepe dabo tunicas. [And I shall often provide a loose garment to wrap up their mackerel.]

[C] Even if nobody reads me, have I wasted my time when I have entertained myself during so many idle hours with thoughts so useful and agreeable?

Since I was modelling this portrait on myself, it was so often necessary to prepare myself and to pose so as to draw out the detail that the original has acquired more definition and has to some extent shaped itself. By portraying myself for others I have portrayed my own self within me in clearer colours than I possessed at first. I have not made my book any more than it has made me – a book of one substance with its author, proper to me and a limb of my life. Have I wasted my time by so continuously and carefully telling myself of myself? Those who merely think and talk about themselves occasionally do not examine the basics and do not go as deep as one who makes it his study, his work and his business, who with all good faith and with all his might binds himself to keeping a long-term account. The most delightful of pleasures are inwardly digested: they refuse to leave their spoor behind and refuse to be seen not only by the many but even by one other. How frequently has this task diverted me from painful thoughts! And all trivial thoughts should be counted as painful. Nature has vouchsafed us a great talent for keeping ourselves occupied when alone and often summons us to do so in order to teach us that we do owe a part of ourselves to society but that the best part we owe to ourselves. With the aims of teaching my mental faculty even to rave with some order and direction and so as to stop it losing its way and wandering in the wind, I need simply to give it body and to keep detailed accounts of my petty thoughts as they occur to me. How often when I have been irritated by some action which politeness and prudence forbid me from openly censuring have I unburdened myself here – not without the design of giving a public reproof.5 And, indeed, those scourgings by the poet –

Zon dessus l’euil, zon sur le groin Zon sur le dos du Sagoin.[Bong in the eye, bong on the snout, Bong on the back of Sagon the Lout.]

are even better when imprinted on paper than on the living flesh.

And what if I now lend a more attentive ear to the books I read, being on the lookout to see whether I can thieve something with which to decorate and support my own? I have never studied so as to write a book, but I have done some study because I have written one, if studying a little means lightly touching this author or that and tweaking his head or his foot – not so as to shape my opinions but, long after they have taken shape, to help them, to back them up and to serve them.

[A] But during a time so debased, what man are we to trust when he speaks of himself, seeing there are few, perhaps none, whom we can trust when they speak of others, where they have less to gain from lying? The first sign of corrupt morals is the banishing of truth: for as Pindar says, being truthful is the beginning of any great virtue, [C] and it is the first item that Plato required in the governor of his Republic.6 [A] Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept: just as we call money not only legal tender but any counterfeit coins in circulation. Our nation has long been accused of this vice: Salvianus of Massilia, who lived in the time of the Emperor Valentinian, says that lying and perjury are not a vice for the French but a figure of speech!7 If you wanted to outbid that testimony you could say that at the present time it is for them a virtue. People train themselves for it and practise for it as for some honoured pursuit: dissimulation is one of the most striking characteristics of our age. So I have often reflected on what could have given birth to our scrupulously observed custom of taking bitter offence when we are accused of that vice which is more commonplace among us than any of the others, and why for us it should be the ultimate verbal insult to accuse us of lying. Whereupon I find it natural for us to protect ourselves from those failings with which we are most sullied. It seems that by resenting the accusation and growing angry about it we unload some of the guilt; we are guilty, in fact, but at least we condemn it for show.

[B] Could it not also be because this accusation seems to imply cowardice and faintness of heart? Is anything more expressly cowardly than to deny one’s word – nay, to deny what we ourselves know to be so?

[A] Lying is a villein’s vice, a vice which an Ancient paints full shamefully when he says that it gives testimony to contempt for God together with fear of men.8 It is not possible to show more richly the horror of it, its vileness and its disorderliness. For what can one imagine more serf-like than to be cowardly before men and defiant towards God? Our understanding is conducted solely by means of the word: anyone who falsifies it betrays public society. It is the only tool by which we communicate our wishes and our thoughts; it is our soul’s interpreter: if we lack that, we can no longer hold together; we can no longer know each other. When words deceive us, it breaks all intercourse and loosens the bonds of our polity.

[B] Certain peoples of the new-found Indies (and there is no point in emphasizing their names which are no more, since – an amazing example, the like of which has never been heard – the utter devastation of that Conquest extended even to the total destruction of names and of all ancient knowledge of places) used to offer to their gods human blood, drawn exclusively from their ears and tongue, in expiation of the sin of both hearing and of telling lies.9

[A] That jolly fellow from Greece declared that boys play with knuckle-bones and men play with words.10

As for our various conventions for giving the lie, the laws of honour governing them and the changes they have undergone, I will put off saying what I have to say about that to some other time; meanwhile I will find out if I can from what period dates our custom of exactly weighing and measuring words and making that a question of honour. For it is easy to see that it was not like that in Ancient times among the Greeks and Romans. It often seemed strange and new to me to watch them giving each other the lie and insulting each other without it starting a brawl. Their laws of duty took some other road than ours. Caesar was variously called a thief and a drunkard to his very beard.11 We can see the freedom of invective which they used against each other (and I mean by they the greatest war-leaders in both those nations) where words were avenged by words alone, with no further consequence.