5

5. On conscience

[Conscience originally meant connivance. Conscience in the sense of our individual consciousness of right and wrong or of our own guilt or rectitude fascinated Montaigne. It became a vital concern of his during the Wars of Religion with their cruelties, their false accusations and their use of torture on prisoners. Such moral basis as there was for the ‘question’ (judicial torture) seems, curiously enough, to have been a respect for the power of conscience – of a man’s inner sense of his guilt or innocence which would strengthen or weaken his power to withstand pain. A major source of Montaigne’s ideas here is St Augustine and a passionate note by Juan Luis Vives in his edition of the City of God designed to undermine confidence in torture.]

[A] During our civil wars I was travelling one day with my brother the Sieur de la Brousse when we met a gentleman1 of good appearance who was on the other side from us; I did not know anything about that since he feigned otherwise. The worst of these wars is that the cards are so mixed up, with your enemy indistinguishable from you by any clear indication of language or deportment, being brought up under the same laws, manners and climate, that it is not easy to avoid confusion and disorder. That made me fear that I myself would come upon our own troops in a place where I was not known, be obliged to state my name and wait for the worst. [B] That did happen to me on another occasion: for, from just such a mishap, I lost men and horses. Among others, they killed one of my pages, pitifully: an Italian of good family whom I was carefully training; in him was extinguished a young life, beautiful and full of great promise.

[A] But that man of mine was so madly afraid! I noticed that he nearly died every time we met any horsemen or passed through towns loyal to the King; I finally guessed that his alarm arose from his conscience. It seemed to that wretched man that you could read right into the very secret thoughts of his mind through his mask and the crosses on his greatcoat.2 So wondrous is the power of conscience! It makes us betray, accuse and fight against ourselves. In default of an outside testimony it leads us to witness against ourselves:

Occultum quatiens animo tortore flagellum.

[Lashing us with invisible whips, our soul torments us.]3

The following story is on the lips of children: a Paeonian called Bessus was rebuked for having deliberately destroyed a nest of swallows, killing them all. He said he was right to do so: those little birds kept falsely accusing him of having murdered his father! Until then this act of parricide had been hidden and unknown; but the avenging Furies of his conscience made him who was to pay the penalty reveal the crime.4

Hesiod corrects that saying of Plato’s, that the punishment follows hard upon the sin. He says it is born at the same instant, with the sin itself; to expect punishment is to suffer it: to merit it is to expect it. Wickedness forges torments for itself,

Malum consilium consultori pessimum,

[Who counsels evil, suffers evil most,]5

just as the wasp harms others when it stings but especially itself, for it loses sting and strength for ever:

Vitasque in vulnere ponunt.

[In that wound they lay down their lives.]6

The Spanish blister-fly secretes an antidote to its poison, by some mutual antipathy within nature. So too, just when we take pleasure in vice, there is born in our conscience an opposite displeasure, which tortures us, sleeping and waking, with many painful thoughts.7

[B] Quippe ubi se multi, per somnia sæpe loquentes, Aut morbo delirantes, procraxe ferantur, Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse.

[Many indeed, often talking in their sleep or delirious in illness, have proclaimed, it is said, and betrayed long-hidden sins.]8

[A] Apollodorus dreamed that he saw himself being flayed by the Scythians then boiled in a pot while his heart kept muttering, ‘I am the cause of all these ills.’ No hiding-place awaits the wicked, said Epicurus, for they can never be certain of hiding there while their conscience gives them away.9

Prima est hæc ultio, quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.

[This is the principal vengeance: no guilty man is absolved: he is his own judge.]10

Conscience can fill us with fear, but she can also fill us with assurance and confidence. [B] And I can say that I have walked more firmly through some dangers by reflecting on the secret knowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my designs.

[A] Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo.

[A mind conscious of what we have done conceives within our breast either hope or fear, according to our deeds.]11

There are hundreds of examples: it will suffice to cite three of them about the same great man.

When Scipio was arraigned one day before the Roman people on a grave indictment, instead of defending himself and flattering his judges he said: ‘Your wishing to judge, on a capital charge, a man through whom you have authority to judge the Roman world, becomes you well!’

Another time his only reply to the accusations made against him by a Tribune of the People was not to plead his cause but to say: ‘Come, fellow citizens! Let us go and give thanks to the gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians on just such a day as this!’ Then as he started to walk towards the temple all the assembled people could be seen following after him – even his prosecutor.

Again when Petilius, under the instigation of Cato, demanded that Scipio account for the monies that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch, Scipio came to the Senate for this purpose, took his account-book from under his toga and declared that it contained the truth about his receipts and expenditure; but when he was told to produce it as evidence he refused to do so, saying that he had no wish to act so shamefully towards himself; in the presence of the Senate he tore it up with his own hands. I do not believe that a soul with seared scars could have counterfeited such assurance. [C] He had, says Livy, a mind too great by nature, a mind too elevated by Fortune, even to know how to be a criminal or to condescend to the baseness of defending his innocence.12

[A] Torture is a dangerous innovation; it would appear that it is an assay not of the truth but of a man’s endurance. [C] The man who can endure it hides the truth: so does he who cannot. [A] For why should pain make me confess what is true rather than force me to say what is not true? And on the contrary if a man who has not done what he is accused of is able to support such torment, why should a man who has done it be unable to support it, when so beautiful a reward as life itself is offered him?

I think that this innovation is founded on the importance of the power of conscience. It would seem that in the case of the guilty man it would weaken him and assist the torture in making him confess his fault, whereas it strengthens the innocent man against the torture. But to speak the truth, it is a method full of danger and uncertainty. What would you not say, what would you not do, to avoid such grievous pain?

[C] Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor.

[Pain compels even the innocent to lie.]

This results in a man whom the judge has put to the torture lest he die innocent being condemned to die both innocent and tortured.13 [B] Thousands upon thousands have falsely confessed to capital charges. Among them, after considering the details of the trial which Alexander made him face and the way he was tortured, I place Philotas.14

[A] All the same it is [C], so they say, [B] the least bad15 [A] method that human frailty has been able to discover. [C] Very inhumanely, however, and very ineffectually in my opinion. Many peoples less barbarous in this respect than the Greeks and the Romans who call them the Barbarians reckon it horrifying and cruel to torture and smash a man of whose crime you are still in doubt.16 That ignorant doubt is yours: what has it to do with him? You are the unjust one, are you not? who do worse than kill a man so as not to kill him without due cause! You can prove that by seeing how frequently a man prefers to die for no reason at all rather than to pass through such a questioning which is more painful than the death-penalty itself and which by its harshness often anticipates that penalty by carrying it out.

I do not know where I heard this from, but it exactly represents the conscience of our own Justice: a village woman accused a soldier before his commanding general – a great man for justice – of having wrenched from her little children such sops as she had left to feed them with, the army having laid waste all the surrounding villages. As for proof, there was none. That general first summoned the woman to think carefully what she was saying, especially since she would be guilty of perjury if she were lying; she persisted, so he had the soldier’s belly slit open in order to throw the light of truth on to the fact. The woman was found to be right.17 An investigatory condemnation!