7

7. On rewards for honour

[The historic Order of St Michael, of which Montaigne was a knight, had become debased, partly as the result of an inflation of awards during the Wars of Religion. The new Order of the Holy Ghost was instituted by Henry III of France in 1578, ceremonies creating the new knights taking place in December 1578 and January 1579. Montaigne’s reflections lead him to thoughts on the origin of inequality among men.]

[A] The biographers of Augustus Caesar picked out this point to emphasize in his military discipline: he was wonderfully free with his gifts to those who deserved it; but where rewarding honour itself was concerned he was equally sparing. Yet before he had ever gone to war himself he had had bestowed on him by his uncle all the military awards.

It was a fine innovation practised by most of the systems of government in the world to establish certain vain and, in themselves, valueless decorations, in order to honour and reward virtue, such as crowns of laurel oak or myrtle Laves, certain forms of dress, the privilege of riding through the city in a coach or with torch-bearers by night, a special seat at public meetings, the prerogative to certain special names and titles, to certain symbols on their coats-of-arms and such-like things; this system was operated differently according to each nation’s set of values, and still is.

For our part, like many of our neighbours, we have Orders of Chivalry which were instituted for this express purpose. It is, in truth, a very good and beneficial custom to have found a way of recognizing the worth of rare outstanding men and to please and to satisfy them with rewards which are no charge on the people and which cost the monarch nothing. It was always recognized by the experience of the Ancients – and was formerly seen to be so among us French – that men of distinction were more zealous for such rewards than for those which brought gain and profit: that was not unreasonable nor without evident justification. If you introduce other advantages and riches into a prize which should be for honour alone, instead of increasing the prestige you prune it back and degrade it.

The Order of Saint Michael, which was so long held in high esteem among us, had no greater advantage than its being in no ways associated with any other advantage. As a result there used to be no office or estate whatsoever to which the nobility aspired with so much longing and yearning as they did to that Order, nor was there any rank which comported more respect and dignity, since Virtue more readily aspires to embrace such recompense as is truly her own, more glorious than useful. The other rewards which are bestowed do not have the same dignity; they are1 employed on all sorts of occasions: money rewards the services of a manservant, the diligence of a messenger, dancing, vaulting, talking and the meanest services done for us; yes, and we use it to reward vice, flattery, pimping and treachery. No marvel2 then if Virtue desires and accepts that sort of common currency less willingly than the one which is proper and peculiar to herself. Augustus was right to be much more niggardly and sparing over this one than the other, especially since honour is a privilege, the main essence of which is its rarity. So, too, for Virtue.

Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?

[For him who thinks no man is bad, can any man be good?]3

We do not pick out for praise a man who takes trouble over the education of his children, since however right that is it is not unusual, [C] no more than we pick out a tall tree in a forest where all the trees are tall. [A] I do not think that any citizen of Sparta boasted of his valour, for it was the virtue of all the people of their nation; nor did he boast of his reliability or of his contempt for riches. No matter how great it may be, no recompense is allotted to any virtue which has passed into custom: I doubt if we would ever call it great once it was usual.

Since such distinctions have no other value or prestige than the fact that few men enjoy them, to make them worthless you simply have to be generous with them. Even if there were more men nowadays who merited our Order it still ought not to have its prestige debased.

And it could easily happen that more deserve it since not one of the virtues can spread so easily as military valour. There is valour of another kind, true, perfect, philosophical (I am not speaking of it here: I use the word valour in accordance with our own usage); it is greater than our kind, it is more ample: it consists in fortitude and assurance of soul, despising all hostile accidents equally; it is calm, uniform and constant; our own kind is but a glimmer of it. Habit, education, example and custom are all-powerful in establishing the valour I am talking about, and can easily make it common, as can be readily seen from our experience in our Civil Wars. [B] If anyone could unite us now and arouse our whole people for some common emprise we would make our ancient [C] military [B] reputation flower again.

[A] It is certain that in former times this Order was not concerned with valour by itself: it looked much further. It was never earned by a brave soldier but by a famous4 leader: knowing how to obey orders never deserved so honourable a reward then. In former times they were looking out for a more general expert knowledge of warfare, embracing the greater part of the greatest parts of the fighting man – [C] ‘Neque enim eædem militares et imperatoriæ artes sunt’ [For the skills of a soldier and those of a commander are not the same]5 – [A] they sought a man whose circumstances also were worthy of such an honour. But, as I was saying, even if more men were judged worthy than were found in former times, we still must not be more liberal with it, and it would have been better to fail to bestow it on everyone to whom it was due than for ever to lose in practice so useful an innovation. No great-minded man deigns to see any advantage in what he holds in common with many others; and today those who merit it least are the first to affect to despise it in order to range themselves with those who were wronged when a decoration which was peculiarly theirs was unworthily extended and debased.

Now to wipe out this Order, to abolish it with the expectation of giving a new and sudden prestige to some similar decoration, is an undertaking inappropriate to so licentious and diseased a period as our own present one; what will happen is that the latest Order will, from its inception, incur the same disadvantages which have just ruined the other. To give it authority, the rules governing the awarding of this new Order would need to be extremely tight and restrictive, whereas our troubled times are not susceptible to a short governing-rein. Apart from that, before it could be given any prestige we should need to have lost all memory of the former Order and of the contempt into which it has fallen.

My topic could lend itself to a discussion of Valiance and of its differences from other virtues. But since Plutarch has often touched on that theme6 I would be wasting my time, repeating here what he has already said about it.7 But it is worth considering that our own nation gives the first place among the virtues to valiance as its name shows, vaillance deriving from valeur, worth. By our usage, in the language of the Court and of the nobility, when we say that a man vaut beaucoup (‘has great worth’) or is an homme de bien (‘a good man’) we mean he is a valiant one. The custom of the Romans was similar: they derived their general term for virtue (virtus) from the word for strength (vis).8

The only, essential, proper form of nobility in France is the profession of arms. It is probable that the first of the virtues to appear among men, giving some of them superiority over others, was the one by which the stronger and the more courageous made themselves masters of the weaker and so acquired individual rank and reputation, from which derive our terms of honour and dignity; or else those nations, being most warlike, gave the prize and the title highest in dignity to the virtue which they were most familiar with. So too our passion, our feverish concern, for the chastity of women results in une bonne femme (‘a good woman’), and une femme d’honneur, ou de vertu (‘a woman of honour’ or ‘of virtue’) in reality meaning for us a chaste woman – as though, in order to bind them to that duty, we neglected all the rest and gave them free rein for any other fault, striking a bargain to get them to give up that one.