The Art of Real Conversation — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne begins with Plato's point that courts condemn some men not because undoing the deed is possible, but to warn others, and he turns that logic toward speech. The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, he says, is conference: a full and vigorous debate where truth, not victory, should be the common cause. He ranks it above solitary reading because another soul tests what yours would too easily keep.

He dislikes soft conversation. Praise dulls us; Antisthenes told his pupils to let their ears pass through learning as a sponge does water. A man never speaks of himself without loss, and self-portraiture in talk is always diminution. Yet he loves strong, manly familiarity that can bite and scratch, because civilised smoothness fears the shock honest dispute requires. Ceremonious sound must be resisted; without reprehension there is no real conference.

When anyone contradicts him, he says, they raise his attention, not his anger. He hails and caresses truth wherever he finds it and willingly surrenders, opening conquered arms far off as he can discover it. Passion confounds judgment before the angry man can answer, which is why he would almost let wagers mark the cost of stubborn ignorance. He takes pleasure in being reproved when civility allows, and often yields more from courtesy than amendment.

Most people, however, cannot bear correction. They extend anger beyond the question, swell and puff their souls in narration, and treat opposition as insult. Half-learned men strew Plato and Aquinas before hearers who cannot judge, and women who might teach by natural grace are pushed into rhetorical armor they do not need. He has seen a silent man seem great until he spoke, then prove hollow; loquacity and show undo what modest presence once promised.

He therefore varies his conduct: sometimes affect ignorance, sometimes speak in print before people who are nothing of the sort, and never let conference become theatre for ego. The wise listener should harden hearing against ceremonious words and ask whether dispute serves knowledge or merely appetite for dominance. He distinguishes fruitful opposition from tyrannical obstinacy on either side of an argument.

Examples from history and table talk fill the second half: guests who contradict for sport, masters who punish wit, and pedants who quote what they have never understood. Montaigne prefers friends who can wound him usefully to admirers who approve every sentence. He warns against doing one's master so great a service in debate that the master no longer knows how to reward you, a proverb he applies to teachers of truth as much as servants of power.

Conference fails when the talker needs to win more than to learn. The essay's turn is that real conversation is combat in service of clarity, and the first casualty to avoid is one's own vanity. He would rather leave a dispute instructed than leave it triumphant, and he asks us to measure speech by whether it changed the mind that spoke as well as the mind that listened.