Montaigne begins where the courts begin: they condemn some men not to undo a deed, which cannot be undone, but to warn others. He publishes his own imperfections on the same logic, so that someone may learn to be afraid of them. A man never speaks of himself without loss; accusations of himself are always believed, his praises never. The elder Cato said the wise may learn more of fools than fools can of the wise, and a harp-master sent his scholars to hear a neighbour play ill so they would hate the discords. The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, Montaigne says, is conversation. If he were compelled to choose, he would sooner lose his sight than his hearing and speech. The study of books is a languishing motion that heats not; a strong mind and a rough disputant press his flanks, prick him right and left, and raise him to something above himself. Mean spirits spread like contagion. He loves to dispute, but with few men, and not as a spectacle for great persons. Folly is a bad quality; not to be able to endure it, as he does, is another disease little less troublesome. No proposition astonishes him. When anyone contradicts him, they raise his attention, not his anger; he advances toward whoever controverts and instructs him, and the cause of truth ought to be the common cause of both. He hails and caresses truth in what quarter soever he finds it, and cheerfully opens conquered arms, provided the reproof is not too imperious. Men of his time have not the courage to correct because they have not the courage to suffer themselves to be corrected.
He would rather take the company of those who ruffle him than of those who fear him. Antisthenes commanded his children never to take praise kindly or for a favour. Montaigne is much prouder of the victory he obtains over himself, when, in the very ardour of dispute, he submits to an adversary's force of reason, than of the victory he obtains through the other man's weakness. Shepherds and shop-boys keep their theme even in tumult; gentlemen lose the principal in a crowd of incidents, fly east and west, and annihilate truth. It is impossible to deal fairly with a fool. Plato would prohibit this exercise to fools and ill-bred people. Who has got understanding by his logic? Montaigne would rather his son learn in a tap-house to speak than in the schools to prate. Strip a master of arts of his gown, his hood, and his Latin, and you will take him for one of us, or worse. Learning is a sceptre in one hand and a fool's bauble in another. The world is but a school of inquisition: it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses. Then he accuses his own impatience. It is equally vicious in him that is in the right and in him that is in the wrong, for it is always a tyrannic sourness not to endure a form contrary to one's own. Yesterday a man of understanding scoffed at another who tormented the table with a false catalogue of genealogy, and would not discern that he himself was as wearisome in extolling his wife's pedigree. Reproof can still be true and of good use even from a dirty mouth. Socrates would have a man present himself first to the sentence of justice, then his son, then the stranger. In conference, the gravity, robe, and fortune of him who speaks ofttimes give reputation to vain arguments and idle words. A surgeon who only remembers that he cured four people of the plague and three of the gout has not yet extracted a judgment.
He hates all sorts of tyranny, both in word and deed. Megabyzus stood a great while silent in Apelles' painting-room and seemed some great thing by his chains and rich habit; the moment he began to talk of the pictures, there was not the meanest boy in the workshop who did not despise him. A sullen and silent mien has procured the credit of prudence for many foolish fellows of Montaigne's time. Dignities and offices are conferred more by fortune than upon the account of merit. We are not to judge of counsels by events: the Carthaginians punished the ill counsels of their captains even when success repaired them, and the Roman people often denied a triumph because the conduct was not answerable to the good fortune. Events are a very poor testimony of our worth. See a man promoted to dignity, though you knew him but three days before as a man of little regard, and an image of grandeur steals into the opinion; mix him with the common crowd again, and everyone inquires with amazement how princes satisfied themselves with so little. All reverence and submission are due to kings except that of the understanding: the knees bow; the reason is not obliged. Antisthenes told the Athenians to set their asses to tilling as well as the horses: order it, he said, and the most ignorant men you employ in the commands of your wars incontinently become worthy enough, because you employ them. Those of Mexico dare no more look their king in the face after the coronation. Montaigne is more apt to suspect the capacity when he sees it accompanied with grandeur of fortune and public applause. A man of prodigious fortune, giving judgment upon a slight dispute foolishly set on foot at his table, began, "It can be no other but a liar or a fool that will say otherwise than so and so." Pursue this philosophical point, Montaigne says, with a dagger in your hand.
Every word that seems to be good is not immediately to be accepted. Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either. Montaigne will not always presently yield, what truth or beauty soever may seem to be in the opposite argument; either he must stoutly meet it, or retire, under colour of not understanding it, to try how it is lodged in the author. With a vigorous man he anticipates conclusions; with the others he presupposes nothing. Fools say things that are not foolish; do not help them place the fine expression in credit; let them step deeper into the mire. Cyrus answered the man who importuned him to harangue the army upon the point of battle that men do not become valiant on a sudden by a fine oration, no more than a man becomes a good musician by hearing a fine song. Montaigne will not become tutor to the first passer-by. Nothing vexes him so much in folly as that it is more satisfied with itself than any reason can reasonably be. Among friends he endures a tart retaliation and, hanging down cheerfully his ears, defers revenge to a better time; practical jokes after the French manner he mortally hates, having seen two princes of the blood buried upon that account. When he has a mind to judge of anyone, he asks how far the person is contented with himself. Philip de Commines warned that a man must have a care not to do his master so great service that at last the master will not know how to give him his just reward; Montaigne met the thought in Tacitus and Seneca, so he commends the invention, not the later writer. He has been reading Tacitus through at a gentleman's instance, a book of manners for a troubled and sick state such as France is now. He is angry at the severe judgment on Pompey, does not see why Tiberius's letter to the senate should be read as sharp remorse, and finds it mean in Tacitus to excuse naming an honourable office. He dares not only speak of himself, but to speak only of himself. Let historians deliver common beliefs more as they receive them than as they believe them. He presents himself standing and lying, before and behind, his right side and his left. This is what memory presents in gross, and with uncertainty enough: all judgments in gross are weak and imperfect.
