The Essays of Montaigne Ch. 12: When to Stand

Michel de Montaigne

When to Stand Your Ground

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Summary

The law of constancy, Montaigne says, does not ask you to walk into every harm. Decent ways of getting clear of a threat are not only allowed, they are praiseworthy. What constancy requires is to stand and suffer the trouble that cannot be escaped. A clumsy shift of the body, or an ungraceful move of the arm, needs no apology if it turns the blow.

Warlike nations made retreat a weapon and left their backs more dangerous than their faces. Socrates laughs at Laches for defining courage as standing firm in the ranks, and asks whether winning by giving ground should count as cowardice. Homer praises Aeneas for the science of flight. The Spartan foot, famous for holding ground, feigned a withdrawal at Plataea so the Persian mass would break in pursuit, and then they won. Idanthyrses tells Darius he retires by the custom of a people with no fields or cities to defend. If the Persian wants a fight, he should come to the old graves.

Cannon-shot is another case. Standing in front of artillery, it looks ugly to quit the post, and ducking has earned laughter. Yet the Marquis de Guast, stepping out from a windmill near Arles, slipped aside when a culverin was fired and lived. Lorenzo de' Medici ducked at Mondolfo and lost only a graze on the head. Montaigne does not think those evasions were calculated; fortune favoured the flinch. He himself starts when a harquebus rattles where he did not expect it, as do braver men. The Stoics allow a philosopher to tremble at thunder if judgment stays whole. The untrained man lets the fright reach the seat of reason and then judges by his fear. Tears may fall. The mind either stays, or follows them.

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Why This Matters

Pausing After the Flinch

The first jolt in a room is cheap evidence of who you are, and expensive if you treat it as a verdict. Montaigne cannot help starting when a harquebus rattles suddenly, and he has seen braver men do the same.

When your body jumps before you think, wait through the first wave before you treat that jump as your decision.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Laches

Laches defines courage as standing firm in the ranks. Socrates asks whether it would be reputed cowardice to overcome by giving ground. The fear is looking like a finished coward in the first move: constancy here is what you do with the trouble that cannot be escaped, not a pose that never steps aside.

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Coming Up in Chapter 13

No subject is too small for this rhapsody, Montaigne says, and then he turns to who must be home when a visitor is announced. Queen Margaret of Navarre calls it rude even to go out and meet a guest on the road. Ceremony, it turns out, can fill a private house.

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Chapter 12

When to Stand Your Ground

OF CONSTANCY The law of resolution and constancy does not imply that we ought not, as much as in us lies, to decline and secure ourselves from the mischiefs and inconveniences that threaten us; nor, consequently, that we shall not fear lest they should surprise us: on the contrary, all decent and honest ways and means of securing ourselves from harms, are not only permitted, but, moreover, commendable, and the business of constancy chiefly is, bravely to stand to, and stoutly to suffer those inconveniences which are not possibly to be avoided. So that there is no supple motion of…

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When to Stand Your Ground

Summary

Why This Matters