The Power of Imagination — The Essays of Montaigne

The schoolmen say a strong imagination begets the event itself. Montaigne is one of those most sensible of its power: everyone is jostled by it, but some are overthrown. He could live by the sole help of healthful and jolly company. The sight of another's pain materially pains him, and he often usurps their sensations. A perpetual cough in another tickles his lungs and throat. He visits the sick he loves less willingly than strangers, because he takes the disease to himself. Simon Thomas, meeting him at Toulouse in a rich old fellow's house, told the patient to fix his eyes on Montaigne's fresh complexion so the old man's habit of body might be amended. He forgot that Montaigne's, at the same time, might be made worse. Gallus Vibius bent his mind to madness until he went out of his wits. A man whose eyes were unbound to hear his pardon was found stark dead upon the scaffold by the stroke of imagination.

A particular friend of his, a man above suspicion of insufficiency, hears a companion relate an unusual frigidity at a very unseasonable time, then runs the same fortune. The scurvy remembrance tyrannises him until he frankly confesses the subjection beforehand. Knowing some such misbehaviour is now expected, the restraint upon his faculties grows less, and he is totally freed. Montaigne later does a more doubtful kindness. A count of a great family is married in a house where a former suitor is present, and an old kinswoman fears sorcery. Montaigne happens to have about him a flat plate of gold, sewed to a ribbon, a foppery supposed good against sunstroke. He whispers a script of nightgown, repeated words, and a medal tied upon the reins. The count, ears battered with tattle, gives the sign. The ape's tricks work because their very inanity gives them weight. Montaigne calls it a sudden whimsey contrary to his nature. He is an enemy to all subtle and counterfeit actions, even for sport.

The indocile liberty of one member is universally complained of, yet hair stands, skin shivers, the tongue is interdict, the belly refuses a single puff, and the will itself mutinies. Physicians possess their patients' credulity with false promises so imagination may supply their decoctions. A blunt Swiss apothecary of Montaigne's father tells of a merchant at Toulouse, afflicted with the stone, who received clysters with every usual form except injection, and found the same operation. When his wife, to save charges, tried warm water only, the effect discovered the cheat. A woman fancying she had swallowed a pin cried as though she felt it stick. An ingenious fellow, seeing no tumour, caused her to vomit and, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the basin. She no sooner saw it than she found herself eased.

A gentleman later bragged in jest that he had made a large company eat of a baked cat, though there was no such thing. A young gentlewoman at the feast took such a horror that she fell into violent vomiting and fever, and there was no means to save her. Imagination also works upon other bodies, as plague and sore eyes run through families. There was at Montaigne's house a cat watching a bird: mutually fixing their eyes, the bird at last let herself fall dead into the claws. The tales he borrows he charges upon the consciences of those from whom he has them. The discourses are his own. In the examples he has heard, read, done, or said, he has forbidden himself to alter even the most light circumstances. His conscience does not falsify one tittle. Some solicit him to write the affairs of his own time. He will not give himself the trouble for the glory of Sallust. It is not of so dangerous consequence, as in a medicinal drug, whether an old story be so or so.