Two Ways to See the World — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne treats judgment as a utensil that wants an oar in everything, so these Essays take hold of whatever fortune first presents. When a subject is too deep for his stature, he sounds it at a distance and keeps on the shore. Knowing he can go no further is one effect of judgment's virtue, and one of those of which it is most proud. He never designs to go through any argument, for he never sees all of anything, nor do they who so largely promise to show it others. Of a hundred faces a thing has, he takes one: he looks it over, ripples the skin, or pinches it to the bones, and gives a stab not so wide but as deep as he can. Did he know himself less, he might try to handle a subject to the bottom and be deceived in his own inability. Instead he sprinkles one word here and another there and gives himself up to doubt, uncertainty, and his own governing method, ignorance.

All motion discovers us. The same soul of Caesar that marshalled Pharsalia was also busy in love and leisure, and a man judges a horse not only by his paces but by his walk and by seeing him stand in the stable. The soul never handles more than one thing at a time, and that not according to it but according to herself. Things may have their own weight, but once we take them into us they strip themselves and receive a new robe from the soul. Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Fortune has no power over our manners. Why should he not judge Alexander at table, or at chess? Montaigne hates that game because it is too grave a diversion; Alexander did not more pump his brains about the Indies than about this idle board. Anger, spite, malice, and a vehement desire of getting the better all appear there. Every employment of man manifests him equally with any other.

Democritus, finding the human condition ridiculous and vain, never appeared abroad but laughing; Heraclitus commiserated the same condition and appeared always with tears. Montaigne is clearly for the first humour, not because laughing is more pleasant, but because it expresses more contempt. Compassion still values what it mourns; the things we laugh at are of no moment. We are not so unhappy as vain, nor so full of mischief as inanity. Diogenes, rolling in his tub and making nothing of Alexander, esteeming us flies or bladders puffed with wind, was a juster judge than Timon the Man-hater, for what a man hates he lays to heart. Timon fled our conversation as dangerous; Diogenes left us to herd together from contempt, concluding us as incapable of doing good as evil. When Brutus courted Statilius into the conspiracy against Caesar, Statilius granted the enterprise was just and still denied that mankind was worthy of a wise man's concern. Theodorus would not hazard wisdom for a company of fools. Our condition is as ridiculous as risible.