Montaigne opens on little knacks and frivolous subtleties from which men expect reputation and applause. Poets compose whole poems with every line beginning with the same letter. The ancient Greeks cut eggs, globes, wings, and hatchets out of verse by making the lines longer or shorter to match a figure. Another man computed how many orders the letters of the alphabet might be transposed, and found the incredible number mentioned in Plutarch. A performer is brought before Alexander who has learned to throw a grain of millet through the eye of a needle and never miss. When Alexander is entreated to reward so rare a performance, he pleasantly, and in Montaigne's opinion justly, orders bushels of the same grain delivered so the man will not want material for so famous an art. It is strong evidence of a weak judgment, Montaigne says, when men approve of things for being rare, new, or difficult, where worth and usefulness are not conjoined to recommend them.
He has just come from playing with his own family at who could find the most things that hold by two extremities. Sire names the king and also vulgar merchants, never the ranks between; great ladies and the meanest women are both called Dames; cloth of state hangs in palaces and in taverns. Democritus said gods and beasts had sharper sense than men, who are of a middle form. The Romans wore the same habit at funerals and feasts. Extreme fear and extreme ardour of courage equally trouble and relax the belly. They surnamed Sancho XII, king of Navarre, Trembling, because valour will cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear. Those arming him tried to compose him by representing the danger as less; he said they understood him ill, for if his flesh knew the danger his courage would carry it into, it would sink down to the ground. Aristotle says sows of lead will melt and run with the rigour of winter just as with a vehement heat. Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre when human accidents arrive: the wise control and triumph over ill, and the others know it not. Ordinary middle men perceive evils, feel them, and are not able to support them.
A man may say there is an Abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it, an ignorance that knowledge creates at the same time that it despatches the first. Of mean understandings, little inquisitive and little instructed, are made good Christians who simply believe and stay constant. In the average understandings the error of opinion is begotten: they follow the first impression and call the old beaten path simplicity. The higher and nobler souls, after a long investigation of truth, make another sort of true believers. Simple peasants are good people, and so are the philosophers, men of strong and clear reason. The mongrels who have disdained the first ignorance of letters and have not attained the other, sitting betwixt two stools, as Montaigne and a great many more do, are dangerous, foolish, and importunate; these are they that trouble the world. For his own part he retreats toward the first and natural station, whence he so vainly attempted to advance. Popular Gascon songs, and the songs of nations without writing, hold artless graces that can stand beside poetry perfected by art; the middle sort of poesy is despised. Were his Essays considerable enough to deserve a critical judgment, they might not take with vulgar capacities nor with the singular and excellent sort of men: the first would not understand them enough, and the last too much. And so they may hover in the middle region.
Coming Up in Chapter 55
Alexander's sweat, they say, smelled sweet from a rare constitution, and Plutarch hunted the cause. Ordinary bodies, Montaigne answers, do best when they smell of nothing. Plautus writes that a woman smells sweetest when she smells not at all, and those who reach for exotic perfume are suspected of hiding a defect.
