Montaigne splits the name from the thing: the name is a voice joined outside the substance, and only God's name, not His being, can grow by praise. We are hollow and empty, and should not fill ourselves with wind and voice. A man starving with hunger would be simple to seek a gay garment rather than a good meal. Chrysippus and Diogenes treat the pleasure of others' approbation as the most dangerous. Epicurus bids men conceal their lives, then, on the last day, dictates a letter of his inventions and orders birthday feasts after death. Carneades wants glory for itself. If virtue were only for honour, men need not be virtuous except in public. Sextilius Rufus takes an inheritance against his conscience because the law allows it. Crassus and Hortensius share a forged will and call themselves clean because they did not forge it.
Virtue sought from glory is vain, because reputation is accidental. Fortune advances and depresses more from its own will than from right. Glory is a shadow that sometimes goes before the body and sometimes infinitely exceeds it. Those who teach gentlemen to employ valour only for honour teach them never to hazard themselves if they are not seen. How many brave actions are buried in the crowd of a battle? A man is often surprised betwixt the hedge and the ditch, must run the hazard of his life against a henroost, must dislodge four rascally musketeers out of a barn. Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous. Caesar was never wounded, while thousands fell in lesser dangers than the least he went through. All the glory Montaigne pretends to derive from his life is that he has lived it in quiet, according to himself. He who is only a good man that men may know it is one from whom much service is not to be expected.
No art can follow so wandering a guide as the multitude. The old mariner said to Neptune in a tempest that the god might save or destroy him, but he would hold his rudder straight. Paulus Aemilius, going into Macedonia, charged the people of Rome not to speak of his actions in his absence. Fabius suffered his authority to be dissected by vain fancies rather than do less well for popular applause. Montaigne cares not so much what he is in the opinions of others as what he is in his own. Strangers see the countenance, not the heart. An old soldier can counterfeit the brave; with Plato's ring, many would hide when they ought most to appear. We are more solicitous that men speak of us than how they speak. Herostratus and Manlius Capitolinus wanted a great reputation more than a good one. Of two names Montaigne has, one is common to other families, and the other a porter might take.
Of so many thousands of valiant men who have died in France with their swords in their hands these fifteen hundred years, not a hundred have come to our knowledge. The memory of battles and victories is buried. Even of the Greeks and Romans, so few are arrived at our knowledge. It will be much if, a hundred years hence, it be remembered in general that in our times there were civil wars in France. The sages propose a juster end: the reward of a thing well done is to have done it. If false opinion still keeps men in their duty, if Trajan's memory blesses and Nero's is cursed, Montaigne will let that curb be nursed. Numa fed his men with the nymph Egeria, Sertorius with a white hind. He then advises the ladies no longer to call that honour which is but their duty: the duty is the mark, the honour but the outward rind. Every woman of honour will much rather choose to lose her honour than to hurt her conscience.
Coming Up in Chapter 73
There is another sort of glory: having too good an opinion of our own worth, like love that lends beauties to the object. If it be Caesar, Montaigne says, let him boldly think himself the greatest captain in the world. Yet we are nothing but ceremony, holding by the branches and quitting the trunk.
