Writing About Yourself Without Shame — The Essays of Montaigne

Someone will say that making a man's self the subject of his writing were indeed excusable in rare and famous men, who by their reputation had given others a curiosity to be fully informed of them. A mechanic will scarce lift his eyes from his work to look at an ordinary man, whereas a man will forsake his shop to stare at an eminent person who comes into a town. It misbecomes any other to give his own character but him whose life and opinions may serve for example. Caesar and Xenophon had a just and solid foundation in the greatness of their own performances, and Montaigne wishes we had the journals of Alexander the Great and the commentaries that Augustus, Cato, Sylla, Brutus, and others left of their actions. Men love even the copper and marble statues of such persons. The remonstrance is very true, he confesses, and it very little concerns him. He does not form a statue for the great square of a city, a church, or any public place. The pages are for some corner of a library, or to entertain a neighbour, a kinsman, a friend who has a mind to renew acquaintance with this image. Others speak of themselves because they found the subject worthy and rich. He is the bolder because the subject is so poor and sterile that he cannot be suspected of ostentation. He judges freely of others and gives little of his own to judge of, because they are nothing. He does not find so much good in himself that he cannot tell it without blushing. What contentment it would be to hear the manners, faces, ordinary words, and fortunes of his ancestors. He preserves their writing, seal, and a particular sword, and has not thrown the long staves his father used to carry in his hand out of his closet. If posterity is of another mind, he shall be avenged, for they cannot care less for him than he will then care for them.

All the traffic he has with the public is that he borrows their utensils of writing, and in recompense shall, peradventure, keep a pound of butter in the market from melting in the sun. Even if nobody should read him, he asks whether he has wasted time entertaining himself in so pleasing and useful thoughts. In moulding this figure upon himself he has been so often constrained to temper and compose himself in a right posture that the copy is truly taken, and has in some sort formed itself. Painting himself for others, he represents himself in a better colouring than his own natural complexion. He has no more made his book than his book has made him: it is a book consubstantial with the author, a parcel of his life, whose business is not designed for others as that of all other books is. How often has this work diverted him from troublesome thoughts. Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone, and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves. He gives ear to his whimsies because he is to record them. Being displeased at some action that civility will not permit him openly to reprove, he disgorges himself here, not without design of public instruction, and poetical lashes imprint themselves better upon paper than upon the flesh. He has not at all studied to make a book, but he has in some sort studied because he had made it, pinching now one author and then another to fortify opinions already embraced. Whom shall we believe in the report he makes of himself in so corrupt an age, considering how few we can believe when speaking of others, where there is less interest to lie? The first thing done in the corruption of manners is banishing truth. Pindar says to be true is the beginning of a great virtue, and Plato requires it as the first article in the governor of his Republic. The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe, as we give the name of money even to the false if it will pass. Salvianus of Marseilles, in the time of the Emperor Valentinian, said that lying and forswearing themselves is with the French not a vice, but a way of speaking. He who would enhance this testimony might say it is now a virtue in them. Dissimulation is one of the most notable qualities of this age.

Montaigne has often considered why we are more highly offended with the reproach of a lie, a vice so familiar to us, than with any other, and why it should be the highest insult that can in words be done us. Upon examination he finds it natural most to defend the defects with which we are most tainted. By resenting and being moved at the accusation, we in some sort acquit ourselves of the fault. The reproach seems to imply cowardice and feebleness of heart, of which there is no more manifest sign than to eat a man's own words, nay, to lie against a man's own knowledge. Lying is a base vice. One of the ancients portrays it in the most odious colours: it is to manifest a contempt of God, and withal a fear of men. What can a man imagine more hateful than to be a coward towards men, and valiant against his Maker? Our intelligence being communicable by no other way but by a particular word, he who falsifies that betrays public society. It is the interpreter of the soul, and if it deceive us we no longer know nor have further tie upon one another. It breaks all our correspondence and dissolves all the ties of government. Certain nations of the newly discovered Indies offered to their gods human blood drawn from the tongue and ears, to expiate the sin of lying, as well heard as pronounced. That good fellow of Greece said children are amused with toys and men with words. As to the diverse usages of giving the lie, and the laws of honour in that case, Montaigne defers saying what he knows of them to another time. It was not anciently amongst the Romans and Greeks. It has often seemed strange to him to see them rail at and give one another the lie without any quarrel. Caesar is sometimes called thief, and sometimes drunkard, to his teeth. The greatest chiefs of war of both nations practised a liberty of invective where words are only revenged with words, and do not proceed any farther.