Chapter 7

On all sides we are beset by the incalculable--walled up suddenly, as if by malign trickery, in the open field, or pushed forward senselessly, by the crowd around us, to good-fortune. In art, as in poetry, there are the "transports" which lift the artist out of, as they are not of, himself; for orators also, "those extraordinary motions which sometimes carry them above their design." Himself, "in the necessity and heat of combat," had sometimes made answers, that went "through and through," beyond hope. The work, by its own force and fortune, sometimes outstrips the workman. And then, in [101] defiance of the proprieties, whereas poets sometimes "flag, and languish in a prosaic manner," prose will shine with the lustre, vigour and boldness, with "the fury" of poetry.

And as to "affairs,"--how spasmodic the mixture, collision or coincidence, of the mechanic succession of things with men's volition! Mere rumour, so large a factor in events,--who could trace out its ways? Various events (he was never tired of illustrating the fact) "followed from the same counsel." Fortune, chance, that is to say, the incalculable contribution of mere matter to man, "would still be mistress of events"; and one might think it no un-wisdom to commit everything to fortuity. But no! "fortune too is oft-times observed to act by the rule of reason: chance itself comes round to hold of justice;" war, above all, being a matter in which fortune was inexplicable, though men might seem to have made it the main business of their lives. If "the force of all counsel lies in the occasion," that is because things perpetually shift. If man--his taste, his very conscience--change with the habit of time and place, that is because habit is the emphatic determination, the tyranny, of changing external and material circumstance. So it comes about that every one gives the name of barbarism to what is not in use round about him, excepting perhaps the Greeks and Romans, somewhat conventionally; and Montaigne was fond of assuring people, [102] suddenly, that could we have those privileged Greeks and Romans actually to sit beside us for a while, they would be found to offend our niceties at a hundred points. We have great power of taking ourselves in, and "pay ourselves with words." Words too, language itself, and therewith the more intimate physiognomy of thought, "slip every day through our fingers." With his eye on his own labour, wistfully, he thought on the instability of the French language in particular--a matter, after all, so much less "perennial than brass." In no respect was nature more stable, more consecutive, than man.

In nature, indeed, as in one's self, there might be no ultimate inconsequence: only, "the soul looks upon things with another eye, and represents them to itself with another kind of face: for everything has many faces and several aspects. There is nothing single and rare in respect of itself, but only in respect of our knowledge, which is a wretched foundation whereon to ground our rules, and one that represents to us a very false image of things." Ah! even in so "dear" a matter as bodily health, immunity from physical pain, what doubts! what variations of experience, of learned opinion! Already, in six years of married life, of four children treated so carefully, never, for instance, roughly awaked from sleep, "wherein," he would observe, "children are much more profoundly involved than we,"--of four children, [103] two were dead, and one even now miserably sick. Seeing the doctor depart one morning a little hastily, on the payment of his fee, he was tempted to some nice questions as to the money's worth. "There are so many maladies, and so many circumstances, presented to the physician, that human sense must soon be at the end of its lesson:--the many complexions in a melancholy person; the many seasons in winter; the many nations in the French; the many ages in age; the many celestial mutations in the conjunction of Venus and Saturn; the many parts in man's body, nay, in a finger. And suppose the cure effected, how can we assure ourselves that it was not because the disease was arrived at its period, or an effect of chance, or the operation of something else that the child had eaten, drunk, or touched that day, or by virtue of his mother's prayers? We suppose we see one side of a thing when we are really looking at another. As for me, I never see all of anything; neither do they who so largely promise to show it to others. Of the hundred faces that everything has I take one, and am for the most part attracted by some new light I find in it."

And that new light was sure to lead him back very soon to his "governing method, ignorance"--an ignorance "strong and generous, and that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an ignorance, which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive [104] knowledge itself"--a sapient, instructed, shrewdly ascertained ignorance, suspended judgment, doubt everywhere.--Balances, very delicate balances; he was partial to that image of equilibrium, or preponderance, in things. But was there, after all, so much as preponderance anywhere? To Gaston there was a kind of fascination, an actually aesthetic beauty, in the spectacle of that keen-edged intelligence, dividing evidence so finely, like some exquisite steel instrument with impeccable sufficiency, always leaving the last word loyally to the central intellectual faculty, in an entire disinterestedness. If on the one hand he was always distrustful of things that he wished, on the other he had many opinions he would endeavour to make his son dislike, if he had one. What if the truest opinions were not always the most commodious to man, "being of so wild a composition"? He would say nothing to one party that he might not on occasion say to the other, "with a little alteration of accent." Yes! Doubt, everywhere! doubt in the far background, as the proper intellectual equivalent to the infinite possibilities of things: doubt, shrewdly economising the opportunities of the present hour, in the very spirit of the traveller who walks only for the walk's sake,--"every day concludes my expectation, and the journey of my life is carried on after the same fashion": doubt, finally, as "the best of pillows to sleep on." And in fact Gaston did sleep well after [105] those long days of physical and intellectual movement, in that quiet world, till the spring came round again.

But beyond and above all the various interests upon which the philosopher's mind was for ever afloat, there was one subject always in prominence--himself. His minute peculiarities, mental and physical, what was constitutional with him as well as his transient humours, how things affected him, what they really were to him, Michael, much more than man, all this Gaston came to know, as the world knew it afterwards in the Essays, often amused, sometimes irritated, but never suspicious of postures, or insincerity. Montaigne himself admitted his egotism with frank humour:--"in favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our private confession, I confess myself in public." And this outward egotism of manner was but the symptom of a certain deeper doctrinal egotism:--"I have no other end in writing but to discover myself." And what was the purport, what the justification, of this undissembled egotism? It was the recognition, over against, or in continuation of, that world of floating doubt, of the individual mind, as for each one severally, at once the unique organ, and the only matter, of knowledge,--the wonderful energy, the reality and authority of that, in its absolute loneliness, conforming all things to its law, without witnesses as without judge, without appeal, save to itself. [106] Whatever truth there might be, must come for each one from within, not from without. To that wonderful microcosm of the individual soul, of which, for each one, all other worlds are but elements,--to himself,--to what was apparent immediately to him, what was "properly of his own having and substance": he confidently dismissed the inquirer. His own egotism was but the pattern of the true intellectual life of every one. "The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own. If the world find fault that I speak too much of myself, I find fault that they do not so much as think of themselves." How it had been "lodged in its author":--that, surely, was the essential question, concerning every opinion that comes to one man from another.

Yet, again, even on this ultimate ground of judgment, what undulancy, complexity, surprises!--"I have no other end in writing but to discover myself, who also shall peradventure be another thing to- morrow." The great work of his life, the Essays, he placed "now high, now low, with great doubt and inconstancy." "What are we but sedition? like this poor France, faction against faction, within ourselves, every piece playing every moment its own game, with as much difference between us and ourselves as between ourselves and others. Whoever will look narrowly into his own bosom will hardly find himself twice in the same condition. [107] I give to myself sometimes one face and sometimes another, according to the side I turn to. I have nothing to say of myself, entirely and without qualification. One grows familiar with all strange things by time. But the more I frequent myself and the better I know myself, the less do I understand myself. If others would consider themselves as I do, they would find themselves full of caprice. Rid myself of it I cannot without making myself away. They who are not aware of it have the better bargain. And yet I know not whether they have or no!"

One's own experience!--that, at least, was one's own: low and earthy, it might be; still, the earth was, emphatically, good, good-natured; and he loved, emphatically, to recommend the wisdom, amid all doubts, of keeping close to it. Gaston soon knew well a certain threadbare garment worn by Montaigne in all their rides together, sitting quaintly on his otherwise gallant appointments,--an old mantle that had belonged to his father. Retained, as he tells us, in spite of its inconvenience, "because it seemed to envelope me in him," it was the symbol of a hundred natural, perhaps somewhat material, pieties. Parentage, kinship, relationship through earth,--the touch of that was everywhere like a caress to him. His fine taste notwithstanding, he loved, in those long rambles, to partake of homely fare, paying largely for it. Everywhere it was as if the earth in him turned kindly to [108] earth. "Under the sun," the sturdy purple thistles, the blossoming burrs also, were worth knowing. Let us grow together with you! they seem to say. Himself was one of those whom he thought "Heaven favoured" in making them die, so naturally, by degrees. "I shall be blind before I am sensible of the decay of my sight, with such kindly artifice do the Fatal Sisters entwist our lives. I melt, and steal away from myself. How variously is it no longer I!" It was not he who would carry a furry robe at midsummer, because he might need it in the winter.--"In fine, we must live among the living, and let the river flow under the bridge without our care, above all things avoiding fear, that great disturber of reason. The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear."

And still, health, the invincible survival of youth, "admonished him to a better wisdom than years and sickness." Was there anything better, fairer, than the beautiful light of health? To be in health was itself the sign, perhaps the essence, of wisdom--a wisdom, rich in counsels regarding all one's contacts with the earthy side of existence. And how he could laugh!--at that King of Thrace, for instance, who had a religion and a god all to himself, which his subjects might not presume to worship; at that King of Mexico, who swore at his coronation not only to keep the laws, but also to make the sun run his annual course; at those followers [109] of Alexander, who all carried their heads on one side as Alexander did. The natural second-best, the intermediate and unheroic virtue (even the Church, as we know, by no means requiring "heroic" virtue), was perhaps actually the best, better than any kind of heroism, in an age whose very virtues were apt to become insane; an age "guilty and extravagant" in its very justice; for which, as regards all that belongs to the spirit, the one thing needful was moderation. And it was characteristic of Montaigne, a note of the real helpfulness there was in his thoughts, that he preferred to base virtue on low, safe, ground. "The lowest walk is the safest: 'tis the seat of constancy." The wind about the tower, coming who knows whence and whither?--could one enjoy its music, unless one knew the foundations safe, twenty feet below-ground? Always he loved to hear such words as "soften and modify the temerity of our propositions." To say less than the truth about it, to dissemble the absoluteness of its claim, was agreeable to his confidence in the natural charm, the gaiety, of goodness, "that fair and beaten path nature has traced for us," over against any difficult, militant, or chimerical virtue.--"Never had any morose and ill-looking physician done anything to purpose." In that age, it was a great thing to be just blameless. Virtue had its bounds, "which once transgressed, the next step was into the territories [110] of vice." "All decent and honest means of securing ourselves from harm, were not only permitted but commendable." Any man who despises his own life, might "always be master of that of another." He would not condemn "a magistrate who sleeps; provided the people under his charge sleep as well as he." Though a blundering world, in collusion with a prejudiced philosophy, has "a great suspicion of facility," there was a certain easy taking of things which made life the richer for others as well as for one's self, and was at least an excellent makeshift for disinterested service to them. With all his admiration for the antique greatness of character, he would never commend "so savage a virtue, and one that costs so dear," as that, for instance, of the Greek mother, the Roman father, who assisted to put their own erring sons to death. More truly commendable was the custom of the Lacedaemonians, who when they went to battle sacrificed always to the Muses, that "these might, by their sweetness and gaiety, soften martial fury." How had divine philosophy herself been discredited by the sour mask, the sordid patches, with which, her enemies surely! had sent her abroad into the world. "I love a gay and civil philosophy. There is nothing more cheerful than wisdom: I had like to have said more wanton."

Was that why his conversation was sometimes coarse? "All the contraries are to be found in [111] me, in one corner or another"; if delicacy, so also coarseness. Delicacy there was, certainly,--a wonderful fineness of sensation. "To the end," he tells us, "that sleep should not so stupidly escape from me, I have caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I might the better and more sensibly taste and relish it.--Of scents, the simple and natural seem to me the most pleasing, and I have often observed that they cause an alteration in me, and work upon my spirits according to their several virtues. In excessive heats I always travel by night, from sunset to sunrise. I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing and whistle in the shrouds, the forerunners of the storm.--When I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are for a while taken up with foreign occurrences, I some part of the time call them back again to my walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of the solitude, and to myself.--There is nothing in us either purely corporeal, or purely spiritual. 'Tis an inhuman wisdom that would have us despise and hate the culture of the body. 'Tis not a soul, 'tis not a body, we are training up, but a man; and we ought not to divide him. Of all the infirmities we have, the most savage is to despise our being."

There was a fineness of sensation in these unpremeditated thoughts, which to Gaston seemed to connect itself with the exquisite words he had found to paint his two great affections, for his [112] father and for Etienne de la Boetie,--a fineness of sensation perhaps quite novel in that age, but still of physical sensation: and in pursuit of fine physical sensation he came, on his broad, easy, indifferent passage through the world, across the coarsest growths which also thrive "under the sun," and was not revolted. They were akin to that ruder earth within himself, of which a kind of undissembled greed was symptomatic; the love of "meats little roasted, very high, and even, as to several, quite gone"; while, in drinking, he loved "clear glass, that the eye might taste too, according to its capacity"; akin also to a certain slothfulness:--"Sleeping," he says, "has taken up a great part of my life." And there was almost nothing he would not say: no fact, no story, from his curious half-medical reading, he would not find some plausible pretext to tell. Man's kinship to the animal, the material, and all the proofs of it:--he would never blush at them! In truth, he led the way to the immodesty of French literature; and had his defence, a sort of defence, ready. "I know very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings, who have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts."

Yet when Gaston, twenty years afterwards, heard of the seemingly pious end of Monsieur de Montaigne, he recalled a hundred, always quiet but not always insignificant, acts of devotion, noticeable in those old days, on passing a village [113] church, or at home, in the little chapel--superstitions, concessions to others, strictly appropriate recognitions rather, as it might seem, of a certain great possibility, which might lie among the conditions of so complex a world. That was a point which could hardly escape so reflective a mind as Gaston's: and at a later period of his life, at the harvest of his own second thoughts, as he pondered on the influence over him of that two-sided thinker, the opinion that things as we find them would bear a certain old-fashioned construction, seemed to have been the consistent motive, however secret and subtle in its working, of Montaigne's sustained intellectual activity. A lowly philosophy of ignorance would not be likely to disallow or discredit whatever intimations there might be, in the experience of the wise or of the simple, in favour of a venerable religion, which from its long history had come to seem like a growth of nature. Somewhere, among men's seemingly random and so inexplicable apprehensions, might lie the grains of a wisdom more precious than gold, or even its priceless pearl. That "free and roving thing," the human soul--what might it not have found out for itself, in a world so wide? To deny, at all events, would be only "to limit the mind, by negation."

It was not however this side of that double philosophy which recommended itself just now to Gaston. The master's wistful tolerance, so [114] extraordinary a characteristic in that age, attracted him, in his present humour, not so much in connexion with those problematic heavenly lights that might find their way to one from infinite skies, as with the pleasant, quite finite, objects and experiences of the indubitable world of sense, so close around him. Over against the world's challenge to make trial of it, here was that general licence, which his own warm and curious appetite just then demanded of the moral theorist. For so pronounced a lover of sincerity as Monsieur de Montaigne, there was certainly a strange ambiguousness in the result of his lengthy inquiries, on the greatest as well as on the lightest matters, and it was inevitable that a listener should accept the dubious lesson in his own sense. Was this shrewd casuist only bringing him by a roundabout way to principles he would not have cared to avow? To the great religious thinker of the next century, to Pascal, Montaigne was to figure as emphatically on the wrong side, not merely because "he that is not with us, is against us." It was something to have been, in the matter of religious tolerance, as on many other matters of justice and gentleness, the solitary conscience of the age. But could one really care for truth, who never even seemed to find it? Did he fear, perhaps, the practical responsibility of getting to the very bottom of certain questions? That the actual discourse of so keen a thinker appeared often inconsistent or inconsecutive, might be a [115] hint perhaps that there was some deeper ground of thought in reserve; as if he were really moving, securely, over ground you did not see. What might that ground be? As to Gaston himself,--had this kindly entertainer only been drawing the screws of a very complex piece of machinery which had worked well enough hitherto for all practical purposes?--Was this all that had been going on, while he lingered there, week after week, in a kind of devout attendance on theories, and, for his part, feeling no reverberation of actual events around him, still less of great events in preparation? These were the questions Gaston had in mind, as, at length, he thanked his host one morning with real regret, and took his last look around that meditative place, the manuscripts, the books, the emblems,--the house of Circe on the wall.

VI. SHADOWS OF EVENTS

[116] We all feel, I suppose, the pathos of that mythic situation in Homer, where the Greeks at the last throb of battle around the body of Patroclus find the horror of supernatural darkness added to their other foes; feel it through some touch of truth to our own experience how the malignancy of the forces against us may be doubled by their uncertainty and the resultant confusion of one's own mind--blindfold night there too, at the moment when daylight and self-possession are indispensable.

In that old dream-land of the Iliad such darkness is the work of a propitiable deity, and withdrawn at its pleasure; in life, it often persists obstinately. It was so with the agents on the terrible Eve of St. Bartholomew, 1572, when a man's foes were those of his own household. An ambiguity of motive and influence, a confusion of spirit amounting, as we approach the centre of action, to physical madness, encompasses [117] those who are formally responsible for things; and the mist around that great crime, or great "accident," in which the gala weather of Gaston's coming to Paris broke up, leaving a sullenness behind it to remain for a generation, has never been penetrated. The doubt with which Charles the Ninth would seem to have left the world, doubt as to his own complicity therein, as well as to the precise nature, the course and scope, of the event itself, is still unresolved. So it was with Gaston also. The incident in his life which opened for him the profoundest sources of regret and pity, shaped as it was in a measure by those greater historic movements, owed its tragic significance there to an unfriendly shadow precluding knowledge how certain facts had really gone, a shadow which veiled from others a particular act of his and the true character of its motives.