The Essays, vol 17 | Page 4

to sample the author's ideas before making
an entire meal of them. D.W.]

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Translated by Charles Cotton
Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 17.
IX. Of Vanity

CHAPTER IX
OF VANITY
There is, peradventure, no more manifest vanity than to write of it so
vainly. That which divinity has so divinely expressed to us--["Vanity of
vanities: all is vanity."--Eccles., i. 2.]--ought to be carefully and
continually meditated by men of understanding. Who does not see that
I have taken a road, in which, incessantly and without labour, I shall
proceed so long as there shall be ink and paper in the world? I can give
no account of my life by my actions; fortune has placed them too low: I
must do it by my fancies. And yet I have seen a gentleman who only
communicated his life by the workings of his belly: you might see on
his premises a show of a row of basins of seven or eight days' standing;
it was his study, his discourse; all other talk stank in his nostrils. Here,
but not so nauseous, are the excrements of an old mind, sometimes
thick, sometimes thin, and always indigested. And when shall I have
done representing the continual agitation and mutation of my thoughts,
as they come into my head, seeing that Diomedes wrote six thousand
books upon the sole subject of grammar?
[It was not Diomedes, but Didymus the grammarian, who, as Seneca
(Ep., 88) tells us, wrote four not six thousand books on questions of
vain literature, which was the principal study of the ancient
grammarian.--Coste. But the number is probably exaggerated, and for
books we should doubtless read pamphlets or essays.]
What, then, ought prating to produce, since prattling and the first

beginning to speak, stuffed the world with such a horrible load of
volumes? So many words for words only. O Pythagoras, why didst not
thou allay this tempest? They accused one Galba of old for living idly;
he made answer, "That every one ought to give account of his actions,
but not of his home." He was mistaken, for justice also takes
cognisance of those who glean after the reaper.
But there should be some restraint of law against foolish and
impertinent scribblers, as well as against vagabonds and idle persons;
which if there were, both I and a hundred others would be banished
from the reach of our people. I do not speak this in jest: scribbling
seems to be a symptom of a disordered and licentious age. When did
we write so much as since our troubles? when the Romans so much, as
upon the point of ruin? Besides that, the refining of wits does not make
people wiser in a government: this idle employment springs from this,
that every one applies himself negligently to the duty of his vocation,
and is easily debauched from it. The corruption of the age is made up
by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute
treachery, others injustice, irreligion, tyranny, avarice, cruelty,
according to their power; the weaker sort contribute folly, vanity, and
idleness; of these I am one. It seems as if it were the season for vain
things, when the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common,
to do but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my
comfort, that I shall be one of the last who shall be called in question;
and whilst the greater offenders are being brought to account, I shall
have leisure to amend: for it would, methinks, be against reason to
punish little inconveniences, whilst we are infested with the greater. As
the physician Philotimus said to one who presented him his finger to
dress, and who he perceived, both by his complexion and his breath,
had an ulcer in his lungs: "Friend, it is not now time to play with your
nails."-- [Plutarch, How we may distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend.]
And yet I saw, some years ago, a person, whose name and memory I
have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders,
when there was neither law nor justice, nor magistrate who performed
his office, no more than there is now, publish I know not what pitiful
reformations about cloths, cookery, and law chicanery. Those are

amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill-used, to show that
they are not totally forgotten. Those others do the same, who insist
upon prohibiting particular ways of speaking, dances, and games, to a
people totally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices. 'Tis no time to
bathe and cleanse one's self, when one is seized by a violent fever; it
was for the Spartans alone to fall to combing and curling