The Essays, vol 9 | 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 9.
I. Of the inconstancy of our actions. II. Of drunkenness. III. A custom
of the Isle of Cea. IV. To-morrow's a new day. V. Of conscience. VI.
Use makes perfect.

ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE
BOOK THE SECOND
CHAPTER I
OF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS
Such as make it their business to oversee human actions, do not find
themselves in anything so much perplexed as to reconcile them and
bring them into the world's eye with the same lustre and reputation; for
they commonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems
impossible they should proceed from one and the same person. We find
the younger Marius one while a son of Mars and another a son of
Venus. Pope Boniface VIII. entered, it is said, into his Papacy like a
fox, behaved himself in it like a lion, and died like a dog; and who
could believe it to be the same Nero, the perfect image of all cruelty,
who, having the sentence of a condemned man brought to him to sign,
as was the custom, cried out, "O that I had never been taught to write!"
so much it went to his heart to condemn a man to death. All story is full
of such examples, and every man is able to produce so many to himself,
or out of his own practice or observation, that I sometimes wonder to
see men of understanding give themselves the trouble of sorting these
pieces, considering that irresolution appears to me to be the most
common and manifest vice of our nature witness the famous verse of
the player Publius:

"Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest."
["'Tis evil counsel that will admit no change." --Pub. Mim., ex Aul.
Gell., xvii. 14.]
There seems some reason in forming a judgment of a man from the
most usual methods of his life; but, considering the natural instability
of our manners and opinions, I have often thought even the best authors
a little out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant
and solid contexture; they choose a general air of a man, and according
to that interpret all his actions, of which, if they cannot bend some to a
uniformity with the rest, they are presently imputed to dissimulation.
Augustus has escaped them, for there was in him so apparent, sudden,
and continual variety of actions all the whole course of his life, that he
has slipped away clear and undecided from the most daring critics. I
can more hardly believe a man's constancy than any other virtue, and
believe nothing sooner than the contrary. He that would judge of a man
in detail and distinctly, bit by bit, would oftener be able to speak the
truth. It is a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men
who have formed their lives to one certain and constant course, which
is the principal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in one word,
says one of the ancients, and to contract all the rules of human life into
one, "it is to will, and not to will, always one and the same thing: I will
not vouchsafe," says he, "to add, provided the will be just, for if it be
not just, it is impossible it should be always one." I have indeed
formerly learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want of
measure, and therefore 'tis impossible to fix constancy to it. 'Tis a
saying of. Demosthenes, "that the beginning oh all virtue is
consultation and deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy." If we
would resolve on any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon
the best, but nobody has thought on't:
"Quod petiit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit; AEstuat, et vitae
disconvenit ordine toto."
["That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he seeks again.
He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of life."--Horace,
Ep., i. I, 98.]

Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, be it
to the left or right, upwards or downwards, according as we are wafted
by the breath of occasion. We never meditate what we would have till
the instant we have a mind to have it; and change like that little creature
which receives its colour from what it is laid upon. What we but just
now proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and presently return
again to it; 'tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:
"Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum."
["We are turned about like the top with the thong of others." --Idem,
Sat., ii. 7, 82.]