The Complete Essays

This morning I read Montaigne’s third essay Our emotions get carried away beyond us. From the title, I expected it to be somewhat similar to his second essay On sadness, which discusses the power emotions like sadness and joy have to incapacitate us. But “carried away beyond us” here is referring not to being overwhelmed, but to something entirely external.

Montaigne spends most of the essay examining various historical figures’ concerns for their own funeral. It is clear that Montaigne sees these worries as meritless:

And whoever does know himself never considers external things to be his; and above all other things he loves and cultivates himself: he rejects excessive concerns as well as useless thoughts and resolutions.

I admit that I sometimes struggle with this kind of advice. It is, on the one hand, wise. Far too often I let myself boil over with anger at something that doesn’t concern me, or lose sleep over things I can’t control. What’s worse, these emotions sometimes prevent me from properly attending to my family or to my own mental health.

But on the other hand, it can sometimes feel both selfish and complacent. There are real problems in the world, and as a citizen of a democracy it is my right and my duty to opine on these problems by casting my vote.

Is it possible to cast informed votes while also rejecting excessive concerns and useless thoughts, especially when so many of the issues on which politicians campaign are excessive and useless?

I agree with Montaigne. But it’s hard to discern what is excessive and useless.

Today I read the essay On Sadness. It begins with a shocking assertion:

I am among those who are most free from this emotion: I neither like it nor think well of it, even though the world, by common consent, has decided to honour it with special favour.

What does Montaigne mean by this? By being “free from this emotion,” is he saying he does not experience it? That seems unlikely.

Indeed, the rest of the essay suggests that what Montaigne is “free” of is an attachment to sadness as a virtuous feeling.

The force of extreme sadness inevitably stuns the whole of our soul, impeding her freedom of action. It happens to us when we are suddenly struck with alarm by some really bad news: we are enraptured, seized, paralyzed in all of our movements in such a way that, afterwards, when the soul lets herself go with tears and lamentations, she seems to have struggled loose, disentangled herself and become free to range about as she wishes.

Could that have been written by a man who has not experienced sadness? It should be noted that Montaigne’s project of writing the essays was colored by the death of his father and a beloved friend.

Montaigne’s dislike of sadness appears to be rooted in its ability to incapacitate us. So powerful is its effect that it can cause that “temporary impotence which sometimes comes so unseasonably upon men when making love.” Even joy, the opposite of sadness, can overwhelm us.

For pleasures to be tasted and then digested they must remain moderate.

So the goal is not to become unfeeling, but to maintain control over our emotions. To “taste” an emotion is to experience it. To “digest” it is to process it, to integrate it into our being, to productively benefit from the experience.

Violent emotions like these have little hold on me. By nature my sense of feeling has a hard skin, which I daily toughen and thicken by arguments.

One has to wonder how aspirational that first sentence is.

Today I read the essay We reach the same ends by discrepant means, in which Montaigne examines the different ways captors and executioners have been swayed to spare the lives of their prisoners.

The most common way of softening the hearts of those we have offended once they have us at their mercy with vengeance at hand is to move them to commiseration and pity by our submissiveness. Yet flat contrary means, bravery and steadfastness, have sometimes served to produce the same effect.

He gives several examples from history where the former has no effect yet the latter succeeds. As for himself, he admits:

Both of these means would have swayed me easily for I have a marvelous weakness towards mercy and clemency --- so much so that I would be more naturally moved by compassion than respect.

He goes on to conjecture that the different responses are due partly to gender:

It could be said that for one’s mind to yield to pity is an effect of affability, gentleness --- and softness (that is why weaker natures such as those of women, children, and the common-people are more subject to them) --- whereas disdaining tears and supplications and then yielding only out of respect for the holy image of valour is the action of a strong, unbending soul, reserving its good-will and honour for stubborn, masculine vigour.

But even here Montaigne finds a counterexample: Alexander the Great, who, having conquered Gaza and witnessed the bravery of its commander Betis, spared the “disarmed” but put Betis to a violent death.

Was it because bravery was so unusual for him that he was never struck with wonder by it and therefore respected it less? Or was it because he thought bravery to be so properly his own that he could not bear to see it at such a height in anyone else without anger arising from an emotion of envy; or did the natural violence of his anger allow of no opposition?

The conclusion Montaigne draws is that:

Man is indeed an object miraculously vain, varied and wavering. It is difficult to found a judgment on him which is steady and uniform.