VOLUME

SERIES CONTENTS

MONTAIGNE'S MESSAGE AND METHOD

SOURCES OF MONTAIGNE'S THOUGHT
MONTAIGNE'S RHETORIC
Composing Myself for Others
LANGUAGE AND MEANING
Word Study in Montaigne's Essais
READING MONTAIGNE

LANGUAGE
AND MEANING
WORD STUDY IN
MONTAIGNE'S ESSAIS

Edited with introductions by

DIKKA BERVEN
Oakland University

GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC.

New York & London 1995

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

would seem impertinent to ask what Montaigne's last

essay is about. Yet if the student were to ask such a
question of his teacher I doubt whether an agreed or a
reliable answer would be possible. We could tell him the
date of the essay, more closely than of many others. We
might add that he would find in it some interesting facts
about Montaigne's way of life and some remarkable statements of his personal philosophy. But we should not thereby
have answered the question as to what the essay is really
about. Is it really about any single subject? Is it any more
than a series of chatty irrelevancies, an old man's confession
of things that have interested him ?
Such apparently innocent questions as these confront us
with some of the most difficult problems in the study of
Montaigne. For the general reader these problems do not
exist. He reads Montaigne as a pleasant rather than a serious
author. Like Charles Lamb and Izaak Walton he reads 'the
witty Frenchman' whose essays make an admirable bedside
book. Yet Montaigne has always had more careful readers.
For the Marquess of Halifax his essays were the most
entertaining book in the world, partly because they were also
original and profound. He wrote in a letter to Charles
Cotton: of 'this great man, whom Nature hath made too big
to confine himself to the Exactness of a Studied Stile. He let
his mind have its full Flight, and sheweth by a generous
kind of negligence that he did not write for praise but to give
to the world a true picture of himself and of Mankind.'1
T

Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax, edited by Walter

Raleigh, Oxford, 1912, p. 185.

35

Modern scholarship has confirmed this impression. Since

the pioneer work of Pierre Villey, over forty years ago, the
serious student has no longer been able to read Montaigne as
a man of wit, who wanders from the point at will. Witty he
certainly is, and entertaining no less, irrelevant also on
occasion, but not so often as the cursory reader might think.
As he once neatly put it: 'C'est 1'in-diligent lecteur qui perd
son subject, non pas moy* (Jouaust, vi. 203). One cannot
read him long before discovering, as Lord Halifax did, a
mind in full flight, giving us a true picture of mankind, a
mind also of essential relevance, despite the superficial air
of eclectic chat. Even such an unwieldy essay as the
Apologie de Raimond Sebond proves on careful examination
to be a cogent indictment of the scholastic position, an essay
in which every part is pertinent to its theme.l
It is the purpose of the present inquiry to ascertain
whether the essay on Experience is equally cogent. Such is
not the general view. Its purple passages are quoted and its
autobiographical material exploited, but it has never, to my
knowledge, been submitted to rigorous analysis. 2 The most
serious summary of its content has been twice given, at an
interval of over twenty years, by M. Villey. In 1908, after
admitting the 'capital importance' of the essay, he wrote:
En substance il dit ceci: Nous ne pouvons pas nous baser sur la
seule raison pour acqurir la connaissance ... il faut nous en
1

The recent work of continental scholars has enabled us to see this more
clearly, notably that of Prof. Hugo Friedrich, 'Montaigne Ober Glauben und
Wissen', Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, 1932.x. 412-35. Cf. the larger treatment in
Friedrich's general work, Montaigne, Berne, 1949.
2
In Friedrich's view, this would apply to most of Montaigne's later work:
'Das Verlsslichste und ErschSpfendste, was die M-Forschung bietet, betrifft die
biographischen, textkritischen und quellengeschichtlichen Fragen. Sobald diese
Untersuchungen aber zu einer Auslegung der Essais Ubergehen, befriedigen sic
nicht mehr', op. cit., p. 9.

36

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

remettre l'exprience . . . L'exprience de l'un peut n'tre pas

inutile aux autres. Je vais par suite vous apporter mon exprience
moi; chacun verra dans quelle mesure elle lui convient ... le
chapitre n'est en effet qu'un rsum de l'exprience de Montaigne.1
In 1931 in the course of a preface to the essay, M. Villey calls
it 'un plaidoyer en faveur de l'exprience' which, despite
irrelevancies, gives us 'son attitude dernire dans la recherche de
la vrit', an attitude which is defined thus :
Instruit de tous les piges qui menacent l'exercice de la raison,
Montaigne cherche s'assurer un point d'appui solide dans le fait...
le fait qui intresse le moraliste c'est le moi, seul connu directement
par lui, et par le moyen duquel il prend connaissance de l'homme en
gnral.2
The professor's view has obviously changed through the years.
What he once thought autobiography for the use of the public, as
a means whereby any reader could compare his experience with
that of the author, M. Villey came to qualify as a final attitude to
the truth, as the process of finding refuge from the uncertainties of
reason in . . . the facts. But the facts amount, it seems, to little
more than the fact of the writer's personality. Can this be called an
attitude to the truth in any valid sense ? Perhaps I have not
understood the professor: I find his explanations more difficult
than the essay they explain. The obscurity seems to be due to the
fact that the word 'experience' is given no precise meaning. We
cannot know whether an essay on Experience is a plea for the
facts against reason until we know what is meant by the words we
are using. When we speak, as M. Villey does, of'the fruit of
experience' I think that we are meaning something different from
what we mean by saying that we have experienced a shock. In the
first case we are thinking of the amount that a man has learnt and
seen in the process of living; in the second we
1

P. Villey: Les sources et rvolution des Essais de Montaigne, Paris, 1908,

2
ii. 322.
Les Essais de Montaigne, Alcan, i93i> iii. 361.

' MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

37

are thinking of a certain means of receiving an impression from

any event. Applying this to our problem, does Montaigne's essay
give us what we usually call the 'experience of a long life' or does
it discuss actual, direct contact with life? The two senses lead to
widely differing interpretations of the essay, yet both senses are
established in modern usage. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, for
example, in its two-line definition of the word has : 'actual
observation of facts or events, knowledge resulting from this'.
Which, if either, is Montaigne's subject? For the answer may well
be: neither. Littr gives three meanings:
1. acte d'prouver;
1. connaissance des choses acquise par un long usage;
1. tentative pour reconnatre comment une chose se passe.
It may be that the sixteenth-century usage implied something
else, but that we cannot tell without meticulous comparison of
cases. We shall find that, as with present-day usage, the precise
sense is not always discernible from any single example. When,
for instance, Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes : 'L'exprience du
monde en dgote', is he referring to the way we experience the
world, or to accumulated dealings with the world ? We cannot
say, any more than we can say what M. Villey was referring to in
the phrase 'un plaidoyer en faveur de l'exprience'.
The most natural source to which we go for help is in this case
of no use to us. Though the word occurs in Huguet's
Dictionnaire du 16e sicle the only sense given is preuve, which is
supported by quotations from two minor writers. Something more
to the point is found in Le Grand Dictionnaire de l'Acadmie
Franaise which, though not contemporary, takes us to within a
hundred years of Montaigne's last revision of the essay. As a
starting-point to our inquiry it may be quoted in full :
Experience. S.F. Espreuve qu'on fait de quelque chose, soit

4o

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

imaginions Dieu en l'air, sans en avoir en nous le sentiment par

experience.
And again, with similar meaning:
Ceste congnoissance consiste plus en vive experience qu'en vaine
speculation . . . tellement Dieu se donne sentir tel par experience,
qu'il se declaire par sa parole.1
Even such occasional soundings into the mass of literature
written and read in Montaigne's day suggest the complexity of the
problem involved and give some point to the desire of a modern
scholar that we need a history of the word :
Nous parlions d'exprience. Comment n'avons-nous pas non plus
d'histoire de ce mot? Experience, pour nous, une technique, surtout
familire aux hommes de laboratoire. Une intervention longuement prmdite et calcule d'avance dans le domaine des faits bruts.
Le rsultat d'un choix, et d'un choix opr pour permettre soit la
vrification d'une hypothse dj formule, soit la formation d'une
nouvelle hypothse. Pour eux? le fait d'prouver, le fait d'observer,
le fait d'enregistrer, tel quel, un phnomne, un vnement qui se
produit de lui-mme, en dehors de toute intervention, de toute
volont particulire de le produire ou non.2
Professor Febvre brings us back to the third sense of the word
in Littr, that of 'experiment'. Even if it were impossible to decide
which of the three meanings Montaigne and his contemporaries
intend in any given case, we should at least be aware that they
were all then possible. A careful scrutiny of the passages just
quoted will, I think, suggest that the most general meaning of the
word exprience in the French Renaissance was something felt or
perceived in an immediate and lively way, with the force of
personal acquaintance or participation. It is opposed to
1

Institution de la Religion Chrestienne, d. Lefranc, Chtelain, Pannier, 1911,

pp. iii, xxvii, xxxv, 13, 28, 29.
* L. Febvre, Le Problme de l'Incroyance au 16e sicle, Paris, 1942, p. 477. I
owe this reference, and that to Amyot, to my colleague Mr. R. A. Sayce.

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

41

what is apprehended by the mind, to such activities, that is, as

'speculation' and 'imagination', which beside its immediate
apprehension appear airy and vain. Like Calvin it is for
Montaigne a feeling: 'il se sent par exprience que tant
d'interprtations dissipent la vrit'. (Jouaust, vii. 7. All
succeeding references to the essay are to the paging in this
volume.)
Montaigne uses the word fifteen times in all, once in the title,
and once in Latin. At the outset of the essay he opposes
experience and reason. Would this be intelligible if he were
thinking of experience as 'une connaissance des choses acquise
par un long usage' ? Was he not rather contrasting the conclusions
of argument and the impressions of sense ? Was he not striving to
define that contact with events which is entirely different from
anything we may know about those events? Let us not be less
diligent in the interpretation than he was in the expression. Such
sentences as these demand the closest scrutiny:
La raison a tant de formes que nous ne savons laquelle nous
prendre; l'exprience n'en a pas moins. La consequence que nous
voulons tirer de la conference des evenemens est mal seure, d'autant
qu'ils sont tousjours dissemblables. Il n'est aucune qualit si universelle en cette image des choses que la diversit et varit.1 (2)
The point is clinched by an image so apt that one feels it may
have inspired the argument or suggested its development, the
case of the Greek at Delphi who could even distinguish one egg
from another. The point seems to be that the mind, in classifying
things, overlooks their essential feature, which is diversity.
Rather than consider each occurrence of the word we
1
For clarity's sake I append a modern translation:
Reason has so many shapes that we know not which to lay hold of: experience
has no fewer. The inference we try to draw from the likeness of events is uncer tain, because they are always unlike. No quality is so universal, in the appearance
of things, as diversity and variety.

42

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

may pass at once to the passage where Montaigne is concerned to express what he is writing about, in which the title
word occurs three times :
En fin, toute cette fricasse que je barbouille ici n'est qu'un registre
des essais de ma vie, qui est, pour l'interne sant exemplaire assez
prendre l'instruction contre-poil. Mais quant la sant corporelle,
personne ne peut fournir d'exprience plus utile que moy, qui la prsente
pure, nullement corrompue et altre par art et par opination.
L'exprience est proprement sur son fumier au sujet de la mdecine, o
la raison lui quitte toute la place. Tibre disoit que quiconque avoit
vescu vingt ans se debvoit respondre des choses qui luy estoyent
nuisibles ou salutaires, et se savoir conduire sans mdecine. Elle faict
profession d'avoir tousjours l'exprience pour touche de son operation.
Ainsi Platon avoit raison de dire que pour estre vray mdecin, il serait
ncessaire que celuy qui l'entre-prendroit eust pass par toutes les
maladies qu'il veut guarir et par tous les accidens et circonstances
dequoy il doit juger. C'est raison qu'ils prennent la verole s'ils la veulent
savoir panser. Vrayment je m'en fierais celuy-la, car les autres nous
guident comme celuy qui peint les mers, les escueils et les ports, estant
assis sur sa table, et y faict promener le modle d'un navire en toute
seuret: jettez le l'effect, il ne sait par o s'y prendre. Ils font telle
description de nos maux que faict un trompette de ville qui crie un
cheval ou un chien perdu: Tel poil, telle hauteur, telle oreille; mais
presentez-le luy, il ne le cognoit pas pourtant. (26)

There are many points of interest in this passage. To

begin with, M. Villey thought that the word essais needed
elucidation and defined it as expriences. Then again, if I
understand him aright, Montaigne refers to the experience of
health in his case as 'unadulterated, quite uncorrupted by art
and theory'. (Incidentally, 'art' is another Renaissance word
of which we stand in real need of an accurate history.) The
application of 'experience' to the medical profession can
surely not mean length of service or knowledge. It must
mean, if the contrast with reason is to be adhered to,
personal as distinct from professional or bookish

10

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE*

43

knowledge. Once we grasp that Montaigne means this we

shall see why health and disease play a central part in the
argument, for it is precisely in that kind of sphere that actual
experiencing of symptoms counts for more than all secondhand knowledge. The two delightful pictures which end the
paragraph make this very plain. To talk about disease may
be as far from real knowledge of what one is talking about
as the painter of seascapes may be from being able really to
handle the boat he so easily inserts, in a figure, on his
canvas. Professional diagnosis may be, in the strict sense, as
impertinent as the town crier's description of the lost dog: he
is correct in each detail but cannot recognize the dog, for he
has never seen it.
If this point be granted, the relation of the parts of the
essay to its subject becomes clear. It is not loquacity that
makes Montaigne treat of personal matters of habit and
physical existence which are not usually given serious
discussion. It is because the most immediate, and least intellectual, apprehension of life is via the body. Thus the
recurring themes of this essay seem to be health, eating,
drinking, sleeping:
Le dormir a occup une grande partie de ma vie ... la nourriture est
une action principale de la vie... voil une dent qui me vient de choir
sans douleur, sans effort, c'estoit le terme naturel de sa dure; et cette
partie de mon estre et plusieurs autres sont desj mortes, autres demy
mortes, des plus actives et qui tenoient le premier rang pendant la
vigueur de mon aage. C'est ainsi que je fons et eschape

moy- (57,65,67)
Such things as these give an immediate apprehension of
life, things that we do naturally or by custom, without
1

As Prof. Mansell Jones puts it: 'Experience, which is true living, is not
quantitative.' French Introspectives from Montaigne to Andr Gide, Cambridge,
1937, P- 20.

11

44

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE thinking.

The coupling of health with custom is a sign of the way

Montaigne's mind approaches its subject.
Ma sant c'est maintenir sans destourbier mon estt accoustum.
Je voy que la maladie m'en desloge d'un costj si je crois les mdecins ils m'en destourneront de l'autre; et par fortune et par art me
voyl hors de ma route. Je ne croy rien plus certainement que cecy:
que je ne sauroy estre offence par des choses que j'ay si longtemps
accoustumes. C'est la coustume de donner forme nostre vie,
telle qu'il Iuy plaist; elle peut tout en cela; c'est le breuvage de
Circe, qui diversifie nostre nature comme bon luy semble. (28)
The mental activity devoted to the consideration of things not
subject primarily to the mind is most evident in the original
development of this very point of custom. It is custom that can
free us from bondage to routine,
. . . elle peut nous duire non seulement telle forme qu'il luy
plaist mais au changement et la variation, qui est le plus noble et le
plus utile de ses apprentissages. La meilleure de mes complexions
corporelles, c'est d'estre flexible et peu opiniastre; j'ay des inclinations plus propres et ordinaires et plus agrables que d'autres; mais
avec bien peu d'effort je m'en destourne et me couple aisement
la faon contraire. Un jeune homme doit troubler se9 rgles pour
esveiiler sa vigueur, la garder de moisir et s'apoltronir; et n'est train
de vie si sot et si dbile que celuy qui se conduit par ordonnance et
discipline. (33)
It is perhaps useful to note that this important development is
introduced by a case of homely observation, expressed in
unintellectual terms: 'Regardez la difference du vivre de mes
valets bras la mienne . . .'
If we look at the ways of living which :re adversely criticized in
the essay they are almost all ways wherein
the mind has disregarded or misinterpreted primary data.
Doctors, for instance, speak without the book because they
prescribe for they know not what; they even have the
arrogance to prophesy what will happen :
... la dubitation et ignorance de ceux qui se meslent d'expliquer

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

45

les ressorts de nature et ses internes progrez et tant de faux prognostiques de leur art nous doit faire cognoistre qu'elle a ses moyens
infiniment incognuz; il y a grande incertitude, varit et obscurit
de ce qu'elle nous promet ou menace. (55)
Doctors are only a particular example of the harm of mind and
intellect uncontrolled by actual experience. Language,
codification, formulation, are all condemned as being secondhand, and thus divorced from living contact. Life is not a thing
that can be eternally classified and ranged in compartments; it is
like quicksilver, which the more boys strive to make it go one
way escapes and goes its own way. The mind, working without
control, obscures more than it clarifies. Books are written about
things, then books about books, commentaries on commentaries:
'nous ne faisons que nous entregloser'. This negative part of the
essay is the most living critique of human institutions which the
Renaissance inspired ; for a parallel one must go to Hamlet's
monologues. The biting picture of justice as a human system
which fails to be just in effect is an example of social institution
divorced from experience :
Considrez la forme de cette justice qui nous regit, c'est un vray
tesmoignage de l'humaine imbcillit, tant il y a de contradiction et
d'erreur. Ce que nous trouvons faveur et rigueur en la justice, et y
en trouvons tant que je ne say si l'entre-deux s'y trouve si souvent,
ce sont parties maladives et membres injustes du corps mesmes et
essence de la j ustice. (11)
This reflection is suggested by an actual case of peasants who
have found a man assaulted in a wood but who dare not answer
his appeals for help, in case the law should apprehend them as
murderers. Montaigne gives other cases, no doubt from his own
experience, which have resulted in the sacrifice of innocent men
to the forms of justice. This leads him to profound reflections on
the authority of law,

12
13

46

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

which is not an authority of reason or of right but of social

power, a brilliant passage which has been read with profit
by Pascal.
There are then two sets of activity contrasted in the essay,
the intellectual and the non-intellectual. By working out
such a contrast Montaigne attacks one of the hardest
problems of morals, the subject of Nature. In none of his
essays is this so firmly grasped. The test of living is not
conformity with any model of conduct thought out by men,
it is conformity with the laws and constitutions of the
creature we call man. This conformity we can each of us
find within ourselves, and more surely than by listening to
any outside authority. This is no new note in Montaigne's
writing. It finds eloquent expression in the essay on
Repentance, but we should be at a loss to account for the
frequency of this appeal to nature throughout the essay on
Experience were it not plain that for Montaigne Nature and
Experience are, as it were, obverse and reverse of the same
medal. In other words, he writes about experience because
he is aiming at a more direct contact with nature than books
or systems or the opinions of others can give him.
Quel que soit donc le fruict que nous pouvons avoir de l'exprience,
peine servira beaucoup nostre institution celle que nous tirons de9
exemples estrangers, si nous faisons si mal nostre proffict de celle que
nous avons de nous-mesme, qui nou9 est plus familire et certes
suffisante nous instruire de ce qu'il nous faut. (15)

Hence the constant stress on, and practice of, self-knowledge. Montaigne finds that scrutiny of himself replaces both
metaphysics and physics and is more profitable than scrutiny
of man in Plato. Philosophers indeed are un-\ certain guides :
Les inquisitions et contemplations philosophiques ne servent que
d'aliment nostre curiosit. Les Philosophes avec grand raison nous

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

renvoyent aux rgles de Nature; mais elles n'ont que faire de si sublime
cognoissance,1 ils les falsifient et nous prsentent son visage peint, trop
haut en couleur et trop sophistiqu, d'o naissent tant de divers
pourtraits d'un subject si uniforme. Comme elle nous a fourny de pieds
marcher, aussi a elle de prudence nous guider dans la vie, prudence
non tant ingnieuse, robuste et pompeuse, comme celle de leur
invention, mais l'advenant, facile, quite et salutaire, et qui faict trs
bien ce que l'autre diet, en celuy qui a l'heur de savoir l'employer
navement et ordonnment, c'est dire naturellement. Le plus
simplement se commettre nature, c'est s'y commettre le plus
sagement. O que c'est un doux et mol chevet, et sain, que l'ignorance et
l'incuriosit, reposer une teste bien faicte. ( 16)

I Jiave continued the quotation to the end of the paragraph,

as it would otherwise seem to have omitted one of the
characteristic and oft-quoted expressions of Montaigne's
hedonism. As usually understood the phrase about 'the soft
pillow' is not at all characteristic of its author, whose
restless mind is one of the keenest in literature. But no
writer has been more pungent against the fussiness and the
worry that often accompany intellectual activity. So
understood, the phrase is germane to the thought of its
whole paragraph and that in turn is closely relevant to the
subject.of the essay. This aspect returns in even more
vigorous expression in the course of the central section on
the gall-stone. This detailed analysis of the effects of his own
disease leads Montaigne to distinguish between its natural
effect and the imaginative repercussion on the mind of the
sufferer:
Je seray assez temps sentir le mal sans l'allonger par le mal de la
peur. Qui craint de souffrir, il souffre desj ce qu'il craint. Je ne me juge
que par vray sentiment, non par discours. (55)

Would it be going too far to define Montaigne's subject

by this last sentence, as an elaboration of that judgement
which results from feeling rather than from abstract
1

14

47

This seems difficult to translate, unless we substitute ils for elles.

15

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MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

49

thinking ? Discours is certainly for him, now as in the past, the

enemy to be watched and avoided. It is not altogether easy to see
why. Montaigne seems to deplore (what many have deplored as
one of the faults incidental to the Cartesian philosophy) the
separation of body and mind, the scorn of body and exaltation of
mind which seem to be natural to the intellect when working
without control. He therefore takes every occasion to re-establish
the harmony of body and mind which unbridled intellect is apt to
destroy: this seems to me to be the sense we should give to his
adverb loyallement. His scepticism about intellectual conclusions,
and more particularly about our blind faith in their accuracy, is a
recurring theme: he glories in being ordinary, earthy,
unintellectual, for that is natural to man; it is the fruit of actual
experience of life in and on oneself, rather than through books or
appropriated ways of thought.
Moy, qui ne manie que terre terre, hay cette inhumaine sapience
qui nous veut rendre ennemis de la culture et plaisir du corps. Je
trouve pareille injustice de prendre contre cur les voluptez
naturelles que de les prendre trop cur... il ne les faut ny suyvre
ny fuir, mais il les faut recevoir; je les recois un peu plus grassement
et gratieusement, et me laisse plus volontiers aller vers la pante
naturelle. Nous n'avons que faire d'exaggerer leur inanit; elle se
faict assez sentir et se produit assez. Mercy nostre esprit maladif,
rabat-joye, qui nous desgoute d'elles comme de soy-mesme. Il traitte
de soy et tout ce qu'il reoit, tantost avant, tantost arrire selon son
estre insatiable, vagabond et versatile.
Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis acescit Moy, qui
me vante d'embrasser si curieusement les commoditez de la vie et
si particulirement, n'y trouve, quand j'y regarde ainsi finement,
peu prs que du vent. Mais quoy ? nous sommes par tout vent; et le
vent encore, plus sagement que nous, s'ayme bruyre, s'agiter, et
se contente en ses propres offices, sans dsirer la stabilit, la
solidit, qualitez non siennes. (75)
These sentences confront us with the real paradox of the

famous essay we are considering. The intellect is never absent

from this inquisition upon its activity. On the contrary, it is
brilliantly applied to matters usually thought of as outside its
purview. The essay is an intellectual statement of the nonintellectual nature of living. It is an inquiry into the extent to
which direct contact with phenomena (with what M. Villey
perhaps rashly called the facts) may correct and supplement the
conclusions of the mind.1 Perhaps such an inquiry was only
possible to a man who was both thinker and artist, at any rate to
one who was not a systematic thinker in the sense known to
philosophy. This may explain why Montaigne has for so long
been disregarded as a thinker and considered as a 'writer',
whatever that may mean. It goes some way, I think, to explain the
structure of this final essay. It is clearly not constructed on a
principle of rational and logical progression, in a straight line, so
to speak. This has been hastily assumed to be due to Montaigne's
habit of chatter about whatever might come into his head. Yet the
essay has a plan, as is borne out by the fact that no extensive part
of it can be said to be irrelevant to its subject. But the plan is that
of an artist rather than of a logician. Subjects recur, almost
rhythmically; they are not completely dealt with in any single
section of the argument. One may watch this by the references to
sleep, eating, health, doctors, and such topics. Pascal once
described the difference between the order of charity and the
order of intellect by saying that the former 'consiste principalement la digression sur chaque point qu'on rapporte la fin, pour
la montrer toujours'. (Pense 2.83.)
The finer essays of Montaigne are constructed, I sug-

16

17

This was the view of Groethuysen: 'In diesem selbstndigen Erlebr des
Lebens liegt das Machtvolle des Denkens Montaignes.' Festschrift Wechssler,
1929, P- 223.

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MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

gest, on such a plan. Like the greater comedies of Molire, they

bring to bear on a given theme a series of parallel considerations,
so that the theme is never exhaustively treated but is illumined
from several angles. We should therefore beware of the apparent
digressions of Montaigne and the more so as we see them
rapportes la fin. The reader stands to lose as well as to gain by
such a method. In the hands of a second-rate author it would
allow too much room for the trivial and the incidental; indeed
Montaigne is accused of these faults. But on the credit side is a
fresh and unacademic interest which leaves the subject more
attractive at the end than at the beginningthe contrary in fact of
much educational method. Montaigne, as he himself once wrote,
is content to open up subjects. His essay is not a disquisition, it is
a subtle mixture of argument, intuition, and example. In this case,
his thoughts about experience and his own experience are
inseparable: the incident is one with the argument.
Autobiography and speculation shade into one another, nowhere
perhaps more than in the passages where experience of his
disease suggests reflections on the natural preparation of the
body for its own decline:
Tu ne meurs pas de ce que tu es malade, tu meurs de ce que tu es
vivant; la mort te tue bien sans le secours de la maladie, et d'aucuns
les maladies ont esloign la mort, qui ont plus vescu de ce qu'il leur
sembloit s'en aller mourants.
... La mort se mesle et confound par tout nostre vielle dclin
praeoccupe son heur et s'ingre au cours de nostre avancement
mesme. J'ay des portraits de ma forme de vingt et cinq et de trente
cinq ans; je les compare avec celuy d'asteure; combien de fois ce
n'est plus moy, combien est mon image prsente plus esloingne de
celles l que de celle de mon trespas. (49, 67)
Death inaugurated in life, a natural part of the life process, are
these thoughts not relevant to a profound consideration of human
experience ? I think they are, but it is

MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

important at the same time to state that they are a product of the
artistic view of life. We owe the dimensions of this essay to
Montaigne the artist no less than to Montaigne the thinker. As
Ruel wrote many years ago : 'Tous les procds de l'observation
artistique peuvent se ramener ce principe: la vie seule peut
connatre la vie.'1
Perhaps a main cause of Montaigne's immense fascination for
succeeding generations was this aesthetic achievement in the field
of intellectual inquiry. The age in which he wrote was bookish
and pedantic. It seemed to be fast losing that taste for the
particular and the individual which we associate with the
Renaissance.The decline in the reputation of Ronsard, the
strictures of Malherbe upon Desportes, are signs of a preference
for lucidity over poetry, for the concise and the general over the
concrete and the fragmentary, perhaps for 'art' in the narrow sense
over life. Such an essay as this on Experience seems to perform
the miracle of focusing the intelligence on this neglected domain
of the particular and the temporal.
The masters of the classical age in France seem to have felt
this. Pascal goes to this essay for his notion of law and of custom,
of the automatic elements in behaviour (la machine). The
astonishing awareness of La Rochefoucauld to the differences
between thought and conduct probably owes something to the
same source. Molire and Montaigne seem to have chosen
precisely the same subject of medical professionalism of which to
make sport, and incidentally to declare their own views on
Nature.
Is it fanciful to trace the influence of the same essay upon later
developments in modern thought ? The empiricism of Diderot,
Voltaire's aversion to metaphysics, Rousseau's nostalgic search
for nature, were probably all nourished on 'experience'. Much of
the thought of nineteenth1

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51

E. Ruel, Du sentiment artistique dans la morale de Montaigne, Paris, 1902, p. 8 9.

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MONTAIGNE'S NOTION OF EXPERIENCE

century artists and scholars was inspired by Maine de Biran,

who thought of Montaigne as among 'les gens vraiment
redoutables'. These and many other figures have been
nourished by the protest against an intellectualism divorced
from life, a protest of which Montaigne provided so brilliant
an example. If one seeks a contemporary epithet for such
thinking one might call it existential.
w. G. MOORE
20