This essay is a continuation of the last for Montaigne. The previous one focused on the matter of reputation and the difficulties of fully understanding what others think of you. This essay is about self opinion.

It seems to jump off on an argument against excessive self love — but quickly zig-zags to arguing that it’s just as much a mistake to have an excessively low opinion of yourself. If you can’t form an accurate picture of yourself, what hope to you have that others will see you clearly and consistently?

Then Montaigne gives us this memorable segment:

We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body. We have taught the ladies to blush at the mere mention of what they are not at all afraid to do; we dare not call our members by their right names, and we are not afraid to employ them in every kind of debauchery. Ceremony forbids our expressing in words things that are permissible and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids our doing things that are illicit and wicked, and no one obeys it. I find myself here entangled in the laws of ceremony, for she does not allow a man either to speak well of himself, or to speak ill. We shall let her alone for the moment.

What’s most interesting about this quote is how all encompassing it is. Montaigne, who rarely makes broad statements about anything, foreshadows Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage” with this declaration that life is a series of ceremonies. The specifics are significant as well: the dainty, blushing woman who genuinely has no embarrassment about matters of sex; our unwillingness to call our sex organs what we are, while freely using them for every debauchery. And then Montaigne applies this to laws: we refrain from saying certain words, even those the described acts are permitted, but then there are laws preventing behavior that everyone ignores.

Ceremony and custom seem directly related in this context. We go through life pretending to be something everyone knows that we are not. And this self-deception bothers Montaigne a great deal. Better to be completely honest. He then goes on to catalogue many of his personal failings.

The most interesting to me is the one about poetry. Montaigne is not humble about his poetic knowledge, he declares himself a great lover of poetry and judge of its quality. But he adds that he is also a terrible poet, which is likely the drive that leads him to create the essay form, if he could express himself in poetry, he would.

This reminds me of my continuing struggles with songwriting. I enjoy the class immensely. I like the collaboration and think I am good at helping others improve their songs. But I do not enjoy writing and performing my songs at all, and each passing week, I dislike my songs more and more. I have three more weeks left in the class and will keep showing up, but I’m unlikely to sign up for another cycle.

By the way, this is the infamous essay where Montaigne makes a glowing statement about Marie de Gournay, declaring her to be like a daughter to him and calls “one of the best parts of my own being.” Most scholars believe she inserted into the essay, perhaps without his full consent. I’m not so judgmental about the passage. De Gournay was unquestionably a huge asset to Montaigne in his advancing age and I like the idea of him giving her due credit.

But it is quite ironic that de Gournay chose Montaigne’s highly confessional essay, one where he made his strongest direct statement against deceptive ceremony, for her to deceptively insert praise for herself, even if it was well deserved.