The placement of this essay is interesting, coming directly after Montaigne’s deeply affecting description of his friendship with Etienne de La Boetie. After displaying his emotions most openly, he dives back into caution:
Things which in themselves are good and beautiful are corrupted by our handling of them. We can seize hold even of Virtue in such a way that our action makes her vicious if we clasp her in too harsh and too violent an embrace.
There is a touch of eastern philosophy to Montaigne’s counsel. He’s saying something very similar to the Buddhists, that anything we grasp too tightly can warp into a form of fanaticism:
That is a subtle observation on the part of philosophy: you can both love virtue too much and behave with excess in an action which itself is just. The Voice of God adapts itself fittingly to that bias: ‘Be not more wise than it behoveth, but be ye soberly wise.’
The fanaticism that concerns him had gripped France in his age and led to endless sectarian conflict. That part is understandable. But I have to wonder if Montaigne isn’t feeling some need to step back from the deeply devotional feelings he expressed towards La Boetie. If he thought it ok to be a fanatical friend, he certainly believed it important to be a temperate marital partner:
All those shameless caresses which our first ardour suggests to us in our sex-play are not only unbecoming to our wives but harmful to them when practised on them. At least let them learn shamelessness from some other hand! They are always wide enough awake when we need them. Where this is concerned what I have taught has been natural and uncomplicated.
In case you think Montaigne is being ironic in that statement, he goes on:
Marriage is a bond both religious and devout: that is why the pleasure we derive from it must be serious, restrained and intermingled with some gravity; its sensuousness should be somewhat wise and dutiful. Its chief end is procreation, so there are those who doubt whether it is right to seek intercourse when we have no hope of conception, as when the woman is pregnant or too old. For Plato that constitutes a kind of of homicide.
Montaigne is anti-ascetic — he doesn’t believe in denying “the good life” to anyone. So he’s not really making a case for the denial of human pleasure … he’s making a case for really boring sex with your partner, mostly for procreation, and perhaps open relationships of some sort to take care of the rest. But isn’t that just being French? Or maybe French before his time?
Montaigne believes that if you are singularly focused on a partner and desire her deeply, then something’s wrong:
In short there is no pleasure, however proper, which does not become a matter of reproach when excessive and intemperate.
Montaigne’s brand of moderation doesn’t aim for the middle ground. Our modern world thinks true moderation is about enjoying our sensual, hedonic pleasures in reasonable doses at times. Montaigne isn’t buying that at all. His approach is more about not mixing the sacred and profane.
Fanaticism is a social ill, and it’s hard to argue with Montaigne’s point that we should discourage it however possible. While I think his thoughts about marriage are odd in modern context, I broadly agree with him that perhaps we don’t put enough thought into how the various ways we make our private lives moderate may in fact be quite fanatical. Also consider that Montaigne might have been carefully couching displeasure with his own marriage in broad, socially-acceptable terms.
I would alter Montaigne this way: by all means moderate your emotions, especially when they can negatively affect others. But don’t moderate your values. There are ideals, standards and people I believe in and it will always bother me if I’m required to keep quiet about it.
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