Before I jump into the essay, I want to take issue with M.E. Screech’s English translation. I don’t do this often, but I believe he screwed up one of Montaigne’s best quotes and should be held accountable.
The modern French translation of the quote is:
Tout mouvement nous fait connaitre.
This is a simple phrase to translate: “every movement defines us.” Donald Frame translates it as “every movement reveals us.” Fine. But Screech translates it as:
Anything we do reveals us.
Ugh, so much less colorful, and missing Montaigne’s hint at embodied consciousness. And this generalization weakens the final sentence of the paragraph, where Montaigne says:
You judge a horse not only by seeing its paces on a race-track but by seeing it walk–indeed, by seeing it in its stable.
The next paragraph is all about embodied consciousness as well, so Screech misses an opportunity to properly set it up. I’m annoyed with Screech at the moment, so I’ll use Frame:
Among the functions of the soul there are some lowly ones; he who does not see that side of her also does not fully know her. And perhaps she is best observed when she goes at her simple pace. The winds of passion seize her more strongly on her lofty flights. Moreover, she gives all her being to each matter, and concentrates all her strength on it, and never treats more than one at a time. And she treats a matter not according to itself, but accord to herself.
This is a very interesting thought that circles back to that earlier discussion I had about living a life tuned to your passions. Montaigne argues here that it’s only when we become in-our-heads about our lives, when passions mix with thoughts, that feelings become overwhelming. Left to themselves, observed without critique or category, the body can handle what comes before it one at a time.
From that point, let me jump ahead a bit to Montaigne’s discussion of his project and how he decides what to write about. Often I write when I need to figure out what I really think about something, and Montaigne agrees with this:
If it concerns a subject which I do not understand at all, that is the very reason why I assay my judgement on it; I sound out the ford from a safe distance: if I find I would be out of my depth, then I stick to the bank: the realization that I cannot get further across is one effect of its action; indeed, it is the effect that judgement is especially proud of. Sometimes, when the subject is trivial and vain, I assay whether my judgement can find anything substantial in it, anything to shore it up and support it. Sometimes I employ it on some elevated, well-trodden subject where it can discover nothing new, since the path is so well beaten that our judgement can only follow in another’s tracks.
That free soul Montaigne described above that is not guided by the aspirations of the ego, but moves purely by whim, is also what guides his choice of subject:
I take the first subject Fortune offers: all are equally good for me. I never plan to expound them in full, for I do not see the whole of anything: neither do those who promise to help us to do so! Everything has a hundred parts, and a hundred faces: I take one of them and sometimes just touch it with the tip of my tongue or with my fingertips, and sometimes I pinch it to the bone. I jab into it, not as wide but as deep as I can; and I often prefer to catch it from some unusual angle. I might even have ventured to make a fundamental study if I did not know myself better.
That last part is amusing to me, because I ventured into Montaigne not because I had some kind of fundamental study in mind, but because I wanted to capture him part by part as quickly as possible and move on. But just as Montaigne frees my mind from too great an attachment, he also becomes an obsession whenever I return.
This leads Montaigne to a very important idea he will build upon later—and something that stands in sharp contrast to all of his recent takes on the role of Fortune in life:
Each soul is Queen in her own state. So let us no longer seek excuses from the external qualities of anything: the responsibility lies within ourselves. Our good or our bad depends on us alone. So let us make our offertories and our vows to ourselves not to Fortune: she has no power over our behaviour; on the contrary our souls drag Fortune in their train and mould her to their own idea.
This paragraph hits me at an opportune moment. I’m feeling rather guilty over some things that have shown up in now-discarded versions of essays, both here and in an essay for my “Drive My Car” series that I left out of the finished book. I make no excuses for myself for misunderstandings I shared and misperceptions I brought to print. Sometimes I simply read the tea leaves incorrectly, in which case my greater sin is not correcting the text in a timely manner. These days I’m doing my best to stop reading the tea leaves entirely and to keep the focus on me. But again in the form of explanation, not excuses, this project has been emotionally challenging for me for a very long time. Everything is taking place almost entirely in my head. Few people can take on such a project without some wild thoughts taking flight from time to time–as Montaigne testified.
If this sounds like a return to Montaigne’s previous thoughts on Fortune, that’s intentional. Perhaps we have an ability to take command of our own lives and to shape events in our favor. But it’s the definition of folly to look beyond this personal power and see it in the world at large. Once we see in the world a reflection of ourselves, the vanity Montaigne describes above enters full bloom.
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