It’s such a curious thing at times to witness Montaigne describing a soul. The first thought upon hearing it is Cartesian, that the soul is something separate from the body, perhaps immortal. But as I’ve noted elsewhere, Montaigne stubbornly opposed the idea of a soul that outlives the body. So when he speaks of it, it must be taken in context of a body that will someday perish.
And so consider this passage:
We must consider how our soul is often agitated by diverse passions. And just as in our body they say there is an assemblage of diverse humors, of which that one is master which most ordinarily rules within us, according to our constitution; so in our soul, though various impulses stir it, there must be one that remains master of the field. Its advantage is not complete, however; because of the volatility and pliancy of our soul, the weaker ones on occasion regain the lost ground and make a brief attack in their turn.
I was about to write how even in the matter of the soul, Montaigne holds onto his bits and pieces. But then it struck me—maybe that’s where Montaigne’s bits and pieces always dwell. Perhaps it is in the soul, as he sees it, where our great mysteries lie, where those strangers as unusual to us as other people lie hidden.
As an example, Montaigne writes about children who cry and laugh about the same thing. How frequently we say such things, that we do not know whether to laugh or to cry, whether we should be overcome with the absurd comedy before us or the tragic failure it masks.
This is how Montaigne sets up the odd circumstance of lamenting a dead person who we have no intention of celebrating in life. But he follows this up with a series of examples that are extremely unflattering. He starts by noting how he sometimes likes to scold his valet, but that doesn’t keep him from believing he is a fine fellow. Then he has this ice cold juxtaposition that includes his wife and Nero’s slain mother:
Whoever supposes, to see me look sometimes coldly, sometimes lovingly, on my wife, that either look is feigned, is a fool. Nero, taking leave of his mother, whom he was sending to be drowned, nevertheless underwent the emotion of this maternal farewell, and had a feeling of horror and pity.
This is a good time to remind readers that Montaigne has a very weird style of writing that, yes, comes across as charming at times, and so many writers are eager to point that out. But that same style can be horrifying as well. What must his unfortunate wife had thought, being thrown together in the same paragraph with Nero plotting his mother’s death, but feeling glum about it?
Then Montaigne writes something that puts me in mind of Etienne de La Boetie. It’s a continuing source of speculation for me why Montaigne wrote just once of his friend and then let go of him for the rest of his project. This paragraph suggests that this instinct to move on might be ingrained in him:
Kinship, old acquaintance, and friendship seize our imagination and get it passionately involved for the moment, according to their character; but the turn is so quick that it escapes us. “Nothing is known to match in lightning speed, The mind of man, passing from thought to deed. Whatever nature shows to human sight, Is not so swift as is the soul in flight. (Lucretius)
He closes out his examination by tying it all back to Pyrrhonism:
And for this reason we are wrong to try to compose a continuous body out of all this succession of feelings.
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