Book 1, Chapter 19: That To Study Philosophy Is To Learn To Die (Part 3 of 3)

In this final part of his long essay, Montaigne talks with incredible logic and beauty of why it is stupid to fear our last day. 

Seneca reported that an old weather-beaten guard approached Ceaser asking for permission to kill himself. Ceaser looked at his withered and decrepit body and said, ‘You think then, that you are alive?’ If a man should fall into such a condition suddenly, he would not be able to bear it, but nature leads us step by step into this miserable state, so that we are not even conscious of the moment when our youth dies in us, even though this may be a harder death than the final end of the languishing body – the death of old age; the fall is not as great from an uneasy being to none at all as it is from an energetic and flourishing being to one that is troublesome and painful. The body, bent and bowed, has less force to support a burden, and this is also true for the soul. That’s why we have to raise her (the soul) up firmly against the enemy. No anxiety, fear or disturbance should have any place in her. She should be master to all her lusts and passions, mistress of necessity, shame, poverty and any other injuries of fortune.

Our religion very religion has no surer foundation than the contempt of death. It is very logical really: why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented? Also, since there are so many ways in which we could die, isn’t it worse to fear them all than just undergo one of them? And what does it matter, when it is inevitable? When Socrates was (wrongly) told, ‘The thirty tyrants have sentenced you to death’, he responded, ‘And nature them.’ It is ridiculous to trouble ourselves about taking the only step that is to end all our troubles! As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our death is the death of all things included. And to lament that we will not be alive a hundrer years from now is as foolish as feeling sorry that we were not alive a hundred years ago. Death is the beginning of another life. Nothing can be a grievance that is but once. Is it reasonable to fear a thing for so long that will come so soon?

Long lives and short are made one by death. There is no long, nor short, to things that are no more. Aristotle tells us of little animals on the banks of the river Hypanis that never live more than a day; those that die at eight in the morning die in their youth and those that die at five in the evening die in their old age. Which of us would not laugh to see this time of death affect our grief or relief? The most and the least, of ours, in comparison with eternity, or yet with the duration of mountains, rivers, stars, trees, and even some animals, is no less ridiculous.

Nature compels us to leave this world as we entered it. The same pass we made from death to life, without passion or fear, should be repeated from life to death. Your death is a part of the order of the universe. Death is a part of you, and while you try to evade it, you evade yourself. This very being of yours that you nor enjoy is equally divided between birth and death. The day of your birth is one day’s advance towards the grave. Seneca said, ‘The first hour that gave us life took away also an hour’, and Manilius said, ‘As we are born we die, and the end commences with the beginning’.

The whole time you live, you take from life and live at the expense of life itself. The perpetual work of your life is only to lay the foundation of death. You are in death while you are in life, because you still are after death, when you are no longer alive. Or, if you want to put it another way, you are dead after life, but you are dying while you are living, and death handles the dying much more rudely than it handles the dead. If you have profited from life, go away satisfied. Lucretius said, ‘Why not depart from life as a satisfied guest from a feast?’

And if you have not profited from life, why are you worried about losing it? For what purpose do you desire to keep it? To this, Lucretius said, ‘Why seem to add longer life, merely to renew ill-spent time, and be again tormented?’

Life is neither good nor evil, it is only the scene for good or evil, and if you have lives a day, you have seen it all. One day is equal and alike all other days. There is no other light, no other shade, no other sun or moon or stars. The order and character of things is the same as that that your ancestors enjoyed, and that your posterity will be entertained with. And come the worst day that can come, the distribution and variety of all the acts of my comedy are performed in a year. If you have observed the revolution of the four seasons, then you know the infancy, the youth, the strength, and the old age of the world. The year has played its part, and knows no other art but to begin again; it will always be the same thing.

Give place to others, as others have given place to you. Who can complain when all have the same destiny? Live as long as you can – you  shall by that nothing shorten the space you are to be dead; it is to no purpose, you shall be in the condition that you fear so much for just as long as if you had died at birth. Death will still remain eternal.

And yet you will be in such a condition that you will have no reason to be displeased, because when you are dead, there will be no other living self to lament over your grave. It should not concern you whether you are living or dead because in living, you are still in being, and in death, you are no more.

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. Make use of your time while you can. It depend upon your will, not the number of days that you have. Is it possible that you can imagine never to arrive at the place towards which you are continually going? and yet there is no journey without an end.

Lucretius said, ‘No night has followed day, no day has followed night, in which there has not been heard sobs and sorrowing cries, the companions of deaths and funerals.’

Anyway, imagine how much more unbearable an immortal life would be to man than the one he has now. If you didn’t have death, you would be cursing Fate for depriving you of it. There is some bitterness mixed in death only so that, seeing how convenient it is, you do not greedily and indiscreetly seek and embrace it, and so that you may live in a balance between being neither too sick of life nor excited about death. You will die once, and death lies somewhere between pleasure and pain. Why fear your last day? It contributes no more to your end than any of your other days.

Everyday travels towards death, the last only arrives at it.

Book 1, Chapter 19: That To Study Philosophy Is To Learn To Die (Part 1 of 3)

Montaigne talks firstly about how study can be a kind of death. Then he shares his feelings about sex. He ends with with a contemplation on man's fear of death

 'it is a pleasure more favourable, soft, and natural, than the other forms of pleasure that we prefer to call pleasure'

Cicero says that studying philosophy serves no purpose other than to prepare one’s self for death. The reason for this is that study and contemplation, in some sense, withdraw us from our souls, and employ the soul separately from the body. This is a kind of ‘apprenticeship’ and a resemblance of death in this process. Another reason is that the point of all wisdom and reasoning is to teach us not to fear death.

Now, either our reason mocks us, or it has no aim other than contentment. ‘All the opinions of the world’ agree that pleasure is our aim, even if we all have different ways of attaining it. Any other route would be rejected straightaway, for who would go down a path that led to misery and affliction? All disputes on this point are trivial, and merely verbal. They arise out of a stubbornness and opposition that should not be present in great thinkers.

No matter what they say, even in virtue, our ultimate aim in life is bliss (Montaigne here uses the word ‘volupté’, referring to an intense pleasure that is both sensual and spiritual). I’d like to punch the ears of those who find this word sickening. If the word signifies a supreme pleasure or excessive contentment, then this is due to the assistance of virtue and nothing else. This bliss, if it is joyous, strong and virile, becomes all the more seriously blissful. And so we should allow this bliss to be called pleasure; it is a pleasure more favourable, soft, and natural, than the other forms of pleasure that we prefer to call pleasure. Those other pleasures are lower forms of bliss. If they even deserve to be called pleasure, this should be a matter of agreement and not privilege. 

A few words on this bliss

- I find it to be less free from inconvenience and pitfall than virtue.  

- The enjoyment is more momentary, fluid, and frail than some other pleasures. Nonetheless, it has its periods of vigils and fasting, also periods of hard work, sweat and blood.

- It comes with so many different kinds of sharp and wounding passions, and the satiety that attends it can be so dull and heavy that it sometimes equates to a punishment.

- If one imagines that these hurdles actually spur us to pursue it, that they are no more than a seasoning to its sweetness,  they are mistaken.

- When circumstances render it inaccessible (such as a coming to virtue, or some kind of difficulty), the pleasure of this joyous bliss is sharpened and heightened once it comes. 

- He who measures its cost against its fruit renders himself unworthy of it, for he does not understand its graces nor uses.

- What do they mean, those who preach that the quest for it is difficult, complicated, and painful and the resultant orgasmic joyousness (in French, jouissance) pleasant? Is it ever unpleasant? What would human beings not do to arrive at this pleasure? The most perfect have been happy to just aspire to this pleasure, to approach it without ever possessing it. Those that warn of the quest are therefore wrong, because even the pursuit of this bliss is pleasurable, because the attempt contains the essence of what it pursues.

Now, one of the greatest benefits that virtue confers upon us is a contempt of death. This contempt allows us a soft and easy tranquility in life, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct. All the rules centre around and agree with this contempt. And although they also teach us to despise pain, poverty, and other accidents to which human life is subject, we do not do so with the same level of concern. These accidents are, after all, not necessarily going to strike us. Many pass through life without knowing what poverty is, and the musician Xenophilius lived to a hundred and six without falling ill. But death is inevitable. And it can strike at any time, cutting short and putting an end to all other inconveniences.

Hor., in the Odyssey, said; ‘We are all bound one voyage; the lot of all, sooner or later, is to come out of the urn. All must to eternal exile sail away.’

So if death were to frighten us, it would be a perpetual torment, for which there would be no consolation. Sometimes people on their way to execution are granted special favours just before their death. But, at this time, ‘Sicilian dainties will not tickle their palates, nor the melody of birds and harps bring back sleep.’ (Hor. Od.) They cannot relish these types of entertainment when they know they are at the fatal end of their journey. The end of our race is death, it is the necessary object of our aim. It this frightened us, how would it be possible to advance one step without a fit of panic?

The remedy that the vulgar use is not to think about it, but from what brutish stupidity can they derive such a blatant blindness? They probably ride their donkeys backwards. They scare people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves when they hear the word, as if it were the name of the devil. And they refuse to write up their wills, because that would be a reference to dying. They will not pick up a pen until the physician has told them in no uncertain terms that they are in their last moments, and even then, they will do so in a state of terror. God knows how, in this state, they are fit enough in understanding to do so.

The Romans, feeling that the word death sounded too ominous to their ears, found a way to soften and spin it, and instead of saying someone is dead, they will say, ‘he has lives’ or ‘he has ceased to live’ (Plutarch, Life of Cicero). The mention of life in the phrase, eventhough it has passed, offers a kind of consolation. It is from them that we have borrowed the phrase, ‘The last Mr. such-and-such’.

I was born between eleven and twelve in the afternoon on the last day of February 1533. The year, that used to commence at Easter, had been changed by order of Charles IX to commence from  then on on January 1^st. I turned thirty-nine fifteen days ago. I hope to live at least as many more years. In the meantime, to trouble myself with something that will happen after so long seems foolish. But so what? Young and old die upon the same terms; no one departs out of life otherwise than as if he had just entered it. No man is so old and decrepit that he does not imagine he has twenty good years left in him. Fool that thou art! Who has assured upon thee the term of life? You depend on your physicians but instead, consult effects and experiences. According to the average life-span, you have lives by extraordinary favour. Think of people you know, how many more have died before they arrived at your age than have survived? And as for those who have made themselves famous in their lifetimes, I bet you will find more that have before before than after thirty-five years of age. Jesus Christ himself died at thirty-three and the greatest man that was no more than a man, Alexander, died at around the same age. Death can surprise us in many ways. Who would have guessed that the duke of Brittany, for instance, would be crushed to death in a crowd of people? King Henry II was killed in a sword tournament and his ancestor Philip died whilst fighting with a hog. Aeschylus, who was very circumspect in avoiding danger, was hit on the head by a tortoise that fell out of the talons of an eagle flying overhead. Another choked on a grape-stone. An emperor was killed with the scratch of a comb while he was combing his hair, and Aemilius Lepidus stumpled on the steps of his own front door. Another died between the thighs of a woman, and another – my brother Captain St. Martin – was playing tennis when he received a little blow with the ball just above his right ear. He took no notice of it at the time, but six or seven hours later, he had died.

With such frequent and common examples passing before us everyday, how is it possible to disengage ourselves from thoughts of death and not live in constant fear of it? You may say that it doesn’t matter how it comes about, provided we do not terrify ourselves with expectation. I, for one, would crawl under the skin of a calf if by that means I could avoid death. I am not ashamed of this. All I aim for is to pass my time at my ease, doing what will most contribute to that ease. I must quote this glorious little exemplary:

‘I had rather seem mad and a sluggard, so that my defects are agreeable to myself, or that I am not painfully conscious of them, than be wise and chaptious’ (Hor. Ep.).

Book 1, Chapter 18 That Men Are Not To Judge Of Our Happiness Till After Death

In this beautiful, touching essay, Montaigne warns against judging any life, even our own, until our final day. He also writes of the death of his close friend Etienne

'Sometimes Fortune waits to surprise the last hours of our lives, to show her power by, in a moment, overthrowing what has taken so many years to build'

Ovid, in Metamorphoses, says, ‘We should all look forward to our last days: no one can be called happy till he is dead and buried.’

Even children know the story of King Croseus, who was captured and condemned to death by Cyrus. As he was going to execution, he cried out, ‘O Solon, Solon!’ Cyrus asked what this meant, and Croseus replied that he had finally realized the truth in the teachings of Solon, which was:

‘That men, however fortune may smile upon them, could never be said to be happy till they had been seen to pass over the last day of their lives’.

This is due to the unpredictability and uncertainty of life - the fact that very light and trivial occasions can suddenly change into their own opposite. Many Dukes have died prisoners (for instance, in our fathers’ days, the tenth Duke of Milan), conquerors have become beggars (Pompey, for instance, who had to plead with the king of Egypt), and kings turned into clerks (Alexander’s successors in Macedon, for example). Queen Mary of Scots, the fairest of all queens, came to die at the hands of an executioner. There are a thousand more examples of the same kind, for it seems that as storms and tempests strike the tallest buildings, there are also spirits above that are envious of the greatnesses here below.

Sometimes Fortune waits to surprise the last hours of our lives, to show her power by, in a moment, overthrowing what has taken so many years to build. Macrobius said, ‘I have lived longer by this one day than I should have done.’

The wise advice of Solon should be heeded. But Solon is a philosopher, the sort of man to whom the favours and disgraces of Fortune mean nothing, and do not make one any happier or unhappier. I am inclined to think he had a further aim in making this statement, and that his meaning was that the happiness of life itself, which depends on tranquility and contentment of the spirit and the resolution and assurance of a well-ordered soul, should not be attributed to any man till he has had to play out the end of his life. He may have been living the rest of his life in pretence, only putting on fine philosophical discourses. When we are not made anxious or upset by anything, we can maintain a false bravado, but in our last scene of death, there is no more pretending. We speak clearly then, and ‘discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the pot’.

Our last day is the day on which our life can be measured. As Seneca says, the last day is the judge of all the rest.

The fruit of my studies can be measured, then, only upon my death. Only then will we see whether my discourses come only from my mouth or from my heart.

Plutarch, in Apoth., relates that Epaminondas, when asked which of three people (one being he himself) he held in greatest esteem, responded, ‘you must see us die first, before the question can be resolved’. Indeed, he would feel very wronged if anyone judged him without the honour and grandeur of his end.

God works in ways that best please him, and I have, in my time, seen three of the most hateful people I know – they lived disgustingly and were not liked – die very regular and composed deaths. I have also seen death cut short a life that could have gone so far, that was in the height and flower of its increase when it was ended. The end, however, was so glorious that perhaps his ambitious and generous plans had nothing in them so high and great as this interruption. Without completing his journey, he reached the place where his ambition aimed. He could not have hoped to do so with greater glory. When I judge this man’s life, I always think of how he carried himself at the time of his death, and my principal concern for my own life is that I may die well – that is, patiently and with peace.

(Montaigne, in this final paragraph, is discussing the death of his closest friend Etienne de la Boetie, at whose death in 1563 he was present)

Book 1, Chapter 11: Of Prognostications

Montaigne discusses fortune-telling. Is it possible to tell the future, and should one follow their unexplained instincts?

'(man's desire to know the future is) a notable example of the wild curiosity of our nature to grasp at and anticipate future things, as if we had not enough to do to digest the present’

Oracles, that is, prophesiers or fortunetellers, had begun to lose credibility even before the coming of Jesus Christ. Other types of fortune-telling, for example those based on the flight of birds, the intestines of dead animals, the claps of thunder, floods, and so on carried great importance in ancient times, but are now abolished by our religion. Still, there are many who continue to practice fortune-telling through the stars above, or through spirits, of the shapes and complexions of men, or from dreams. This is ‘a notable example of the wild curiosity of our nature to grasp at and anticipate future things, as if we had not enough to do to digest the present’. 

Lucan, it seems, disapproved of prophesying; he said:

‘Let whatever thou art preparing be sudden. Let the mind of men be blind to fate in store; let it be permitted to the timid to hope.’

Similarly, Cicero says, ‘It is useless to know what shall come to pass; it is a miserable thing to be tormented with no purpose.’

Although less attention is paid to fortune-telling that in the past, we still have unusual cases occur from time to time, for example, the Italian Marquis (and ally of the French King) Franceso was so terrified at the good fortune prophesied towards Charles V that he became sure that the French would fall, and, in spite of having served the French King, he changed sides, with much regret and sadness.

 ‘A wise God covers with thick night the path of the future, and laughs at the man who alarms himself without reason.’ Hor. Od.

I, for my part, would sooner regulate my affairs with the role of a dice than by such idle and vain dreams. And indeed, many have lived their lives like this, according to chance. Plato, in the system of government that he models according to his own wishes, leaves to the state the decision of several important things, including marriage. The government would place so much importance in this ‘accidental choice’ of marriage that only the children born within their appointed couplings would be brought up in the country, and any begotten outside of the marriage that the state ordained would be thrust aside. Nonetheless, if any of these exiles showed sign of success, they could be recalled into the country, and if any of the retained children showed little expectation, they could be exiled.

I know many who study their calendars to predict future events, and whenever they see a prediction realized, they point this out as proof. In truth, it’s hardly surprising that ‘these alleged authorities sometime stumble upon a truth amongst an infinite number of lies.’ I cannot take such things seriously. I would be more convinced if there was a rule that the calendars always lied. Nobody records the predictions that don’t come true, because they are infinite and common, but if one does come true it is reported far and wide.

A story from Cicero:

Diogenes (surnamed, The Atheist) was shown a painting of several people that were saved from a terrible shipwreck. He was told, ‘look, you say the gods have no care for humans, what about all these people, saved through his special favour?’ He answered, ‘Where are the pictures of the far greater number of the ones that were cast away?’

I have seen men who, astonished at their own misfortune, abandon reason and superstitiously seek out in the stars the causes of their present situation. And sometimes, I find that they have been so ‘strangely successful’ in this. I think this is because the action somehow amuses their sharp and volatile wit. Those who are good at unfolding riddles are capable, in any sort of writing, to find out what they desire. But above all, what gives them the greatest room to play in is the obscure, ambiguous and fantastic gibberish that makes up prophetic talk, where the fortune-teller says nothing clearly and shrouds everything in riddle, so that one can interpret and apply it as they wish.

Socrates claimed to have a demon (literally ‘a divine something’) that frequently warned him – in the form of a ‘voice’ – against mistakes. This demon may actually have been no more than a kind of instinct or impulse, which came upon him without ‘the advice or consent of his judgment’. In a soul as enlightened as his own and so well-versed in wisdom and virtue, its not surprising that those inclinations were important and worthy of being followed, even though they were sudden, and undigested. It’s not strange to find oneself in a situation of agitation, where one makes a decision based on a sudden and forceful opinion. I think following one’s instinct can be extremely favourable. I myself have had ideas that seemed weak in reason, but nonetheless violently persuasive. I carried through with these ideas, and sometimes found the result to be so advantageous for me that one may have said that the idea had had something in it of ‘divine inspiration.’