Book 1, Chapter 27: Of Friendship (3 of 3)

In the final part of this moving essay on friendship, Montaigne compares the common friendship to the extraordinary, and discusses the differences between friends and acquaintances

I was so used to being his double in all places and in all things, that I feel no more than half of myself. There is no action or imagination of mine wherein I do not miss him

Cicero reports that when Blosius, best friend to Tiberius, was asked how much he would do for his friend, he replied, "All things". He was asked how he could say all things:

‘What if he commanded you to set fire to our temples?’

‘He would never ask me that," replied Blosius, ‘but if he did, I would obey him"

Those who think this answer is seditious do not understand the mystery, nor see that Blosius had Tiberius’s will in his sleeve, both by the power of friendship, and by the perfect knowledge he had of the man. They were more friends to one another than either enemies or friends to their country, or than friends to ambition and innovation. Having absolutely given up themselves to one another, each held completely the reins of the other's inclination.

Blosius’s answer was just as it should have been. If someone asked me, ‘If your will commanded you to kill your daughter, would you do it?’ What can I say except that I would? This expresses no consent to such an act, for I don’t have any suspicions of my own will. And just as little for Etienne. All the eloquence in the world cannot sway the certainty I have of the intentions and resolutions of my friend. Not one action of his, no matter what it is, could be presented to me, of which I could not immediately determine the moving cause. Our souls had drawn so unanimously together, they had considered each other with so ardent an affection, that I knew his as well as my own; and would have trusted my own interest much more willingly with him, than with myself.

Let no one compare a common friendship to mine with Etienne. I have experienced common friendships, even the most perfect ones, and no one should confuse the rules of the one and the other, for they would find themselves much deceived. In ordinary friendships, you have to be careful and thoughtful, because there is a possibility of the knot slipping. Chilo said, "Love him so as if you were one day to hate him; and hate him so as you were one day to love him." This precept, though abominable in the sovereign and perfect friendship I speak of, is nevertheless very sound as to the practice of the ordinary and customary ones. Aristotle often said, "O my friends, there is no friend".

In the friendship I speak of, presents and benefits by which other friendships are supported and maintained are not even mentioned. This is because our wills are one; the kindnesses that I give to myself, for example, do not affect my relationship with myself. I don’t feel obliged to myself for any service that I give myself. So it was with Etienne, with such truly perfect friends there is no idea of duties, no words of division and distinction, benefits, obligation, acknowledgment, entreaty, thanks, and the like. All things, wills, thoughts, opinions, goods, wives, children, honours, and lives, are in common. That absolute concurrence of affections is no other than one soul in two bodies (according to that very proper definition of Aristotle), they can neither lend nor give anything to one another. This is the reason why the lawgivers, to honour marriage with some resemblance of this divine alliance, forbid all gifts between man and wife, inferring that all should belong to each of them, and that they have nothing to divide or to give to each other.

If, in this kind of friendship, one gives to the other, the receiver of the benefit would be obliging his friend; because each wants, above all things, to be useful to the other. The receiver is thus giving his friend the satisfaction of doing that which he most desires. When the philosopher Diogenes wanted money, he used to say that he redemanded it of his friends, not that he demanded it. And to let you see the practical working of this, I will here produce an ancient and singular example. Eudamidas, a Corinthian, had two friends, Charixenus, a Sicyonian, and Areteus, a Corinthian. He was poor, and his two friends rich. When he was coming to die, he said in his will, "I bequeath to Areteus the maintenance of my mother, to support and provide for her in her old age; and to Charixenus I bequeath the care of marrying my daughter, and to give her as good a portion as he is able; and in case one of these chance to die, I hereby substitute the survivor in his place." They who first saw this will were amused at the contents: but the two friends accepted it with very great contentment, and when one of them, Charixenus, died within five days, Areteus nurtured the old woman with great care and tenderness, and he divided his estate in exactly half, giving one portion to his own daughter and the other to the daughter of Eudamidas. On one and the same day, he also solemnised both their nuptials.

This example is very full, but my only objection is that it speaks of more than one friend. In the perfect friendship I speak, each one gives himself so entirely to his friend, that he has nothing left to distribute to others. On the contrary, he is sorry that he is not double, treble, or quadruple, and that he has not many souls and many wills, to confer them all upon this one object. Common friendships will admit of division; one may love the beauty of this person, the good-humour of that, the liberality of a third, the paternal affection of a fourth, the fraternal love of a fifth, and so on, but this friendship that possesses the whole soul cannot possibly admit of a rival. If two at the same time should call to you for help, to which of them would you run? Should they require of you favours that are contrary, how could you serve them both? Should one urge you to keep something secret that you knew was of importance to the other to know, how would you disengage yourself? A unique and particular friendship dissolves all other obligations whatsoever. The secret I have sworn not to reveal to anyone else, I may without perjury communicate to him who is not another, but myself. It is enough of a miracle for a man to double himself, and those that talk of tripling don’t know what they’re saying.

These are effects that can’t be understood by those who have no experience of them. Though one may almost everywhere meet with men sufficiently qualified for a superficial acquaintance, yet in this, where a man is to deal from the very bottom of his heart, without any manner of reservation, it will be requisite that all the wards and springs be truly wrought and perfectly sure.

In relationships that hold a single purpose, we only have to worry about the imperfections that concern that purpose. It is of no importance to me what religion my doctor or lawyer is – that has nothing to do with the duties of friendship that they owe me. Similarly, I never inquire, when I am to take a footman, if he is chaste, I only ask whether he is diligent. I don’t care if my muleteer is a gambler, as long as if he is strong and able; or if my cook is a swearer, as long as he is a good cook. I don’t meddle in how other men raise their families, but only give an account of my method in my own. For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and serious; in bed, beauty before goodness; in common discourse the ablest speaker, whether or not he is sincere. 

Plutarch tells of a man who was found playing with his children on a rocking horse, who entreated the person who had surprised him in that posture to say nothing of it till he himself came to be a father, supposing that the fondness that would then possess his own soul, would render him a fairer judge of such an action. Like him, I also could wish to speak to those who have had experience of what I say: though, knowing how rarely it is to be found, I despair of meeting with any such judge. For even these discourses left us by antiquity upon this subject seem to me flat and poor, in comparison with the sense I have of it.

The ancient Menander declared him to be happy that had had the good fortune to meet with even the shadow of a friend. Doubtless, he had good reason to say so, especially if he spoke by experience, for in all honesty, if I compare all the rest of my life, as wonderful as it has been, with the four years I had the happiness to enjoy the sweet society of this excellent man, it is nothing but smoke, an obscure and tedious night. From the day that I lost him
I have only led a languishing life; and the very pleasures that present themselves to me, instead of acting as consolation, double my affliction for his loss. We were halves throughout, and to that degree, that I think, by outliving him, I defraud him of his part.

I was so used to being his double in all places and in all things, that I feel no more than half of myself. There is no action or imagination of mine wherein I do not miss him; as I know that he would have missed me: for as he surpassed me by infinite degrees in virtue and all other accomplishments, so he also did in the duties of friendship.

Book 1, Chapter 27: Of Friendship (1 of 3)

In the first part of this touching tribute to his best friend Etienne, Montaigne discusses friendship, and relationships between parent and child

There are some countries where it was custom for children to kill their fathers, and others where the fathers killed their children, to avoid their being an impediment to each other’s lives. Naturally, the expectations of the one depend upon the ruin of the other

I have noted the technique of a painter in my employ, and would not mind imitating it. This painter chooses a beautiful spot – the middle of some wall or panel – and draws his picture there with utmost art and care. Then, he covers the blank spaces around the picture with grotesque art, odd fantastic figures with no grace. In truth, what are the things I scribble here but grotesque and monstrous bodies, made of various parts but without any clear figure and containing, except by accident, no order, coherence, or proportion.

So in the second part I am like the painter, but in the first and better part, I fall very short of him. I don’t have the powers to produce a rich and finely polished piece. I have therefore thought it fit to borrow from Etienne de la Boetie, a piece that will honour and adorn the rest of my work. It is a discourse called ‘Voluntary Servitude’. Etienne wrote it before he was even eighteen years old, and it has since run through the hands of men of great learning, all of whom praise it, because it is finely written and as full as anything can be. And yet, one can confidently say it is far short of what he was able to do. In the more mature age when I knew him, Etienne had decided to commit his thought to writing, the way that I am doing now. We would have had a great many rare things that would have rivaled the best writings of antiquity if he had done so, for I know no man comparable to him. But he left nothing behind except this discourse, which he bequeathed to me along with his library and other papers, in his last will.

I came to know of Etienne because of this discourse, and only became acquainted with him long after he had written it. This discourse, in fact, proved to be the first cause and foundation of our friendship, which we afterwards improved and maintained for as long as God allowed us to be together. Our friendship was so perfect, inviolate, and entire that none like it could be found in any story, and amongst men of our time there is no sign or trace of such a thing. So much concurrence is required for such a friendship that it is much if fortune allows it to pass even once in three ages.

There is nothing to which nature seems to make us as inclined as to society. Aristotle said that good legislators respected friendship more than justice. The most supreme point of its perfection is that those who derive pleasure, profit, public or private interest, or any nourishment from a friendship, other than friendship itself, cannot enjoy one as beautiful and generous as those that don’t. Also, the four ancient kindnesses: natural, social, hospitable, and sexual – either separately or jointly – cannot help in making a true and perfect friendship.

The relationship of children and their parents is based on respect. Friendship is nourished by a communication that is impossible between parent and child, due to great differences. This communication would offend the duties of nature, for neither are all the secret thoughts of fathers fit to be communicated to their children (this would lead to an indecent familiarity), nor can advice and reproofs (one of the principal offices of friendship) be performed by the son towards the father. There are some countries where it was custom for children to kill their fathers, and others where the fathers killed their children, to avoid their being an impediment to each other’s lives. Naturally, the expectations of the one depend upon the ruin of the other.

Many great philosophers have made nothing of parent-child relationships. When Aristippus was pressed about the affection he owed to his children, he spat forcefully and said that that too had come out of him, and that we also breed worms and lice. Plutarch refused to reconcile with his brother, saying he would not give him extra importance just for ‘coming out of the same hole’.

The word itself is fine and delectable, and for that reason Etienne and I called each other brother. But the complication of interests, the division of estates, and the fact that the wealth of the one is also the property of the other weakens and relaxes the fraternal bond. Brothers who pursue their fortunes by advancing along the same path often jostle and hinder one another. Besides, why do the correspondences of manners, parts, and inclinations that beget true and perfect friendships have to meet in blood relations? Father and son may have completely different temperaments; my son, or my brother, may be passionate, ill-natured, or a fool. These are friendships more imposed on us by the law and natural obligation and less by choice.

Personally, however, I have not experienced anything to corroborate, as I have the best and most indulgent father, even now when I am so old, that ever was. And he himself is descended from a family for many generations famous and exemplary for brotherly concord.

In part 2 of this essay, Montaigne discusses, amongst other things, the difference between friendship and the love one feels for a woman. Soon to come … 

Book 1, Chapter 10: Of Quick or Slow Speech

In this quirky piece Montaigne outlines the difference between the witty speaker and the ponderous. Then, he muses over the benefits of being prepared vs. acting spontaneously, and he wonders where his own words come from.

‘All graces were never yet given to any one man’ – a verse from one of Le Brebis’s sonnets

Some are very gifted in the art of speaking; they have a quick and easy wit, ready on all occasions and never taken by surprise. Others are heavy and slow, unable to say anything they have not ‘long premeditated and taken great pains to fit and prepare’.

When we teach young women sports and exercises to enhance and showcase their beauty and their character, we should teach them eloquence too. At the moment, it seems to be a skill that belongs principally to the lawyers and preachers of our age. I for one think that the preacher should be a slow speaker and the lawyer quick, because the preacher can allow himself all the time he wants to prepare. After all, ‘his career is performed in an even … line, without stop or interruption.’ The lawyer, on the other hand, has to prepared to defend a number of different cases, and to face all kinds of ‘unexpected objections and replies’, when the opposition attempts to jostle him off course or have him think up new answers and defences.

Still, lawyers are not always quick-witted. Let me share the example of Pope Clement and King Francis, where the Pope was asked to have a speech delivered on his behalf to the King and his subjects. The man chosen to make the speech was Mr. Poyet, a very experienced lawyer, known for his eloquence. Poyet had prepared the speech long in advance, in Paris. On the day of the speech, the Pope, afraid that the prepared speech was not appropriate, told the King of a speech he felt more suiting to the time and place, but very different from the one Poyet had taken so much time in preparing. The King liked it, and Poyet was asked to contrive a new speech. He found himself completely unable to do so, and in the end someone else gave the speech instead.

The lawyer’s job is more difficult than that of the preacher; and yet, in my opinion we see more passable lawyers in France than preachers. ‘It should seem that the nature of wit is to have its operation prompt and sudden, and that of judgment to have it more deliberate and more slow’. But he who stays silent, in order to take his time in deciding what to say, and he who finds that time does not better his speech at all, are equally unhappy.

Severus Cassius, it is said, spoke best when he was unprepared to speak. He was more obliged then, to fortune than to his own diligence, and it was actually an advantage to him to be interrupted whilst speaking. His adversaries were afraid, therefore, to annoy him, ‘lest his anger should redouble his eloquence.’ I’m familiar with this kind of disposition – so impatient of tedious preparation that it can only perform well if it works with a care-free light-heartedness. We say of some paintings that ‘they stink of oil and of the lamp’ because laborious handling can sometimes lend a rough harshness to work. Besides, the over-worrying about doing well can result in a mind ‘too far strained and overbent’, and this mind ‘breaks and hinders itself’ like water that is unable to escape from the neck of a bottle or a narrow path, due to its own force and abundance. Also, this type of laborious and painstaking style of work cannot be disordered or stimulated with the same kinds of ‘passions of fury’ as Cassius in his speeches.

As for me, I always perform worst when prepared. Accident and chance play a larger role in anything that comes from me than I myself play. The situation, the people I am around, even the rising and falling of my own voice, extract more from my mind than I myself could find if I tried to use my mind myself. Thus, ‘the things I say are better than those I write, if either were to be preferred where neither is worth anything’. Also, I’ve noted that ‘I do not find myself where I seek myself’. I discover things more by chance than by reasoning. Sometimes, I hit upon something when I write, and it appears clever and fresh to me, although maybe to others it will seem dull and heavy. But let’s leave these compliments; everyone talks this way of his perceived talent. 


When I speak, ‘I am already so lost that I know not what I was about to say’ and sometimes the person I am addressing finds out what I mean before I do. If I were to stop myself every time this happened, I would, in fact, say nothing. Often, the meaning of what I have said is made clear to me long after I've actually said it. 

Book 1, Chapter 9: Of Liars

In this wonderfully long and meandering essay, Montaigne first writes about his own poor memory, and how it can be beneficial, at times, to have a bad memory. Then he complains of talkative people, and finally of liars. He talks about two different types of liars, and illustrates with some personal as well as royal examples. 

I have a worse memory than any man I know. ‘My other faculties are all sufficiently ordinary … but in this, I think myself very rare and singular, and deserving to be thought famous’. Plato was certainly right when he called the memory ‘a great and powerful goddess’.

In my country, when someone wants to say someone has no sense, they sometimes say ‘he has no memory’. When I complain of my own defective memory, people do not believe me – they think I am calling myself a fool. They do not differentiate then, between memory and understanding. This is unfair; experience daily shows us, in fact, that a strong memory often goes hand in hand with weak judgment. My friends also do me a disservice when they bring my friendship into question over the issue of my weak memory. Truth is I ‘am so perfect in nothing as in friendship’. But when I forget a request or a promise made, or I forget to say or do or conceal something, they sometimes think this is because I don’t care for them. It should be enough that I feel the misery and inconvenience of neglecting something important to my friend, without being accused of malice for it. Malice couldn’t be more contrary to my personality.

However, I derive some comfort from my weakness. First, this weakness has helped me avoid a worse one, namely, ambition, an intolerable defect in those who take on public affairs. Also, Nature has strengthened my other faculties to compensate for the weakness in memory. If I had had the ideas and opinions of others ever-present with me through the benefits of a good memory, I would have let my judgment and reasoning depend upon their reports, without every bothering to work things out for myself. Also, I would have been talkative. The memory contains much more information, after all, than the intellect. If my memory had been faithful to me I could have ‘deafened all my friends with my babble’. I have observed in several close friends whose memories ‘supply them with an entire and full view of things’, that they ‘begin their narrative so far back, and crowd it with’ so much useless information, that even if the story in itself is good, they destroy it, so you are left either cursing the ‘strength of their memory or the weakness of their judgment’.  And it’s impossible to cut them off or make them get to the point once they have started. Its like with horses; ‘there is nothing wherein the force of a horse is so much seen as in a round and sudden stop’. Even those of my talkative friends who are being quite precise seem to be unable to stop, because, while they are searching for a good line to conclude with, they go on randomly, straggling about on trivialities ‘as men staggering upon weak legs’. Worst of all are the old men who remember the stories of their past well, but forget how often they have already told them. This can be very tiring.

There is another advantage to my weak memory: I remember less the injuries that I have received. Maybe I should keep a list of injuries or have a prompter, like the ruler Darius, who, so as not to forget the injuries caused to him by the Athenians, ordered one of his employees to whisper into his ear at every mealtime, ‘Sir, remember the Athenians’. Remembering less also has the advantage that the places I revisit and the books I reread ‘smile upon me with a fresh novelty.’

It’s not without good reason that they say, ‘he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying’. The grammarians distinguish between an untruth (something we say that is false but that we believe to be true) and a lie. The definition of a lie in Latin, from which our French is taken, is to say something that we know in our conscience to be untrue.

I’m going to discuss two types of liars now

a. The ones who make up completely what they say. That is, they wholly invent stories and events that never took place.

b. Those who change and disguise a true story.

The second type, who change true stories, will find it difficult to avoid being trapped at one time or another, because “the real truth of the thing, having first taken possession of the memory, and being there lodged … it will be difficult that it should not represent itself to the imagination, and shoulder out falsehood’. The false version doesn’t have as much of a ‘sure and settled footing’ in the memory as the other, true version. The ‘first true knowledge’ may thus make the liar forget those that are untrue and made up by him.

Those that completely invent a story have no ‘true version’ of the tale to ‘jostle their invention’ and so there is ‘less danger of tripping’. Still, the made-up story can easily escape the memory. I’ve had funny experiences of this type of liar, with men who change their speech according to the situation in which they are speaking, and according to the person they address. They tell one person one story and another a different one. And when their listeners ‘confer notes’ and discover the lie, they are ridiculously trapped, ‘for what memory can be sufficient to retain so many different shapes as they have forged upon one and the same subject?’ I have known people who try to gain the reputation of being great storytellers, of the type described above, but ‘they do not see that if they have the reputation of it, the effect can no longer be.’

‘In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice.’ All we have is our word. We should take ‘the horror and gravity’ of this fact very seriously. I sometimes see parents reprimand their children for innocent mistakes. In my opinion, only lying (and obstinacy, which is of a lower form) should be punished. Otherwise, these qualities increase as the children grow up, ‘after a tongue has once got the knack of lying, ‘tis not to be imagined how impossible it is to reclaim’. We sometimes see, indeed, honest men enslaved to this vice. My tailor, for instance, is an honest lad who never tells the truth, even if the truth is to his advantage. If falsehood had, like truth, only one face, we would be on better terms, because then whatever he told me, I would assume the contrary is true. But no, ‘the reverse of a truth has a hundred thousand forms, and a field indefinite’.  The Pythagoreans see good as being certain and finite, and evil being uncertain and infinite. ‘There are a thousand ways to miss the white, there is only one to hit it’.

And how much less sociable is false speaking than silence? 

- King Francis boasted that he had outwitted the ambassador to the Duke of Milan, a man who was very famous for his own wit. The ambassador had been sent to apologise on behalf of the Duke for this reason:

The King, in order to maintain some intelligence about goings-on in Milan, had sent a representative to be with the Duke. In effect, he was an ambassador, this man, but he was to pretend to be an ordinary man, residing there for his own reasons. A Milanese helper of the King, Merveille, was selected for this role. He was given letters of recommendation and other credentials, and the Duke took him into his court. Presumably, his true role was discovered, because the Duke held a sham two-day trial where he accused Merveille of murder. Then, he had him beheaded.

The King made inquiries, and the Duke’s ambassador arrived, with a long falsified story of what had occurred. He insisted that the Duke had never considered Merveille anything other than a private gentleman in Milan on his own business. The King pressed him with several ‘objections and demands’. For example, he asked why the execution had been done at night, as if by stealth. The ‘poor confounded ambassador’ stumbled, and said that the Duke had too much respect for the King to perform it in the day. It can be guessed that this ambassador was admonished when he went home, ‘for having so grossly tripped in the presence of so delicate a nostril as King Francis’.

- Pope Julius sent a messenger to the King of England, urging him to wage war against the French King Francis. The King’s reaction was hesitant; he worried about putting enough resources together to attach such a powerful king as Francis. The ambassador replied that he too had thought of these difficulties, and told the Pope about them. This response was ‘so directly opposite to the thing propounded and the business he came about, which was immediately to incite him to war’ that the King reasoned that the ambassador was clearly on the side of the French. He told Pope Julius of his suspicion, and on his return, the ambassador’s home was confiscated, and he only just escaped losing his head.