Essays“To the Reader”“Of Cannibals”

Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions”

“Of Repentance”

Michel De Montaigne1533-1592

“To the Reader”“…written in good faith…”“I want to be seen here in my

simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I protray.”

“I myself am the matter of my book….”

“Of Cannibals” I: Utopian dreamsOf King Phyrrus: the lesson of the Roman “barbarians”

“Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason’s way, not by popular sway.” (1507)

Of Brazil: the lesson we learn of underestimation“I am afraid we have eyes bigger than our stomachs,

and more curiosity than capacity. We embrace everything, but we clasp only wind.” (1507)

Of Plato’s Atlantis and Aristotle’s Carthaginians: the lesson we learn from myth and legend of ideal lands (1507-8)“…clever people observe more things and more

curiously, but they interpret them…and they can’t help altering history a little.”

“We need a man either very honest, or so simple that he has not the stuff to build up false inventions and give them plausibility; and wedded to no theory.”

“Of Cannibals” II: Barbarism Redefined“…each man calls barbarism what is not his

practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of opinions and customs of the country we live in.” (1509)

“Those people are wild…whereas really it is those that we have changed artificially and led astray from the common order, that we should call wild. The former retain alive and vigorous their genuine, there most useful and natural, virtues and properties, which we have debased in the latter in in adapting them to gratify our corrupted taste.” (1509)

“Of Cannibals III” Barbarism Rethought“All our efforts cannot even succeed in

reproducing the nest of a little bird, its contexture, its beauty, and convenience; or even the web of a tiny spider.”

“These nations, then, [including ancient Palestine (my insert)] seem to me more barbarous in this sense, that they have been fashioned very little by the human mind, and are still very close to their original naturalness. The laws of nature still rule them, very little corrupted by ours.”

“Of Cannibals IV: What Plato Missed“This is a nation, I should say to Plato, in which

there is no sort of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name for a magistrate, or for political superiority, no custom of servitude, no riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupations, but leisure ones, no care for any but common kinship, no clothes, no agriculture, no metal, no use of wine or wheat. The very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, belittling, pardon—unheard of. How far from this perfection would he find the republic he imagined: Men fresh sprung from the gods.” [Seneca] (1510)

Cannibal Utopia: ValuesMen:valor against the enemy; love for their

wivesWomen: keep the men’s drink warm and

seasonedAll: their souls are immortal, and the gods

will judge them at death for reward or punishment.

Divination is a divine giftFalse prophets are cut into a thousand

pieces, or drawn and quartered.

Cannibal War: Natural Evil?With nations far away.Soldiers fight naked, with bows and wooden

swords.Victors return home with heads of the

vanquished and set them up in their doorway.

Prisoners are treated well, then quickly killed.

Then they roast and eat him in a communal meal; pieces are sent to those absent.This is solely for revenge, not nutrition.

Ourselves: Any Less Barbarous?I am heartily sorry that, judging our faults rightly,

we should be so blind to our own.” (1512)Worse to eat a man aliveWorse to put him on the rack.Worse to kill with dogs and pigs (on the pretext

of religion)Cannibalism was once ancient practice, and

considered it rational and healthful.But “Their warfare is wholly noble and generous,

and as excusable and beautiful as this disease can be; its only basis among them is rivalry in valor. They are not fighting for the conquest of new lands….” (1512)

Courage: Their Core Virtue“But there is not one in a whole century who does

not choose to die rather than to relax a single bit, by word or look, from the grandeur of an invincible courage; not one who would not rather be killed and eaten than so much as ask not to be.” (1513)

“The worth and value of a man is in his heart and his will; there lies his real honor. Valor is the strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own. He who falls obstinate in his courage, if he has fallen, he fights on his knees.” [Seneca] (1514)

“Our Ordinary Vices” Are More BarbarousTreacheryDisloyaltyTyrannyCruelty