Montaigne, Michel, Eyquem de

MONTAIGNE, MICHEL, EYQUEM DE. - Jurist, philosopher, educationist, b. at Montaigne, near Bordeaux, on 28 February 1533, d. there on 13 September 1592. He was the firstborn of a family of nobles descended from the mercantile bourgeoisie, and owner of the castle of the same name (an ecclesiastical fief). He studied at the Collège de Guyenne and in the Faculty of Arts at Bordeaux (1539-49), then law at the University of Toulouse. He was (1554) a councillor of the Cour des Aides of Périgueux and (1557) a member of the Parliament of Bordeaux. In 1562 he took part in Paris, and on behalf of his city, in the profession of the Catholic faith decided by that Parliament against the Huguenots. In 1570 he left the magistracy to devote himself to literary studies and to court offices. A Catholic partisan in the first civil war (1572-74), in 1577 he was a court gentleman of Henry of Navarre (Henry IV), remaining nevertheless faithful to Henry

MONTAIGNE, MICHEL, ÉVOGEN de Portrait. Engraving from a contemporary painting.

lia at the end of the 16th century: Giornale di viaggio di M. de M., Città di Castello 1895) merely relates, without any literary intent, his travel impressions, especially concerning the city of Rome, where he was received by the Pope and frequented the most illustrious personages, antiquarians and courtiers, and concerning Loreto, where he went to discharge a vow of his to the Madonna. The principal work, in which his wholly distinctive genius reveals itself, is the Essays (1st ed., in 2 vols., Paris 1561; 2nd ed. ibid. 1581; 3rd ed. Bordeaux 1580; 4th ed. Paris 1588) in which, besides many passages here and there, he added to Book II the Apologie de Raymond Sebonde (II, 12), whose Theologia naturalis he had already translated, and a third book. The 5th, posthumous edition (Paris 1595) carries the additions annotated by M. himself in a copy of the Bordeaux edition. The Essays are on the Index (decree of 28 January 1676).

M.'s thought stands in substantial contradiction with his proven Catholicism. It is naturalistic and sceptical. Its naturalism has as its mystical background the nature created by God, but which lies beyond the life generated by it and in which man recognizes himself as meaning and reason. Reason, by natural grace, can therefore furnish only the matter of religious faith; the form of faith is by supernatural grace. Philosophy, as the exercise of human powers in the study of happiness and salvation, must therefore conclude sceptically that they are limited both in origin and in end, and must aim at the contemplation of death, which will take away pain: whence the superiority of Pyrrhonism and of the doctrine of suspension of judgment (v. CHARRON, PIERRE [friend of M.]). But the individual, in limiting the claims of reason, can develop wisdom and virtue sufficient to regulate himself in earthly life and to form a "heroic" personality. This comes about through experience, which comes to the aid of the uncertainties of thought, which can neither modify nor invent the laws of the world, but only ascertain them (III, 13); and through education, which nourishes us with the wisdom and eloquence of the ancients in order to resist the adversities of nature (I, 26).

Santino Caramella

MONTAIGNE THE PEDAGOGUE

The Essays may be called a work unique of its kind: a most varied collection

III. In 1580-81 he traveled for his education in Burgundy (Domrémy), in the Rhenish Germany, in Italy (Nov. 1580-Sept. 1581: Journal de voyage, ed. 1774). He was mayor of Bordeaux in 1582-85. In 1590 he addressed to Henry IV a sort of political testament proposing peace in the name of Catholicism.

In the Journal des voyages (whose manuscript was discovered and published in Paris in 1774 [Italian version by A. d'Ancona, L'Ita-

of maxims, observations, reflections, proverbs, anecdotes, on all the subjects that crossed his mind or flowed from his pen, with an equal variety of quotations from Cicero, Plato, Horace, Martial, Virgil, Plutarch, Seneca, Diogenes Laertius, Livy to Boccaccio and Ariosto; not, however, heaped up at random and with effort, but drawn from studied readings assimilated to his particular cast of mind. Nor does he aim at any other purpose than to place before the eyes of friends and acquaintances what he is ("I have presented myself to myself as argument and as subject; I myself am the matter of my book") with his ideas, his failings, his feelings, his ways of seeing; all in a form not studied, but simple, which makes him a lively, sharp, effective writer. Above all the Essays have a great importance in pedagogy; to this subject belong the three essays: Du pédantisme (I, 25), De l'éducation des enfants (I, 26); De l'affection des pères aux enfants (II, 8) for his spirit open to new subjects, antagonistic to the methods very much in vogue at the time, without on the other hand amounting to a true treatise writer.

The main points may be gathered in the following principles: a) ban on pedantry, a culture made of words and formulas, of grammatical and logical rules, rather know-it-all than true science, useless to life: as plants are suffocated by too great an abundance of humors and the lamp by an excess of oil, so the intelligence by too great a quantity of matter. b) Ban on the bookish mania: one must educate not so much on books as on the great book of nature, always open to the gaze, always varied in its spectacles: "We toil only to fill the memory and leave the intelligence and the conscience empty... to know by heart is not to know... it is only a bookish capacity. The experience of men will therefore be useful, the study of the foreign languages of neighboring nations, visits to foreign countries; thus perspectives are widened and one no longer judges from a petty and parochial point of view, but becomes accustomed to considering ourselves citizens of the earth." c) Aim at life: "If science is not to help give a better temper to the child's soul and more soundness to his judgment, I would rather he spent his time playing ball; at least his body would become more slender and strong." Every other knowledge is harmful to one who does not possess that of goodness. d) Active, objective method: a healthy curiosity must be aroused in the child: "Let him see all that is singular around him; a building, a fountain, a man, a battlefield, the direction of the winds, the character of persons." Thus knowledge becomes interior to the child, who will not only know the definition of the virtues, but will put them into practice in his own conduct, becoming serious, prudent and virtuous. e) The teacher should be "a well-made head" rather than "a well-filled head," because he must not aim to stuff the memory, but to form the judgment. Let him therefore accustom the pupil not to accept ready-made phrases and judgments, empty formulas, and to hate conventionalism; but to reason, to form an idea of things and persons. f) Personal effort must be promoted at all costs: "Let the teacher have repeated under a hundred aspects what the pupil has learned, to see whether he has well understood the idea and has known how to make it his own. The bees suck the flowers here and there, but afterward they make honey, which is their own production, and is neither thyme nor marjoram. g) Discipline is needed, but not that of the rod, and of punishments alone; but that which has gentleness as its foundation. True method: "a severe gentleness." h) Care for physical education, since man is composed of soul and body: "It is not enough to invigorate the soul, the body must also be invigorated." Therefore accustom the child to cold and heat, to fatigue and pain, to gymnastics and play. To raise not a pretty little dandy, but a virile young man.

One must not, however, fail to note certain shadowy areas in M.'s pedagogical observations. He insists too much on the education of the intelligence, while neglecting the other faculties, which are also important: memory, inclinations, characters; likewise the arts, which have a strong formative power; as for female education his ideas are quite weak and incomplete: a woman, for him, is wise enough when she knows how to distinguish between her husband's shirt and his jacket. Still more deficient is the absence of the pedagogical value of religion, without which a strong and frank conscience cannot be formed. Curious, then, is the idea that the love brought to one's own children must yield to the love of the fruits of one's own genius, because these are much more truly ours.

Despite these gaps M. is rightly considered one of the fathers of pedagogy; the pedagogue "representative of good sense"; who starts from the admirable principle "the child is not a vessel to be filled, but a lamp to be lit" and later pedagogues have more or less derived from him, at least until the time of Rousseau.

Celestino Testore