HUMANISM: ERASMUS AND MONTAIGNE
Each man’s education is a unique achievement. There are as many kinds
of education as there are kinds of men. In every educated mind there
is a mixture of temperament and learning, a selection and emphasis, an
elusive quality like that which haunts a work of art. We may recognize
this elusive something but we cannot define it or describe it. Such
words as wisdom, virtue, independence of judgment, freedom, cannot give
us the meaning of education. We must know the educated man. If you
read and understand Erasmus of Rotterdam, you will see what education
is better than if you read all the books written about theories of
education. A liberally educated person is like Erasmus.
I do not mean that Erasmus is the only type of educated mind, or that
the educated man is like him in all respects. Certainly I would not
suggest that one living in the twentieth century should strive to
imitate a scholar who lived in the fifteenth. Change of environment
calls for a different response. But there are certain constant factors.
New modes of response may be necessary in order to recreate the
values which men of other times discovered, values the loss of which
in our times would cheapen our whole existence. If this were not so
there would be no point in trying to learn anything from men of other
times. There are those who have such faith in the infallibility of
contemporary opinion that they are convinced the past has nothing to
teach us. The ways of the present are “progress,” and progress is its
own criterion of the good and needs no other guide than the interests
of the hour. Such persons are usually to be found cheering for “the
latest thing.” As a rule they are people without background or reserve.
We live in the present, to be sure. But if we are really to live in it
and are not content merely to act a part in the passing show, we must
consider the values which are at issue in the responses we make. To
that end there is enlightenment in knowing the values for which other
men of other times struggled. The kind of living we are to achieve with
our environment is not determined by the environment itself, but by the
kind of men and women we are--by what we bring to our environment from
the widest possible knowledge of what is worth doing. Men like Erasmus
and Montaigne lived better lives than most of their contemporaries
because of the wisdom of the ages that was in them. It may be said that
other men in their times also shared this ancient knowledge, for was
not The Revival of Learning at its height? Many did and were better
men for it. Many were fascinated by the Renaissance who merely shared
its externalities but did not thereby become wiser men; they remained
creatures of their own times. It became “the latest thing” to ape the
ancients without understanding them. Among obscurantists, and fanatics
and corruptionists, Erasmus and Montaigne lived like educated men.
At the close of the fifteenth century, it was said, “Whatever is
artistic, finished, learned and wise is called Erasmian.” It is
difficult to speak of Erasmus except in terms of the superlative.
The most broadly educated man of his times, he was not only the
representative scholar of his generation; he remains an example to
us all of the truly civilized man. His polished wit, his humanity,
his gentle irony, his unfailing reasonableness, his ability to see
through cant and superstition, his philosophic calm in the midst of
intense partisan strife, his good taste and sense of proportion: these
qualities of mind belong to no one age, they are the constants of which
I spoke a moment ago; they are the essentials of a civilized attitude
toward life in any age. Without them man is a barbarian.
The Great Humanist saw as no one else did the spiritual significance
of the revival of learning, and he came to represent all that was best
in it. Scholarship to him was more than erudition and pedantry and
literary style. He found in classic literature a window opening upon a
new vision of the meaning and possibilities of living. He became the
champion of a new way of life and thought. Past and present met and
mingled in his thought and became a new life of reason. “He quietly
stepped out of medievalism,” the first modern man, the forerunner of
Descartes and Voltaire.
In a time when all human interests were submerged in religion, Erasmus
sought to humanize the Church, and leave it an international fellowship
of culture, free of dogma and superstition. He turns from knowledge of
divine things to human letters as the guide to living, and from blind
faith to reason. The Gospel becomes for him the “philosophy of Christ.”
With equal impartiality he could translate the mocking dialogues of
Lucian and provide the coming Reformation with its first standard Greek
text of the New Testament. His boldness in omitting passages from this
latter work, which he found not to be authentic, and his occasional
unconventional commentary on the text brought him under the suspicion
of being at heart a sceptic and a heretic.
With bigotry and persecution almost universal all around him, Erasmus
taught tolerance, moderation, respect for truth. In a splendid
biographical study, Professor Preserved Smith says that Erasmus’s
“Colloquies” did more for the spread of liberal ideas than any book
of the sixteenth century. Another historian says, “Almost all the
liberating ideas on which the international culture of the present
rests, are present in germ in his thought.”
The continent of Europe in the year fifteen hundred was culturally far
inferior to Asia. Compared to the civilization of Greece and Rome, all
Christendom was barbarian. The wave of interest in education which in
the thirteenth century had caused the universities to become crowded,
while it had not passed, had subsided into a dull scholastic dialectic.
Education had little effect upon the life of the masses or their
rulers. In Italy art and letters were breaking away from religious
tradition, but the new spirit which prevailed at Florence, Padua, and
Rome had little sway north of the Alps. Mediæval Christianity had
reached its culmination and was in a period of moral and intellectual
decline. Thoughtful men everywhere were dissatisfied. The time was soon
to come when this dissatisfaction could no longer be held in restraint,
when throughout a century of bloodshed, civil war, and violence and
hatred such as Europe had never known, the Church would be torn asunder
and anarchy and terror reign until modern nationalism and industrialism
could painfully emerge from the smouldering ruins.
It is said that when Leo X ascended the Papal throne, there was placed
above his head in Latin the inscription, “_Nunc tempora Pallas
habet_,”--Now Athene reigns. Not many years were to pass before the
sacred walls, which had under the Pontificate of his predecessor been
decorated by Michelangelo and Raphael, were to echo the sound of church
bells ringing out the tidings of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day.
Soon all over Europe the floodgates would be open and Christendom would
be inundated by torrents of fury. Soon in defense of the sacred Gospel,
Christians would tear at Christians’ throats. With instruments of iron,
tongues would be wrenched from the mouths of men and women, eyes gouged
from their sockets, limbs broken on the rack. The bed of torture and
the heap of burning faggots would become commonplace spectacles for
the public to gaze upon. For a hundred years and more Europe was to
be ablaze with war on every hand, until it should sink exhausted by
the mutual destruction of Christian armies into almost unimaginable
misery and poverty. And this struggle which was destined to breed
hatreds and sectarian divisions lasting even till today, might have
been avoided, probably could have been averted, could the spirit of
Erasmus have prevailed. Protestants hold the Catholics responsible for
the horrors of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Catholics
hold the Protestants responsible. Both were equally guilty, for they
were equally ignorant and barbarous and deluded with superstition. This
is the kind of thing that happens and always will happen when ignorance
breaks loose in the world. Then in the general madness even learned men
like Melanchthon and Œcolampadius and the Medicis lose their poise and
become partisans.
Erasmus during the most trying time kept his sanity. And both sides
denounced him bitterly. He was accused of taking a cowardly middle of
the road position. What neither group of militant partisans could
see was that Erasmus, far from being in the middle of the road, was
not on their wretched highway at all. He remained true to the issue
for which he had struggled from the first. Erasmus saw that what was
wrong with Europe, indeed what really gave rise to the abuses of
mediæval society, was barbarism sanctioned by religious superstition.
He knew that vice and folly and brutality and hypocrisy were not to
be removed by religious warfare, but rather deepened. He saw the same
spirit of doctrinaire scholasticism, the same intolerance and cruelty
and pious ignorance on both sides of the coming controversy. He knew
that conditions could be improved only when the leading minds of
contemporary Europe could acquire the decencies which characterize the
liberally educated of all times. Whether history has vindicated Erasmus
in this conviction of his is a matter concerning which opinions differ.
I think it has. Such liberty and cultural progress as the modern world
enjoys it would seem to have derived from the Erasmian tradition, not
that of Luther, Calvin or Wesley. Protestantism without the humanism
of Erasmus is Fundamentalism. And conversely, Paris and Vienna and
Munich are nominally Catholic, but they have known the influence of
Erasmus and Voltaire to a degree that many Protestant communities have
not known such influence, and so far as the advance of civilization is
concerned, I think that life in such localities will compare rather
favorably with that of certain strictly Protestant communities. I
believe that those movements of the present day which have greatest
spiritual significance and value--modernism in religion, liberalism in
education, the dawning recognition of the necessity of intelligence and
of individual responsibility in matters of belief and conduct, efforts
for the humanization of industry and the state--are but the belated
resumption of the humanizing work begun in northern Europe by Erasmus
and others and broken off by the Reformation. From this point of view
the Reformation is not the continuation of the Renaissance, but would
appear to have been something of a bourgeois reaction against it.
Long before the storm broke, Erasmus was carrying on a brave work
against ignorance and obscurantism. In our times, we have seen
something of the conflict of science with theology. This issue is
tame in comparison with the conflict of theology with Humanism which
occupied scholars at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is
difficult for us now to imagine that there could be bitter opposition
to the teaching of the Latin and Greek literatures. The issue is
blurred for us. Theologians are less acrimonious than they once
were, and Scholasticism has long been on the decline. The classics
moreover, are taught in such a manner that few students see the deep
spiritual chasm which separates the Christian approach to life from
that of the Latin and Greek poets and philosophers. It was pretty well
recognized on both sides of the dispute that the ancients were pagans,
rank heathen. Those who opposed these unchristian writers did so for
much the same reason that early Christians in the second century had
assailed “the present evil world” and all its works.
In Italy the Renaissance tended for a time to take on a definitely
pagan aspect. Imitation of the ancients became a rather ridiculous
gesture, and the fad was often carried to extremes which were little
less than childish. Cardinals assumed the speech and manners of ancient
Roman senators. Sermons were preached in sonorous Ciceronian style. In
certain quarters Christ was identified with Apollo, and God the Father
with Jupiter. Nuns were spoken of as “vestal virgins,” and painters and
sculptors created figures of Mars and Venus and mingled these and other
heathen idols with the images of the saints.
The apparent sympathy of high ecclesiastical personages with such
goings on was one of the causes of the hostility to the Papacy which
later swept over northern Europe.
The sanity of Erasmus saved him and helped save the revival of learning
from such superficiality. He found in Humanism a balanced and serious
wisdom which he strove to combine with the Christian philosophy of
life. The synthesis he achieved was not a new system of theology;
it was the gradual merging of an older outlook upon life into a new
outlook, a transformation of intellectual interests. Professor Smith
quotes a passage which indicates something of Erasmus’s position
regarding the classics. That this literature was pagan he well knew,
but its paganism did not to his mind exclude it from the spiritual life
of mankind. He says of an essay of Cicero’s, “A heathen wrote this to
heathen and yet his moral principles have justice, sincerity, truth,
fidelity to nature; nothing false or careless is in them.” “When I read
certain passages of these great men, ... I can hardly refrain from
saying, ‘St. Socrates, pray for me.’”
Erasmus found himself the leader of Humanism as an educational
movement. He stated the issue in precisely the terms that gave sincere
and intelligent men a new vision of the spiritual life. And he did it
with such a wealth of learning, such reasonableness, such unanswerable
irony and wit that his name became the symbol of the new scholarship.
His books had a larger circulation than those of any other writer of
his generation. And as for many years he travelled about Europe,
moving from one center of learning to another, his coming was hailed
with triumph. Scholars everywhere attended him, sat at his feet, took
up the cause he championed. The Humanists were winning victory after
victory and could look forward to the triumph of their movement in the
education of western Europe. How rapidly the spread and advance of
culture might have proceeded or what directions it might have taken if
men’s thoughts had not been turned again to theological controversy
and to bitter warfare, no one can say. Perhaps the masses were not
prepared to accept or tolerate so sudden a change as that for which
Erasmus strove, for Humanism was a much more radical departure from
the mental habits and standards of value of the Middle Ages than was
Protestantism. The leaders of the Renaissance did not accept the
Reformation because they regarded it as a backward step. Perhaps they
had themselves gone too far ahead. Perhaps the representation of the
good man as the intelligent man, an ancient Greek idea which the
Humanists revived, will always be offensive to the masses. Erasmus
seemed--he still seems to many--to have lacked moral earnestness. He
generated light and what mankind wants is heat. At any rate, the masses
in the nations where the new scholarship was being carried, showed
that they did not want the pagan wisdom. Instead they suddenly became
possessed with a longing for the primitive faith of the first Christian
century, or what they thought was that faith. They followed the leader
who gave them not insight, but a moral issue.
Both Luther and Erasmus had visited Rome. Each was impressed by the
“sight of antique monuments.” Each saw evidence of the corruption and
veniality which along with luxury surrounded the gay Papal court.
Luther later spoke of Rome as the “sink of every abomination,” a
conviction which doubtless had much to do with determining the course
of events which led to his break with Papal authority.
Of the effect of all this on the mind of Erasmus, we have the record in
a book, one of the great classics of literature, “In Praise of Folly.”
In the letter of dedication to his friend Sir Thomas More, Erasmus says
that in his late travels from Italy, that he might not trifle away his
time in the rehearsal of old wives’ fables, he began reflecting upon his
past studies, and thought it good to divert himself by drawing up a
“panegyrick upon Folly.” He suggests that this trifling may be a whet
to more serious thought and that “comical matters may be so treated
of, as that a reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap more
advantage than from some more big and stately argument.” He hints that
he does not wish to be so carping that he will fail to instruct, and
says that he who points indifferently at all, can hardly be accused of
being angry with any one man or one vice. And he wonders at the “tender
humor” of an age in which some are so “preposterously devout that they
would sooner wink at the greatest affront against our Saviour, than be
content that a prince or a pope should be nettled with the least joke
or gird, especially in what relates to their ordinary customs.”
Here we have the characteristic reactions of two contrasting types
of men who probably can never understand each other. To Luther the
vices of Rome are sin; to Erasmus they are folly. The one is filled
with moral indignation at the iniquity of the world, and rushes into
the fray to stamp it out, puts it on the defensive, attacks it in its
stronghold. The other makes iniquity ridiculous, renders it defenseless
by laughing away its pretexts at justification, showing it to itself
as folly and reminding all men that their foolishness may be removed
only by wisdom. No doubt without more moral indignation in the world
than Erasmus seems to have shown there would be too easy tolerance of
abuse. On the other hand, without his insight and scepticism and irony,
indignation turns to malice, men lose their perspective, and their
power of self-criticism; they become so intent upon the struggle for
righteousness that they forget what they are struggling for, and when
the great cause finally triumphs, it carries to victory the same old
iniquities in new dress.
It is evident from a reading of “In Praise of Folly” that Erasmus’
thought made deeper inroads into the very spirit of Mediæval thought
and religion than did Luther’s moral indignation. It undermined many
things that the Reformer left standing. “In Praise of Folly” was
written eight years before Luther’s break with the Pope, and it reveals
a mind emancipated from much more than the Papacy. The man who could
write this satire must have regarded the Reformation as a quarrel which
dealt with only the surface of the problem. I do not wonder that later
both Catholics and Protestants considered him a sceptic. It is my
belief that he was too sceptical to become greatly excited about the
Reformation. He is impressed with the whole stupid comedy of the life
about him.
Knowledge of this book should be part of every man’s education. It has
much more than a historical interest for the modern student. In form
it is an oration which Folly delivers in praise of herself. She makes
a good case; perhaps too good a case. Folly says that however slightly
she is esteemed in the common vogue of the world--being often decried
even by those who are themselves the greatest fools--yet she is _the
deity who really rules the world_ and is the source of most men’s
happiness. “At first sight of me you all unmask and appear in more
lively colors.”
Without Folly society would go to pieces. Indeed no one would ever be
born, for would women ever have children or marry except for Folly? And
except for Folly marriages would be few and divorces many. How could
the government exist without Folly? Have not wise legislators in all
times recognized the necessity of fooling the people? After showing
how Folly reigns in the arts and the professions, and how each nation
has its pet folly and self-conceit, the speaker sums up, “I am so
communicative and bountiful as to let no particular person pass without
some token of my favor, whereas other deities bestow gifts sparingly
and to their elects only.”
Let us note this reference to Folly as “deity.” Does Erasmus mean to
imply that Folly is the deity that mankind really worships and has been
worshipping all the while? He makes Folly say,
“Well, but there are none (say you) build any altars, or dedicate
any temple to Folly. I admire (as I have before intimated) that the
world should be so wretchedly ungrateful. But I am so good natured
as to pass by and pardon this seeming affront, though indeed the
charge thereof, as unnecessary, may well be saved; for to what
purpose should I demand the sacrifice of frankincense, cakes,
goats, and swine, since all persons everywhere pay me that more
acceptable service, which all divines agree to be more effectual and
meritorious, namely, an imitation of my communicable attributes?...
Farther, why should I desire a temple, since the whole world is but
one ample continued choir, entirely dedicated to my use and service?
Nor do I want worshippers at any place where the earth wants not
inhabitants. And as to the manner of my worship, I am not yet so
irrecoverably foolish, as to be prayed to by proxy, and to have my
honour intermediately bestowed upon images and pictures, which quite
subvert the true end of religion....”
But Folly has not time to recount all the foolishness of the ignorant,
neither is it necessary. She confines herself to the follies of those
who make pretense of wisdom. Of these the theologians doubtless “least
like to be reminded of their dependence upon Folly,” but in evidence of
this fact,
“They will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease
as Alexander did the Gordian knot; they will thunder out so many
rattling terms as shall fright an adversary into conviction. They
are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries;
they will tell you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of
omnipotence in the creation of the universe; they will explain
the precise manner of original sin being derived from our first
parents; they will satisfy you in what manner, by what degrees, and
in how long a time our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin’s womb,
and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer how accidents may subsist
without a subject. Nay, these are accounted trivial, easy questions;
they have yet far greater difficulties behind, which nothwithstanding
they solve with as much expedition as the former; ... whether Christ,
as a son, bears a double specifically distinct relation to God the
Father, and his virgin mother? whether this proposition is possible
to be true, the first person of the Trinity hated the second? whether
God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, could as
well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone? and
were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any shape of an
inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his gospel?
or how have been nailed to the cross? whether if St. Peter had
celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on
the cross, the consecrated bread would have been transsubstantiated
into the same body that remained on the tree?”
“Further, does any one appear a candidate for any ecclesiastical
dignity, why an ass or a plough jobber shall sooner gain it than a
wise man.”...
“All their preaching is mere stage-playing, and their delivery the
very transports of ridicule and drollery. Good Lord! how mimical are
these gestures? What heights and falls in their voice? What toning,
what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, making
of mouths, and apes’ faces, and distorting of their countenance;
and this art of oratory as a choice mystery, they convey down by
tradition to one another. The manner of it I may adventure thus
farther to enlarge upon. First, in a kind of mockery they implore the
divine assistance, which they borrowed from the solemn custom of the
poets....
“Now as to the popes of Rome, who pretend themselves Christ’s vicars,
if they would but imitate his exemplary life, in the being employed
in an unintermitted course of preaching; in the being attended with
poverty, nakedness, hunger, and a contempt of this world; if they did
but consider the import of the word pope, which signifies a father;
or if they did but practice their surname of most holy, what order or
degrees of men would be in a worse condition? There would be then no
such vigorous making of parties, and buying of votes, in the conclave
upon a vacancy of that see: and those who by bribery, or other
indirect courses, should get themselves elected, would never secure
their sitting firm in the chair by pistol, poison, force of violence.
How much of their pleasure would be abated if they were but endowed
with one dram of wisdom? Wisdom, did I say? Nay, with one grain of
that salt which our Saviour bid them not lose the savour of. All
their riches, all their honour, their jurisdictions, their Peter’s
patrimony, their offices, their dispensations, their licences, their
indulgences, their long train and attendants, (see in how short a
compass I have abbreviated all their marketing of religion;) in a
word, all their perquisities would be forfeited and lost.”...
Finally, after quoting many passages in praise of Folly and of foolish
actions and foolish persons which occur in his precious classic
literature, Erasmus does a surprising thing. At the time this book
was written those who later were to become the Reformers were already
disposed to appeal to the Bible as an infallible authority equal to, if
not above, that of the Church. That Erasmus placed the Holy Scriptures
in the same category as other ancient literature is indicated by his
free and easy treatment of it. He humorously quotes many passages to
prove that the Bible actually enjoins men to practice folly and eschew
wisdom. Were not our first parents expelled from Eden in punishment for
the sin of eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge? He does not
even spare the New Testament.
“Now therefore I return to St. Paul, who uses these expressions ‘Ye
suffer fools gladly,’ applying it to himself; and again, ‘As a fool
receive me,’ and ‘That which I speak, I speak not after the Lord,
but as it were foolishly’; and in another place, ‘We are fools for
Christ’s sake.’ See how these commendations of Folly are equal to the
author of them, both great and sacred. The same holy person does yet
enjoin and command the being a fool, as a virtue of all others most
requisite and necessary: for, says he, ‘If any man seem to be wise in
this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.’...
“Nor may this seem strange in comparison to what is yet farther
delivered by St. Paul, who adventures to attribute something of Folly
even to the all-wise God himself, ‘The foolishness of God (says he)
is wiser than men’ ... wherein is to be understood that other passage
of St. Paul, ‘The preaching of the cross to them that perish, is
foolishness.’ But why do I put myself to the trouble of citing so
many proofs, since this one may suffice for all, namely, that in
those mystical psalms wherein David represents the type of Christ,
it is there acknowledged by our Saviour, in way of confession, that
even he himself was guilty of Folly; ‘thou (says he) O God knowest
my foolishness?’ Nor is it without some reason that fools for their
plainness and sincerity of heart have always been most acceptable to
God Almighty.... So our Saviour in like manner dislikes and condemns
the wise and crafty, as St. Paul does expressly declare in these
words, ‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world’; and again,
‘it pleased God by foolishness to save the world’; implying that by
wisdom it could never have been saved. Nay, God himself testifies
as much when he speaks by the mouth of his prophet, ‘I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nought the understanding of the
learned.’ Again, our Saviour does solemnly return his Father thanks
for that he had ‘hidden the mysteries of salvation from the wise, and
revealed them to babes,’ i. e. to fools.”
The book ends with these words, “I hate a pot-companion with a good
memory: so indeed I hate a hearer that will carry anything away with
him. Wherefore in short, farewell: be jolly, live long, drink deep, ye
most illustrious votaries of Folly.”
It is said that Luther was repelled by this book. I do not wonder.
Erasmus would seem to be as far removed from the spirit of
Protestantism as from that of mediæval Catholicism. Has Erasmus,
perhaps without wholly realizing the fact himself, stepped quite
outside the traditional Christian system of beliefs and values into
a world-view which is partly that of the ancient philosophies and
partly that of the eighteenth century Rationalist? I do not know. He is
certainly a liberal in matters of religion, but unlike our contemporary
liberals, he shows little interest in natural science.
He was severely criticised for refusing to participate in the
Reformation on the side of the Reformers. The following bits of
correspondence which I quote from Professor Smith’s biography indicate
the esteem in which he and Luther finally held each other. Luther wrote
about the year 1524:
“Since we see that the Lord has not given you courage and sense to
assail those monsters openly and confidently with us, we are not the
men to expect what is beyond your power and measure.... We only fear
that you may be induced by our enemies to fall upon our doctrine with
some publication, in which case we should be obliged to resist you to
your face.... Hitherto I have controlled my pen as often as you prick
me, and have written in letters to friends, which you have seen, that
I would control it until you publish something openly. For although
you will not side with us, and although you injure and make skeptical
many pious men by your impiety and hypocrisy, yet I cannot and do
not accuse you of willful obstinancy.... We have fought long enough;
we must take care not to eat each other up. This would be a terrible
catastrophe, as neither of us wishes to harm religion, and without
judging each other both may do good.”
Erasmus wrote to his friend, Everard,
“With what odium Luther burdens the cause of learning and that of
Christianity! As far as he can he involves all men in his business.
Everyone confessed that the Church suffered under the tyranny of
certain men, and many were taking counsel to remedy this state of
affairs. Now this man has arisen to treat the matter in such a way
that he fastens the yoke on us more firmly, and that no one dares to
defend even what he has said well. Six months ago I warned him to
beware of hatred. ‘The Babylonian Captivity’ (a bitter treatise which
Luther wrote) has alienated many from him, and he daily puts forth
more atrocious things.”
And again to Luther, in reply to a very unkind letter,
“Your letter was delivered to me late and had it come on time it
would not have moved me.... The whole world knows your nature,
according to which you have guided your pen against no one more
bitterly and, what is more detestable, more maliciously than against
me.... The same admirable ferocity which you formerly used against
Cochlaeus and against Fisher, who provoked you to it by reviling,
you now use against my book in spite of its courtesy. How do your
scurrilous charges that I am an atheist, an Epicurean, and a skeptic
help the argument?... It terribly pains me, as it must all good men,
that your arrogant, insolent, rebellious nature has set the world in
arms.... You treat the Evangelic cause so as to confound together all
things sacred and profane as if it were your chief aim to prevent the
tempest from ever becoming calm, while it is my greatest desire that
it should die down.... I should wish you a better disposition were
you not so marvelously satisfied with the one you have. Wish me any
curse you will except your temper, unless the Lord change it for you.”
Much has been made of the following “damning” admission:
“Would that some ‘deus ex machina’ might make a happy ending for this
drama so inauspiciously begun by Luther! He himself gives his enemies
the dart by which they transfix him, and acts as if he did not wish
to be saved, though frequently warned by me and by his friends to
tone down the sharpness of his style.... I cannot sufficiently wonder
at the spirit in which he has written. Certainly he has loaded the
cultivators of literature with heavy odium. Many of his teachings and
admonitions were splendid, but would that he had not vitiated these
good things by mixing intolerable evils! If he had written all things
piously, yet I should not have courage to risk my life for the truth.
All men have not strength for martyrdom. I fear least, if any tumult
should arise, I should imitate Peter (in denying the Lord).”
It is doubtful if Erasmus meant this confession of weakness to be taken
literally. Cowards are not often so honest with themselves, nor do
they make such candid revelations of their fears, but rather affect a
show of bravery so long as it is possible to disguise their weakness
of character. Had Erasmus been less strong, he would have yielded to
pressure, joined the reformers and sought refuge among them. Instead,
he stood against the crowd, knowing well that although he might decline
to join the ranks of Luther, there was no refuge for him amongst the
churchmen whom he had been attacking for many years. He did not betray
his own cause, the Renaissance, but remained true to it in opposition
to bigotry and ignorance on both sides of the controversy. In support
of the revival of learning he was courageous enough. Surrounded as he
was by madness, he conceived it to be the task of the wise man to keep
his balance and work for peace and sanity.
I believe this to be the first social task of the educated. Could
a Socrates, or a Seneca, or Cicero have returned to life in the
year 1525, it is difficult to imagine that he would have pursued a
course very different from that Erasmus pursued. A man’s intellectual
integrity does not require that he take sides when he believes that
neither side has the truth. I believe Erasmus took the longer view, for
today we find Humanism gradually supplanting orthodoxy among educated
Protestants, and I have no doubt that something similar is taking place
in Catholic centers of culture. The liberal Catholic and the liberal
Protestant are more nearly of one mind than is either of them with the
Fundamentalist in his own sect. And they are each nearer to Erasmus.
Erasmus did not suffer martyrdom, neither did he make martyrs of those
who opposed him. Persecution and martyrdom are the first things that
the uneducated think of in any social crisis. The masses are prepared
to make any conflict the occasion of both, and with only the vaguest
idea of what the killing is all about. If there were more men like
Erasmus there would be less occasion for such practices. His is the
cause which will never triumph by force.
Humanism, which in the Italian Renaissance was something of a _parvenu_
effort at culture, comes to its maturity with Montaigne. It is an
educational experience lived through, a wisdom grown into, as Montaigne
says, with everything in its season. Montaigne’s mind is stored with
the fruits of the wisdom of all historic times. He quotes the ancients
as only Erasmus could, yet he is never an imitator or copier. His is
one of the most original minds in literature, and his originality
increases as he grows older and has time to think. It is very different
from the rebelliousness of certain contemporary radicals, whose
liberalism might be characterized as retarded adolescence.
A contemporary critic says of him, “Montaigne ... was one of the most
civilized men of whom we have any record: his intellectual curiosity
was matched by his magnanimity. He hated cruelty, prejudice, violence
and stupidity: his love of life was so great that it illumined every
object in the world of sense and in the world of thought. His style was
so original that his remarks on little things have outlived thousands
of works dealing soberly with portentous ideas. He could write on
trivial themes without becoming trivial.”
Like Erasmus, he has a delicious sense of humor in which there is no
bitterness. He is so accustomed to ideas that he can play with them.
He can smile at his own weaknesses, and discuss every question with
open mind and with that “kindly irony which is perhaps the ripest of
all moods in which poor humanity can look at itself.” But Erasmus
was the professional scholar, and we think of him always moving in
circles where learning is of special interest. One does not think of
educational institutions when one reads Montaigne’s essays, but of the
educated man himself. He is the learned layman, the _amateur_ whose
learning is assimilated with all the interests of the daily routine of
living. He is not “taken in” by his culture so as to make it an end in
itself. He says,
“I labor not to be beloved more and esteemed better being dead than
alive.... If I were one of those to whom the world may be indebted
for praise, I would quit it for one moytie, on condition it would
pay me before hand.... I make no account of goods which I could
not employ to the use of my life. Such as I am, so I would not be
elsewhere than on paper. Mine art and industry have been employed
to make myself of some worth; my study and endeavor to doe, and not
to write. I have applied all my skill and devoire to frame my life.
Lo--heere mine occupation and my work. I am a less maker of books
than of anything else.... Whosoever hath any worth in him, let him
shew it in his behaviour, manners and ordinary discourses; be it
to treat of love or of quarrels; of sport and play or bed-matters,
at board or elsewhere; or be it in the conduct of his own affairs
or private household matters.... Demand a Spartan whether he would
rather be a cunning Rhethorician, then an excellent souldier;
nay, were I asked, I wuld say a good Cooke, had I not some one to
serve me. Good Lord--how I would hate such a commendation, to be a
sufficient man in writing and a foolish, shallow-headed braine or
coxcombe in all things else.”
He ridicules those who strive to make a show of learning and “alledge
Plato and Saint Thomas for things which the first man they meete would
decide as well.... Such learning as could not enter into their middle
hath staid on their tongues.”
“Being young I studied for ostentation; then a little to enoble
myselfe and become wiser; now for delight and recreation, never for
gaine. A vaine conceit and lavish humour I had after this kinde of
stuffe; not only to provide for my need, but some what further to
adorne and embellish my selfe withall; I have since partlie left it.”
He loves Letters but does not worship them. He remains a little
surprised and amused at his own bits of wisdom and does not quite know
how he came into the company of the philosophers.
“Nothing may be spoken so absurdly but that it is spoken by some of
the philosophers. And therefore do I suffer my humors or caprices
more freely to pass in publike. For as much as though they are borne
with, and of me, and without any patterne; well I wot, they will
be found to have relation to some ancient humour, and some shall
be found, that will both know and tell whence, and of whom I have
borrowed them. My customes are naturall; when I contrived them, I
called not for the help of any discipline: And weake and faint as
they were, when I have had a desire to expresse them, and to make
them appeare to the world a little more comely and decent, I have
somewhat endevoured to aide them with discourse, and assist them with
examples. I have wondred at my selfe, that by mere chance I have
met with them, agreeing and sutable to so many ancient examples and
Philosophicall discourses. What regiment my life was of, I never knew
nor learned but after it was much worne and spent. A new figure: An
unpremeditated Philosopher and a casuall.”
It is this unostentatious, unpremeditated, casual and chatty quality
of Montaigne’s writing that reveals the genuineness of his education.
A present-day critic would lead us to believe that he kept a note
book and patiently copied out of his classics the passages which he
might use as illustrations. In a characteristic bit of humor at his
own expense, Montaigne seems to justify this idea that he was a mere
compiler of other men’s thoughts.
“We labor and toyle and plod to fill the memorie and leave both
understanding and conscience empty. Even as birds flutter and skip
from field to field to peck up corn or any grain and without tasting
the same carrie it in their bills therewith to feed their little
ones: so doe our pedants glean and pick learning from books and
never lodge it further than their lips only to disgorge and cast
it to the wind. It is strange how filthy sottishness takes hold of
mine example. Is not that which I do in the greatest part of this
composition all one and self same thing? I am forever here and there
picking and culling from this and that book the sentences that please
me, not to keepe them (for I have no store house to reserve them in)
but to transport them into this: where to say truth, they are no more
mine than in their first place.”
But it is obvious that these essays were not the product of a mind
which worked in such a sophomoric manner as this. Montaigne’s mind
is saturated with “ancient humor.” There is no pretense or conscious
effort to appear erudite. While many other Renaissance scholars were
writing in Latin and affecting a Ciceronian style, Montaigne wrote
in French. He is, I believe, the creator of the essay as a form of
literary expression, a style which is more free and informal than the
conventional forms of his day.
A man who spent his days in seclusion in his library in the tower
of his castle, he writes not of books but of every conceivable
human interest and commonplace reality. His wisdom turns to such
considerations as, “By diverse means men come to a like end.” “How
the soul dischargeth her passions upon false objects.” “Whether the
captaine of a place besieged ought to sally forth to parley.” He writes
of “Idleness,” of “Liars,” or “Virtue,” of “Drunkenness,” of “Exercise
or Practice,” of “Profit and Honesty,” of “Repenting,” of “Coaches,”
of “The Verses of Virgil,” of “Vanity,” of “The affection of fathers to
their Children,” of “Seneca” and “Plutarch” and “Julius Caesar.” Always
his interest is in human experience. Shrewd personal observations are
mingled with stories from antiquity and quaint philosophic maxims in a
mind which is at once mature and inquisitive, loquacious and sceptical,
candidly self-revealing, without pretention, equally at home among
books and things. Let those who object to the teaching of the classics
on the ground that they tend to a “separation of education from life”
go back and re-read Montaigne.
Although the two were by temperament very different, Montaigne would
have pleased Erasmus. His education and philosophy of life were very
much the type that Erasmus strove to encourage. When Montaigne was
born, in 1533, the influence of the Renaissance had already made
itself felt in France. He was three years old when Erasmus died. But
his casual mention of “The Adages” and “Colloquies” of Erasmus would
indicate that sometime in his youth these books formed part of his
education. His knowledge of Greek and Latin began at a very early
period in his life. It is said that when he was a mere infant his
father placed him in the home of a neighboring scholar so that he would
grow up with the same familiarity with these languages as with his
mother tongue. He entered what was called a “college” at the age of
six. It was, I suppose, a preparatory school. It must have come under
the influence of the revival of learning for it had on its faculty some
of the ablest scholars in France at that time. At the age of thirteen
he entered a university to study Law, took his degree at twenty, and at
twenty-one was appointed councilor for the Parliament of Bordeaux. He
seems to have had some military experience also, and to have spent some
gay years at court.
When he was thirty-nine years old he inherited the estate and castle
of Montaigne near Bordeaux. He married, and except for the few years,
when against his inclination he served as Mayor of Bordeaux, he spent
the remainder of his days in private life, looking after his estate and
enjoying hours of unbroken meditation in his tower library, reading his
Horace and Plutarch and the ancient poets and philosophers generally.
He says he was not a great reader, but that he liked to have his
books about him. He especially enjoyed the privacy of his library,
from which, he gives us to understand, his wife and the rest of the
household were excluded.
Montaigne began writing brief essays when he was forty-five years old,
not at first for publication but rather so that he might present a true
picture of himself to his family and friends. The writing evidently
amused him for as the years passed the essays grew longer and their
content more serious.
If we are to see the full significance of the essays as the revelation
of an achievement in education--and that is our present interest in
them--we must remember what was happening in the world at the time
they were written. The struggle of the Reformation was in full swing.
Montaigne’s lifetime coincides with what was doubtless the most bitter
and acrimonious period of that religious conflict. Everywhere there
was persecution, riot, intrigue, retaliation; men seemed to have lost
utterly the liberal spirit of the Renaissance and to have forgotten
that there was such a virtue as tolerance.
Montaigne was an exception. It is said that during the years of
bloodshed in France, his castle was never fortified, nor closed, and
that both Catholics and Protestants were welcome there. The battle does
not disturb Montaigne’s equanimity, nor warp his judgment; it remains
to him a little more than a fight in the street. I should like to call
attention to this indifference to the great mass movement of the times,
for there are those who contend that philosophy, art and letters are
but the by-products of such movements. At a time when nearly every
one is eaten up with partisan zeal, Montaigne hardly mentions the
Reformation. He says, “I perswade you, in your opinions and discourses,
as much as in your custom, and in every other thing, to use moderation
and temperance, and avoid all newfangled inventions and strangenesses.
All extravagant wais displease me.”
While others are resorting to torture and massacre for the sake of a
faith which they do not question, Montaigne quietly retires and has
time to see when he is making himself ridiculous.
“It is not long since I retired my selfe unto mine owne house, with
full purpose, as much as lay in me, not to trouble myselfe with any
businesse, but solitarily and quietly to weare out the remainder
of my wellnigh spent life: when me thought I could doe my spirit
no greater favor than to give him the full scope of idlenesse, and
entertaine him as best he pleased, and withall to settle himselfe as
best he liked: which I hoped he might, now being by time become more
settled and ripe, accomplish very easily: but I finde
‘... evermore idlenesse
Doth wavering mindes addresse.’
That contrariwise, playing the skittish and loose broken jade, he
takes a hundred times more cariere and libertie unto himselfe than
he did for others: and begets in me so many extravagant chimeraes
and fantastical monsters, so orderless, and without any reason, one
huddled upon the other, that at leisure to view the foolishnesse and
monstrous strangeness of them, I have begun to keep a register of
them, hoping, if I live, one day to make him ashamed and blush at
himselfe.”
Toward the multitude and its judgments of value he is indifferent,
“Our soule must play her part, but inwardly, within our selves,
where no eyes shine but ours: ... not for any advantage but for the
gracefulness of honestie itselfe. This benefit is much greater, and
more worthie to be wished and hoped, then honor and glory, which is
naught but a favorable judgment that is made of us.... Is it reason
to make the life of a wise man depend on the judgment of fooles?
Nothing is so incomprehensible to be just waied as the mindes of the
multitude....
“... In this breathie confusion of brutes and frothy chaos of reports
and of vulgar opinions which still push us on, no good can be
established. Let us not propose so fleeting and so wavering an end
unto ourselves. Let us constantly follow reason: And let the vulgar
approbation follow us that way, if it please. Of the many thousands
of worthie, valiant men which fifteen hundred years since [the day of
Juvenal] have died in France with their weapons in their hands, not
one in a hundred have come to our knowledge.... It shall be much, if
a hundred years hence the civil warres which lately we have had in
France be but remembered in grosse.”
Yes, the multitude may follow if it pleases; Montaigne will not urge
it. He may remind it that in a few years its cause may be forgotten.
But how free he is from the righteous indignation and vindictiveness
and factiousness which everywhere storm about him. He has that urbanity
of which I spoke, and the serenity of one who has learned to laugh at
his own prejudices.
“Surely, man is a wonderful, vaine, divers and wavering subject: it
is very hard to ground any directly constant and uniforme judgment
upon him.”
His wisdom leads him to see not only the folly of mankind, but also
his own folly and weakness, which he does not strive to conceal, but
relates with amusing candor.
“I have, a kind of raving, fanciful behavior that retireth well into
myselfe: and on the other side a grosse and childish ignorance of
many ordinary things: by means of which two qualities I have in my
daies committed five or six as sottish trickes as any one whatsoever:
which to my derogration may be reported....
“For my part, I may in generall wish to be other than I am: I may
condenme and mislike my universall forme: I may beseech God to
grant me an undefiled reformation and excuse my natural weaknesse:
but me seemeth I ought to tearme this repentance, no more than the
displeasure of being neither an Angell nor Cato....
“When I consult with my age of my youthe’s proceedings, I finde that
commonly (according to my opinion) I managed them in order. This
is all my resistance is able to perform. I flatter not myselfe: in
like circumstances I should be ever the same. It is not a spot, but
a whole dye that staynes mee. I acknowledge no repentence (that) is
superficiall, meane, and ceremonious.
“Crosses and afflictions (works of penance) make me doe nothing but
curse them. They are for people that cannot be arroused but by the
whip.... The happy life (in my opinion, not as said Antisthenes, the
happy death,) is it that makes man’s happinesse in this world.
“I have not preposterously busied myselfe to tie the taile of a
Philosopher unto the head and bodie of a varlet: nor that this
paultrie end, should disavow and belie the fairest soundest and
longest part of my life. I will present myselfe and make a generall
muster of my whole, everywhere uniformally. Were I to live againe, it
should be as I have already lived. I neither deplore the past, nor
dread what is to come.”
The man who can speak so of himself is not likely to hold up any
universal standard of faith or practice. He is not the man with the
message for humanity, as were the Reformers and their enemies in the
church. He is not a partisan because he has gone beyond such dilemmas.
His knowledge of many books and of many and diverse explantations of
the riddle of life and many kinds of goods and evils has made him
see that there is no “one right way.” Reason has often been opposed
to faith. Montaigne sees that reason too is faith, and faith all too
human. There can be no finality.
I suspect that his tolerance and aloofness during the Reformation in
France were the result of a point of view somewhat similar to that of
Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise,” and his story of the three rings. No one
possessed the original, which was supposed to entitle the owner to
the ancestral blessing and inheritance. All, like all religions, were
counterfeits of the lost article.
Montaigne gives his ideas of religion and philosophy in the longest of
his essays, “An Apologie of Raymond Sebond.” He says that his father
once requested him to translate a book on natural Theology by an
unknown Spanish writer of this name. His remarks reveal the extent to
which his mind is freed from both rationalism and religious dogmatism.
“We should accompany our faith with all the reason we possess: yet
always with this proviso, that we think it does not depend on us,
and that all our strength and arguments can never attain to so
supernaturall and divine a knowledge.”
His remarkable detachment is seen in the following. He says that the
best test of Verity is the practice of virtue.
“And therefore was our good Saint Lewis in the right, when that
Tartan King who was to become a Christian intended to come to Lions
to kisse the Pope’s feet, and there to view the sanctitie he hoped
to find in our lives and manners, instantly to divert him from it
fearing lest our dissolute manners and licentious kind of life might
scandalize him and so alter his opinion foreconceived of so sacred a
religion. How be it the contrary happened to another who for the same
effect being come to Rome, and there viewing the dissoluteness of the
prelates and people of those days, was so much more confirmed in our
religion, considering with himselfe what force and divinity it must
of consequence have since it was able, amidst so many corruptions and
so viciously poluted hands to maintain her dignitie and splendor....
“Our zeale worketh wonders when ever it secondeth our inclination
toward hatred, cruelitie, ambition, avarice, detraction or
rebellion.... Among other discommodities of our nature this is
one, there is darkness in our minds, and in us not only necessity
of erring but love of errors.... Presumption is our naturall and
originall infirmitie. Of all creatures, man is the most miserable
and fraile, and therewithall the proudest and disdainfullest ...
he ascribeth divine conditions unto himselfe that he selecteth and
separateth himselfe from out the ranke of other creatures.... By
what comparison from them to us doth he conclude the brutishness he
ascribeth unto them? When I am playing with my cat who knows whether
she have more sport in dallying with me than I in gaming with her? We
entertain one another with mutuall apish tricks.”
“We understand them (the beasts) no more than they us. By the same
reason may they as well esteem us Beasts, as we them. It is no great
marvell if we understand them not: no more doe we understand the
Cornish, the Welch, or Irish.”
He is persuaded he says, that if anyone who has pursued knowledge will
“speak in conscience, he will confess that all the benefit he hath
gotten by so tedious a pursuit, hath been that he hath learned to know
his own weaknesse.”
“My profession is not to know the truth nor to attaine it. I rather
open than discover things. The wisest that ever was, being demanded
what he knew, answered that he knew nothing.”
He speaks with approval of the doubters, the Phyrronians who “but
desire to be contradicted, thereby to engender doubt and suspense of
judgment which is their end and drift.” Thus these men have attained
the condition of a quiet and contented life, exempted from the
agitations which beset ourselves because we imagine we have a certainty
and a knowledge that we do not possess.
After all “that ignorance which knoweth and condemneth itselfe,” is
not absolute ignorance. Montaigne seems to hold that it is the best
we may attain and that in knowing and condemning our ignorance we may
avoid much of the misery and mischief we inflict upon ourselves and one
another. The fears and revenge and jealousies and partisan strife and
rebellion and envy and immoderate desires which everywhere he finds
about him all proceed, he thinks, from presumptuous ignorance which
does not know itself to be ignorance. In the midst of theological
disputation he smilingly reminds his neighbors that as,
“Xenophanes said pleasantly that if beastes frame any gods unto
themselves (as likely it is they doe) they surely frame them like
unto themselves and glorifie themselves as we do. For what may not a
Goose say this? All parts of the world behold me, the earth serveth
me to tread upon, the sunne to give me light, the starres to inspire
me with influence: this commodity I have of the winds, and this
benefit of the waters: there is nothing that this world’s vault doth
so favorably looke upon as me selfe: I am the favorite of nature. Is
it not man that careth for me, that keepeth me, and serveth me? For
me it is he soweth and reapeth and grindeth. If he eat me, so doth
man feede on his fellow, and so doe I on the wormes that consume and
eat him.”
“I commend the Milesian wench who seeing Thales the Philosoper
continually amusing hemselfe in the contemplation of heaven’s wide
bounding vault and ever holding his eyes aloft, laid something in
his way to make him stumble, thereby to warne and put him in minde
that he should not amuse his thoughts about matters above the clouds
before he had provided for and well considered those at his feet.
Verily she advised him well, and it better became him rather to looke
to himselfe than to gaze on heaven.”
“_The wisest judging of heaven is not to judge of it at all._” His own
modest answer to the riddle of existence in contrast to those who would
“turne and winde God Almighty according to their own measure,” is “Que
scay-je?”--What do I know?
Montaigne is not a hard and soulless sceptic. He is a well poised,
modest thinker and an honest man. He is not a denier, but one whose
mind is free from cant, humbug, pretentiousness. Historically he is one
of the links between the best in modern education and the questioning
Socrates whom he knew and loved. I trust that in presenting the
Humanist tradition in this concrete manner, I have been able to suggest
something of its spirit. It has a necessary place in liberal education
because it helps liberate the mind from the clutches of opinionated
ignorance, from the follies which prevail as truth in our own age, and
from conceit and vanity to which our human nature is ever prone.