  THE modern Plutarch and the first of essayists deserves his place in this work, if not so much for express and explicit denunciation, totidem verbis, of the barbarism of the Slaughter-House, at least for a sort of argument which logically and necessarily arrives at the same conclusion. In truth, if he had not “seen and approved the better way” (even though, with too many others, he may not have had the courage of his convictions), he would be no true disciple of the great humanitarian. It is necessary to remember that the “perfect day” was not yet come; that a few rays only here and there enlightened the thick darkness of barbarism; that, in fine, not even yet, with the light of truth shining full upon us, have reason and conscience triumphed, as regards the mass of the community, either in this country or elsewhere. Michel de Montaigne descended from an old and influential house in PÉrigord (modern PÉrigeaux, in the department of the Dordogne). His youth was carefully trained, and his early inclination to learning fostered under his father’s diligent superintendence. He became a member of the provincial parliament, and, by the universal suffrage of his fellow-citizens, was elected chief magistrate of Bordeaux, from the official routine of whose duties he soon retired to the more congenial atmosphere The Essais—that book of “good faith,” “without study and artifice,” as its author justly calls it—appeared in the year 1580. It is a book unique in modern literature, and the only other production to which it may be compared is the Moralia of Plutarch. “It is not a book we are reading, but a conversation to which we are listening.” “It is,” as another French critic observes, “less a book than a journal divided into chapters, which follow one another without connexion, which bear each a title without much regard to the fulfilment of their promise.” Montaigne treats of almost every phase of human thought and action; and upon every subject he has something original and worth saying. Living in a savagely sectarian and persecuting age, he kept himself aloof and independent of either of the two contending theological sections, and contents himself with the rÔle of a sceptical spectator. It must be admitted that he is not always satisfactory in this character, since he sometimes seems to give forth an “uncertain sound.” Considering the age, however, his assertion of the proper authority of Reason deserves our respectful admiration, and is in pleasing contrast with the attitude of most of his contemporaries. A few, like his friend De Thou, or the Italian Giordano Bruno—the latter of whom, indeed, had more of the martyr-spirit than Montaigne—contributed to keep alight the torch of Truth and Reason. But we have only to recollect that it was the age par excellence of Diabolism in Catholic and Protestant theology alike, and of all the horrible superstitions and frightful tortures, both bodily and mental, of which the universal belief in the Devil’s actual reign on earth was the fruitful cause. About the very time of the appearance of the Essais, one of the most learned men of the period, the lawyer Jean Bodin published a work which he called the DÉmonomanie des Sorciers (the “Diabolic Inspiration of Witches”), in which he protested his unwavering faith in the most monstrous beliefs of the creed, and vehemently called upon the judges, ecclesiastical and civil, to punish the As for the influence of Montaigne on the modes of thought of after times, and especially of his countrymen, it can scarcely be over estimated. He is the literary progenitor of the most famous French writers of the humanitarian eighteenth century. The most eminent of them, Voltaire, perhaps, most resembles him, but naturally the style of the eighteenth century philosopher is more concise and incisive, and his opinions are more pronounced. “Both,” says a French critic, “laugh at the human species; but the laughter of Voltaire is more bitter; his railleries are more terrible. Both, nevertheless, breathe the love of humanity. That of Voltaire is more ardent, more courageous, more unwearied. The hatred of both of them for charlatanism and hypocrisy is well known. Their morality has for its first principle benevolence towards others, without distinction of country, of manners, or of religious beliefs; warning us not to think that we alone hold the deposit of justice and of truth. It transports our soul, by contempt of mortal things and by enthusiasm for great truths.” It is to be lamented that the countrymen of Montaigne and of Voltaire have not profited to a larger extent by their humanitarian teaching and tendencies. In reference to the almost incredible atrocities of war, and especially of civil war, Montaigne protests:— “Scarcely could I persuade myself, before I had seen it with my own eyes, that there could be souls so ferocious as for the simple pleasure of murder to be ready to perpetrate it; to hack and dismember the limbs of others; to ransack their invention to discover unheard-of tortures and new kinds of deaths—and that without the incentive of enmity or of profit—with the mere view of enjoying the pleasant spectacle of pitiable actions and movements, of groans and lamentations, of a man dying in agony. For this is the climax to which cruelty can attain—‘for a man without anger, without fear, to kill another merely to witness his sufferings.’ “For my part I have never been able to see, without displeasure, an innocent and defenceless animal, from whom we receive no offence or harm, pursued and slaughtered. And when a deer, as commonly happens, finding herself without breath and strength, without other resource, throws herself down and surrenders, as it were, to her pursuers, begging for mercy by her tears, ‘Questuque cruentus Atque imploranti similis.’ This has always appeared to me a very displeasing spectacle. I seldom, or never, take an animal alive whom I do not restore to the fields. Pythagoras was in the habit of buying their victims from the fowlers and fishermen for the same purpose. ‘PrimÂque a cÆde ferarum Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum.’ “Dispositions sanguinary in regard to other animals testify a natural inclination to cruelty towards their own kind. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacle of the murders [meurtres] of other animals, they proceeded to those of men and gladiators. Nature has, I fear, herself attached some instinct of inhumanity to man’s disposition. No one derives any amusement from seeing other animals enjoy themselves and caressing one another; and no one fails to take pleasure in seeing them torn in pieces and dismembered. That I may not [he is cautious enough to add] be ridiculed for this sympathy which I have for them, even theology enjoins some respect for them, Quoting instances of the extreme respect in which some of the non-human races were held by people in Antiquity, “When I meet, amongst the more moderate opinions, arguments which go to prove our close resemblance to other animals, and how much they share in our greatest privileges, and with how much of probability they are compared to us, of a truth I abate much from our common presumption, and willingly abdicate that imaginary royalty which they assign us over other beings.” Wiser than the majority in later times, Montaigne well rebukes the arrogant presumption of the human animal who affects to hold all other life to be brought into being for his sole use and pleasure:— “Let him shew me, by the most skilful argument, upon what foundations he has built these excessive prerogatives which he supposes himself to have over other existences. Who has persuaded him that that admirable impulse of the celestial vault, the eternal brightness of those Lights rolling so majestically over our heads, the tremendous motions of that infinite sea of Globes, were established and have continued so many ages for his advantage and for his service. Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as that this pitiful [chÉtive], miserable creature, who is not even master of “Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most calamitous and fragile of all creatures is man, and yet the most arrogant. Montaigne quotes the example of his master, the just and benevolent Plutarch, who made it a matter of justice and conscience not to sell or send to the slaughter-house (according to the common selfish ingratitude) a Cow who had served him faithfully and profitably for so many years. With Plutarch and Porphyry he never wearies of denouncing the unreasoning opinions, or rather prejudices, prevalent amongst men as to the mental qualities of many of the non-human races, and, as we have already seen, insists that the difference between them and us is of degree and not of kind:— “Plato, in his picture of the ‘Golden Age,’ reckons amongst the chief advantages of the men of that time the communication they had with other animals, by investigating and instructing themselves in whose nature they learned their true qualities and the differences between them, by which they acquired a very perfect knowledge and intelligence, and thus made their lives more happy than we can make ours. Is a better test needed by which to judge of human folly in regard to other species? “I have said all this in order to bring us back and reunite ourselves to the crowd [presse]. We are [in the accidents of mortality] neither above nor below the rest. ‘All who are under the sky,’ says the Jewish sage, ‘experience a like law and fate.’ There is some difference, there are orders and degrees, but they are under the aspect of one and the same nature. Man must be constrained and ranged within the barriers of this police [Il faut contraindre l’homme, et le ranger dans les barriÈres de cette police]. The wretch has no right to encroach [d’enjamber] beyond these; he is fettered, entangled, he is subjected to like necessities with other creatures of his order, and in a very mean condition without any true and essential prerogative and pre-excellence. That which he confers upon himself by his own opinion and fancy has neither sense nor substance; and if it be conceded to him that he alone of all animals has that freedom of imagination and that irregularity of thought representing to him what he is, what he is not, and what he wants, the false and the true, it is an advantage which has been very dearly sold to him, and of which he has very little to boast, for from that springs the principal source of the evils which oppress him—crime, disease, irresolution, trouble, despair.” Rejecting the still received prejudice which will not allow our humble fellow-beings the privilege of reason, but invents an imaginary faculty called “instinct,” he repeats that— “There is no ground for supposing that other beings do by natural and necessary inclination the same things that we do by choice, and while we are bound to infer from like effects like faculties—nay, from greater effects, greater faculties—we are forced to confess, consequently, that that same reason, that same method which we employ in action are also employed by the lower animals, or else that they have some still better reason or method. Why do we fancy in them that natural necessity or impulse [contrainte]—we who have no experience of that sort ourselves. “As for use in eating, it is with us as with them, natural and without instruction. Who doubts that a child, arrived at the necessary strength for feeding itself, could find its own nourishment? The earth produces and offers to him enough for his needs without artificial labour, and if not for all seasons, neither does she for the other races—witness the provisions which we observe the ants and others collecting for the sterile seasons of the year. Those nations whom we have lately discovered [the peoples of Hindustan and of parts of America], so abundantly furnished with natural meat and drink without care and without labour, have just instructed us that bread is not our sole food, and that without toil our mother Nature has furnished us with every plant we need, to shew us, as it seems, how superior she is to all our artificiality; while the extravagance of our appetite outruns all the inventions by which we seek to satisfy it.” |
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