Of three kinds of association (pp. 753-764) could be subtitled, “These are a few of my favorite things.” Montaigne starts out this one by telling us to flexible. It’s the first thing I told my associate editor after hiring her, and it’s also the lesson I tried to impart to a gathering of undergrads at my alma mater back in 2002. As M. put it, “We must not nail ourselves down so firmly to our humors and dispositions. Our principal talent is the ability to apply ourselves to various practices. It is existing, but not living, to keep ourselves bound and obliged by necessity to a single course.”
Back in my little speech at Hampshire College, I told the kids, “Learn how to learn. Because I guarantee that if you study one narrowly specialized field, you’ll come to hate it within five years of graduation and you’ll wish you could branch out into another field.”
But that’s just the intro to the essay. As I said, this one’s about the things M. loves most in life. I enjoyed the heck out of this one because I’m pretty sure I’d have written the exact same thing, if I were living well in an era that didn’t have basketball or comics.
The first of M.’s faves is “rare and exquisite” friendship, consisting of conversation in its various forms. These conversations don’t have to be lofty. He tells us:
In our talks all subjects are alike to me. I do not care if there is neither weight nor depth in them; charm and pertinency are always there; everything is imbued with mature and constant good sense, and mingled with kindliness, frankness, gaiety and friendship.
(In fact, he digresses to warn against speaking too learnedly: “[Learned men] quote Plato and Sain Thomas in matters where the first comer would make as good a witness.” Which is to say, know your audience.)
The second of M.’s faves is “beautiful and well-bred women.” Rather than fill this section with personal anecdotes, he writes more about the need to Treat Her Right and not think solely with your Spitzer. Still, he tells us,
[I]f beauty of [the mind or the body] had necessarily to be lacking, I would have chosen sooner to give up the mental. It has its use in better things; but in the matter of love, a matter which is chiefly concerned with sight and touch, you can do something without the graces of the mind, bothing without the graces of the body.
And this leads us to M.’s favorite association. Friendship is “annoying by its rarity,” while love “withers with age,” so neither of them suffice. And that brings us to M.’s association with books. I thought about paraphrasing his thoughts on his lifelong love of books, but I was so moved by his description of his library that I decided to transcribe that and offer it up.
When at home, I turn aside a little more often to my library, from which at one sweep I command view of my household. I am over the entrance, and see below me my garden, my farmyard, my courtyard, and into most of the parts of my house. There I leaf through now one book, now another, without order and without plan, by disconnected fragments. One moment I muse, another moment I set down or dictate, walking back and forth, these fancies of mine that you see here.
It is on the third floor of a tower; the first is my chapel, the second a bedroom and dressing room, where I often sleep in order to be alone. Above it is a great wardrobe. In the past it was the most useless place in my house. In my library I spend most of the days of my life, and most of the hours of the day. I am never there at night. Adjoining it is a rather elegant little room, in which a fire may be laid in winter, very pleasantly lighted by a window. And if I feared the trouble no more than the expense, I could easily add on to each side a gallery a hundred paces long and twelve wide, on the same level, having found all the walls raised, for another purpose, to the necessary height. Every place of retirement requires a place to walk. My thoughts fall asleep if I make them sit down. My mind will not budge unless my legs move it. Those who study without a book are all in the same boat.
Te shape of my library is round, the only flat side being the part needed for my table and chair; and curving round me as it presents at a glance all my books, arranged in five rows of shelves on all sides. It offers rich and free views in three directions, and sixteen paces of free space in diameter.
In winter I am not there so continually; for my house is perched on a little hill, as its name indicates, and contains no room more exposed to the winds than this one, which I like for being a little hard to reach and out of the way, for the benefit of the exercise as much as to keep the crowd away. There is my throne. I try to make my authority over it absolute, and to withdraw this one corner from all society, conjugal, filial and civil. Everywhere else I have only a verbal authority, essentially divided. Sorry the man, to my mind, who has not in his own home a place to be all by himself, to pay his court privately to himself, to hide! Ambition pays its servants well by keeping them ever on display, like a statue in a market place. “Great fortune is great slavery (Seneca).” Even their privy is not private. I have found nothing so harsh in the austere life that our monks practice as this that I observe in the orders of these men, a rule to be perpetually in company, and to have numbers of others present for any action whatsoever. I find it measurably more endurable to be always alone than never to be able to be alone.
If anyone tells me that it is degrading the Muses to use them only as a plaything and a pastime, he does not know, as I do, the value of pleasure, play, and pastime. I would almost say that any other aim is ridiculous. I live from day to day, and, without wishing to be disrespectful, I live only for myself; my purposes go no further.
In my youth I studied for ostentation; later, a little to gain wisdom; now, for recreation; never for gain. As for the vain and spendthrift fancy I had for that sort of furniture [books], not just to supply my needs, but to go three steps beyond, for the purpose of lining and decorating my walls, I have given it up long ago.
