“Let our pupil be provided with things; words will follow only too fast.”[86]
“The world is given to babbling; I hardly ever saw a man who did not rather prate too much, than speak too little. Yet the half of our life goes in that way; we are kept four or five years in learning words....”[87]
“This is not saying that it is not a fine and good thing to speak well; but not so good as it is made out to be. I am vexed that our life is so much occupied with all this.”
118. How we should read.—Montaigne has keenly criticised the abuse of books: “I would not have this boy of ours imprisoned, and made a slave to his book.... I would not have his spirit cow’d and subdu’d by applying him to the rack, and tormenting him, as some do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and so make a pack-horse of him. Neither should I think it good, when, by a solitary and melancholic complexion, he is discovered to be much addicted to his book, to nourish that humor in him, for that renders them unfit for civil conversation, and diverts them from better employments.”[88]
But while he advises against excess in reading, he has admirably defined the manner in which we ought to read. Above all, he says, let us assimilate and appropriate what we read. Let the work of the reader resemble that of bees, that, on this side and on that, tap the flowers for their sweet juices, and make them into honey, which is no longer thyme nor marjoram. In other terms, we should read with reflection, and with a critical spirit, while mastering the thoughts of the author by our personal judgment, without ever becoming slaves to them.
119. Montaigne’s Errors.—Montaigne’s greatest fault, it must be confessed, is that he is somewhat heartless. Somewhat of an egoist and Epicurean, he celebrates only the easy virtues that are attained “by shady routes through green meadows and fragrant flowers.” Has he himself ever performed painful duties that demand effort? To love children, he waits till they are amiable; while they are small, he disdains them, and keeps them at a distance from him:
“I cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressing an infant, scarcely born, having as yet neither motion of soul nor shape of body distinguishable, by which they can render themselves amiable; and have not suffered them to be nursed near me....”[89] “Never take, and, still less, never give, to the women of your household the care of the feeding of your children!”
Montaigne joined precept to example. He somewhere says unfeelingly: “My children all died while at nurse.”[90] He goes so far as to say that a man of letters ought to prefer his writings to his children: “The births of our intelligence are the children the most truly our own.”[91]
120. Incompleteness of his Views on the Education of Women.—Another mental defect in Montaigne is, that, by reason of his moderation and conservatism, he remains a little narrow. High conceptions of human destiny are not to be expected of him; his manner of conceiving of it is mean and commonplace. This lack of intellectual breadth is especially manifest in his reflections on the education of women. Montaigne is of that number, who, through false gallantry, would keep woman in a state of ignorance on the pretext that instruction would mar her natural charms. In their case, he would prohibit even the study of rhetoric, because, he says, that would “conceal her charms under borrowed charms.” Women should be content with the advantages which their sex assures to them. With the knowledge which they naturally have, “they command with the switch, and rule both the regents and the schools.” However, he afterwards thinks better of it; but in his concessions there is more of contempt than in his prohibitions: “If, however, it displeases them to make us any concessions whatever, and they are determined, through curiosity, to know something of books, poetry is an amusement befitting their needs; for it is a wanton, crafty art, disguised, all for pleasure, all for show, just as they are.”[92]