carol clark - montaigne and the imagery of political discourse

French StudiesVolume XXIV October 1970 No . 4

MONTAIGNE AND THE IMAGERY OF POLITICALDISCOURSE IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE

THE richness of Montaigne's imagery has long been a commonplaceamong critics. It is only in more recent years, however, that seriousattention has been given to analysing the imagery of the Essais. Thejustification proposed for such an analysis has been that by collectingand classifying Montaigne's images, we should learn something furtherabout his ideas or modes of feeling: something more, the argumentrequires, than we could learn simply by reading the Essais. Indeed,Floyd Gray goes so far as to say that, 'Pour de'voiler les directionsessentielles de cette pense"e, il suffira de s'attacher aux images les plusfre"quentes, les plus caract^ristiques'.1 However when one comes toread the collections of Montaigne images produced by, for example,Thibaudet, Gilbert Mayer, or Gray himself, one experiences a feelingof disappointment. These catalogues appear to be quite gratuitousassemblages of imagesthey tell us little beyond the fact that Montaignehad a predilection for images drawn from the theatre, food, building,or whatever. In so far as any attempt is made to relate these image-groups to anything else, it is with Montaigne's life, his supposedcharacter and idiosyncracies that the connection is made: thus Grayexplains his fondness for medical images by the fact that he wasfrequently ill.2 This method is not, indeed, carried to extremes, as inthe worst excesses of the Spurgeon school of Shakespeare criticism, butit is the only method proposed, and it is finally unsatisfactory. 3

Why is this so? Two reasons can be suggested. First, the mediod ofclassification by subject-matter of the image, widiout regard to thecontext in which it is used, is crude and can be misleading. Thus, toplace, as Thibaudet does, in the single category of'food metaphors' thehighly serious 'innutrition' metaphors, of classical origin, which appearin I, xxvi, and such a squib as Quoy, si elle mange vostre pain a lasauce d'une plus agreeable imagination?', which is quite at home in thecontext of sexual badinage of HI, v, does little to illuminate the meaningof either metaphor in the context in which it appears.4 The other, andmore serious defect of this approach, however, is its unhistoricalcharacter. When one is considering the works of a poet of the nine-

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teenth century, or still more of the present day, it is legitimate to seekto relate his images principally to his own character, or die view of thatcharacter which he is seeking to present to his readers. Our era valuesoriginality above all else, and believes that it is the main function of awriter to convey states of mind or feeling to the reader as vividly aspossible. To do this, he must create striking, personal imagery. Thesixteenth-century view of imagery was quite different. So far frombeing the subjective record of an individual response, the image wasprimarily a tool of discourse and of argument. It was, of course,realired that an image proves nothing, that, as the Scholastic tag has it,'omnis similitudo claudicat', but this was a precept largely forgotten inpractice: even Bacon, in the Advancement of Learning, speaks of'evidenceof truth proved by arguments, authorities, similitudes, examples',5 anddie most cursory reading of sixteenth-century prose writing oh anydiscursive topic, whether education, politics, or rhetoric, wiB at oncereveal the writers using images in lieu of arguments. More interestingly,a wider reading will snow that they are largely using the same images,in the same contexts and to prove the same points. The hackneyedcharacter of these images does not appear to have detracted from theirvalue, rather the reverseit was as if the audience, at a familiar point ina familiar chain of reasoning, almost expected to encounter a familiarimage, whose very familiarity would give it the character of an in-controvertible argument. Thus finally one becomes aware of theexistence of a whole stock of time-honoured metaphors which one canexpect to meet again and again in the pages of writers on a particulartopic. In considering the imagery of a sixteenth-century author, it isindispensable to refer to this background of conventional imagery,6 toplace one's subject in perspective, as it were. This article represents apartial attempt at such a placing of Montaigne.

Two important categories of images in Montaigne, as both Thibaudetand Gray recognize, are those drawn from medicine and building. Here. an obvious rapprochement with Montaigne's life seems possible, for hewas frequently ill, and was also responsible for the upkeep of the fabricof the chateau de Montaigne. However, an examination of the contextsin which these images are used will suggest another line of inquiry. Ofthe medical images, a few are developments of the traditional idea ofthe philosopher or spiritual director as medicus animi, treating thetroubles of the soul, and prescribing remedies appropriate to the patient.Thus in I, xiv, the reader is invited to fortify himself against the fear ofdeath by whatever considerations suit him best: 'S'il ne peut digerer ladrogue forte et abstersive, pour desraciner le mal, au moins qu'il lapreigne lenitive, pour le soulager.' Other examples of this traditional

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image can be found in II, xii (p. 549) and (a comic one) HI, ix (p. mo) . 7

The great majority of medical images in Montaigne, however, appearin a political context, in which the patient is the state. Similarly animportant sub-category (though not the majority) of his images drawnfrom building are political in character. Images drawn from medicineand building are in fact among the commonest in the everydaypolitical writing of the period.

The image of the state as body is a very ancient oneone thinks ofBook II of Plato's Republic, the fable of Menenius Agrippa, related byLivy,8 or the doctrine of the Church as Mystical Body of Christ,originated by St Paul9 and much elaborated during the Middle Ages.Its venerable nature, however, seems only to increase its popularitywith sixteenth-century writers on politics, in whom it recurs at everyturn.10 Sometimes it is the king who is head, his officers the limbs, thepeople the belly and 'parties ignobles'. Or the internal arrangements ofthe body are paralleled with the three estates, as for example by JeanTalpin, the 'docteur et chanoine thtologal a Pe"rigueux' whose treatiseon statecraft, La police chrestienne (Paris, 1568), is perhaps the mostcomplete repository of the stock political imagery of the period.Talpin compares the brain to the clergy, the heart to the nobility andthe liver to the populace, while another ingenious writer compares thepeasantry to the feet and legs, for they support the others, but walk inthe dust and are despised. However the message is always the same:each member of the body needs the others, none is self-sufficient. Nordoes one member of the body seek to usurp the office of another. ThusTalpin exhorts his readers to love and help one another: 'En quoy nousnous monstrons estre tous membres d'un corps (comme a vrit nous lesommes: car aussi une Republique est un corps civil) unis ensemble parune union indivisible et entiere amiti6, nous aimans, nous entresecouranset aydans en tous nos affaires, par un vray amour et prompt secours.'11

Superiors have been placed in their positions just as 'Dieu a mis en cecorps naturel les membres superieurs en nature, plus parfaicts, pour legouvernement des inferieurs.12

Charles Sevin's Compkinte de la paix13 proposes as a model of thepeaceful state, the harmony existing between the parts of a healthybody: 'Les membres tant du corps humain, que des autres bestes, ontentre eux un accord et consentement unanime: Ne voyons nous quepour la tuition et deffense de l'un tous les autres incontinent s'apprestent?... la sant et bonne disposition n'est autre chose, que un accord perpetuelde toutes les qualitez du corps.' Pages 23-8 of the anonymous Apologiede la Paix1* are built around the same comparison (beginning p. 23 withthe words: 'Ca commencons par nous-mesmes, et nous recognoistrons

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que Ton ne scauroit trouver, ny mesmes desirer un image plus parfaitd'un Estat franc de bruits, de ligues, de guerres et discords, que cestordre harmonieux, lequel fait vivre nos corps'), and the parallel isrevived on pp. 83-4 of the same work.

The metaphor is frequently developed further by establishing aparallel between some element that is declared to be indispensable tothe functioning of the state (such as its laws, or the obedience of itscitizens), and some indispensable mechanism of the body. Thus Pierrede Dampmartin in his Amiable accusation,1' writes that, 'Le mutuelrespect de ceus qui commandent et de ceus qui ont a obeir ... [se peutdire] l'ame, le sang et les nerfs de tous les estate', and elsewhere in thesame work: 'toute puissance s'abat quant et les bonnes ordonnancesqui la roidissent, ainsi qu'un corps a qui on couppe les nerfs'.16

These examples do not begin to exhaust the use of this image inpolitical writing of the period. What can have been the reason for suchpopularity? We may see one reason in the extremely wide range ofpossible applications. Not only did the image provide a suitablejustification of a hierarchical society, by showing it as something God-ordained: it also afforded a plausible way of accounting for anydisturbances in the state, and could even be used to suggest methods ofdealing with these.

Thus, given the political conditions of the latter half of the sixteenthcentury in France, it is not surprising to find that images of the state asa healthy body are outnumbered by those which present the state as adiseased organism, racked by internal dissensions and devoured by theulcers of greed, ambition or what you will. Indeed it is common forwriters, in a preface or first chapter, to present their picture of the idealby means of the image of the healthy body, only to turn in sub-sequent chapters to the actual spectacle before them, exclaiming howdifferent it is from this ideal picture. Pierre Constant17 may be takenas typifying the feelings of many of his contemporaries when hewrites: ' . . . recognoissons que tous avons failli, et qu'en tout ce grandcorps n'y a sant aucune, depuis la plante des pieds jusques au sommet dela teste'.

Thus images of disease abound in the political writing and oratory ofthe period. La Primaudaye,18 in his chapter entided Des Seditions,writes: '[La guerre civile] faict venir en evidence tout ce qu'il y a demauvais, cachd, 6s plus pernicieux membres du corps politic, jusques ace que l'infection en soit du tout espandue es parties les plus noblesd'iceluy, et qu'il soit reduit en extremity de miseres, sans esperance deremede.' Tracing the course of a civil war, with fields abandoned,cities deserted, provinces seceding, he ends: 'Finalement, le corps

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demembre", les parties infectees du meme poison de discorde, scdesfont elles mesmes.'

Such images recur throughout the collected speeches of Du Vair.Speaking 'apres les Barricades', he declares: 'Chacun cognoist assez que1'ambition et l'avarice sont les deux ulceres qui ont entierement gastiet infecti le corps de cest Estat; et ayant gaign les plus nobles partiesl'ont ainsi mang6 et deffigureV19 Speaking to the inhabitants of Mar-seille, he draws the same lesson:

[...] la dissention est le poison mortel des citez, qui infectant le cceurdes hommes de hayne et de rancune, destruict cet esprit d'union,qui est comme la forme qui donne l'estre a la socie*t civile. Carcomme celuy qui prendroit un corps bien sain et anime\ et lemettroit en deux ou plusieurs pieces, rendroit non seulement lecorps, mais mesmes aussi les membres morts et inutiles: ainsi ladiscorde qui separe les citoyens, et d'une ville en fait plusieurs, nonseulement mine le corps de la Cit, mais aussi toutes les familiesparticuheres.20

And later in the same speech, he warns the inhabitants against fallingback into their old ways, saying: 'Marseille est un corps macilent etlangoureux, qui doit craindre les recheutes, car elles luy seroientmorteUes.'"

Such images can be seen to stem directly from the previous, 'healthybody' image. If it is harmony between its various parts that keeps thebody healthy, so it is discord, the attempt by certain parts to usurp theoffice of others, that is the cause of disease. The authors we have justquoted are inviting the citizens, the cells of the body so to speak, tomend their ways, and, of themselves, reconstitute the primal unity.We may regard this as the most primitive of the solutions which the useof this image might lead speakers to propose (it is, in fact, the conclusionof Menenius Agrippa's fable in Livy). A more common development ofthe image at this period, however, leads from the metaphor of diseaseto that oicure, with the introduction of the figure of a doctor.

The comparison of a ruler with a doctor is certainly a very ancientone. Not only rulers, indeed, but parents, teachers, and any otherperson placed in a position of authority over others might be made thesubject of this comparison. Thus in Erasmus's Parabolae,22 under theheading Obiurgatio, of fifteen similes listed, seven compare the personadministering the obiurgatio to a doctor cutting or prescribing a remedy.23

One may suppose that the attraction of this image lay in the reassuranceit provided: just as a doctor had to do many unpleasant things for thegood of his patients (and they were considerably more unpleasant in the

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sixteenth century than today), so, the image suggested, the unpleasantthings done by those in authority were really all for the good of thosesubmitted to them. The same image also provided the speaker with themeans of making a neat distinction between extreme measures (re-presented by surgery), and milder remedies (represented by medication).Thus Erasmus offers (under Magistrates), the stock argument formoderation: 'Ut magis est probanda medicina quae vitiosas corporispartes sanat, quam quae exurit: Ita melior est magistratus qui rivesimprobos corrigit, quam qui tollit e medio.' However the oppositeargument was just as popularone had only to declare that the ills onecomplained of were too far gone for normal remedy, in order todemand that one's enemies be cut off from the state like diseasedmembers, which otherwise would infect the rest. Thus ClaudeMignault's prefatory sonnet to the Police chrestienne is composed of anoctave which states the theme of a general demand for the return ofstrong government, followed by a sestet which runs:

Tout est tant vicie, que si pour tel ulcereGuerir ou dessecher, on n'use d'un cautere,Sans rien plus delayer en faveur des pervers,Prevoyons pour certaine une fureur divine,Et de noz regions, ou de tout l'universUn triste changement, ou plustost la mine.

Indeed the procedures of surgery and medication are exploited toproduce an infinite variety of metaphorical applications in the writingsof the period. Thus the moderate Talpin builds an elaborate comparisonbetween the body whose hidden ailments produce outward signs in theform of ulcers and so forth, and the state, whose outward disturbancesare, he suggests, merely manifestations of neglected ills within:

Les Republiques seront tousjours en peine et ennuy de corrigergens vitieux, scandaleux et pernicieux: et par iceux en peril d'unecommune mine et malheur: jusques a ce que cest estat [i.e. thepriests and teachers] s'aquitte bien de sa charge, et que les jeunesenfans soyent en doctrine et vertu bien instruits. Car tout ainsiqu'un corps cacochime, c'est a dire remply d'humeurs corrompues,s il n'est repurg par quelque bonne mederine qu'il prenne interi-eurement, il jettera tousjours par dehors, galles, apostumes etulceres: ou engendrera catharres, en facon qu'il faudra que leChirurgien souvent y mette (mais en vain) la main avec ses remedesexternes, la ou il n'y avoit qu'un remede, qui estoit de repurger cecorps par dedans. Ainsi le corps politique, corrompu par vices

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innumerables, doit estre repurge" par doctrines interieures, vrayesmedecines des atnes, administrees par Prestres et scavans pasteurs: etaux enfans par bons Regens et diligens maistres.24

Meanwhile, at the other end of the political spectrum, a blood-thirsty little League pamphlet entitled Origene [sic] de la maladie de laFrance25 begins with an extended prosopopoeia in which the dejectedfigure of France appears before the readers (p. 3), 'toute contamine'e deces maudites putrefactions d'heresie', and begging them for a cure.Such a personification of France is of course an extremely commonfigure in the polemical literature of the time, and one which also makesits appearance in poetry, e.g. in d'Aubigne^s Les Tragiques, Book I, andin Ronsard's Discours des miseres de ce temps. What is worth noticinghere, however, is the more than usually medical character of theimagery, and the invitation to the populace to cast themselves in therole of doctor, which was more usually assigned to the sovereign. Forthe picture is continued with the words:

Elle nous presentoit ses bras a celle fin que fissions escouler et sortirdehors le sang pourry qui gaste et putrifie toutes ces parties; elle nousdemandoit une medecine pour faire evaporer de son corps lesmauvaises humeurs qui semblent la vouloir ensevelir, et conduireau tombeau.

The same image is carried on over pp. 4-6, and the nature of theremedy envisaged is finally made clear on p. 10it is the murder of theking: 'Car c'est la plus salutaire seignee que Ion puisse ordonner anostre France: cest la lancette qui fera sortir ce sang pourry et gras, quienfle la veine de nostre bonne mere.' A further demand is for 'unbreuvage mesle" de sang des heretiques. Voila le repast, voila la medecineordonne"e: il reste seulement de la mettre en execution.' The work endswith a call to the people of Paris to prepare the said 'breuvage', and torun through the body of the heretic king, 'ondoyant la plaine de sonsang mesme'.

It is a far cry from such illiterate rabble-rousing to the oratory of suchrespected statesmen as Du Vair and the others whose speeches arereproduced along with his in the Recueil des Harangues. However, theretoo comparisons drawn from the procedures of medicine recur withsuch frequency as to suggest that they were a commonplace of oratoryat the time. The city whose political problems are being considered iscompared to a patient, unco-operative and dilatory in seeking aremedy for its ills: 'C'est proprement faire comme les imprudensmalades, qui attendent d'envoyer vers le medecin quand ils sont hors

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d'esperance de guarir.'2* The restiveness of the population should not,however, deter its leaders from seeking a solution, for, says Du Vair,'il y a des personnes ulcere"es, qui ne fremissent pas settlement autoucher du fer et de la main, mais ont mesmes apprehension et horreurde tout ce qu'on remue a l'entour d'eux, et toutesfois on ne laisse pas deles penser'.27 A levie de deniers is compared to a bleeding of the bodypoliticbetter results might be obtained, Du Vair suggests, by takingthe required sum over several successive levies, for 'vous tirerez d'uncorps en deux ou trois seignes une quantite" de sang sans l'offenser,laquelle luy aporteroit indubitablement la mort si tout d'un coup vousl'aviez tireV.28 In similar circumstances Despeces casts the king,diplomatically enough, in the role of a distraught father obliged to puthis son under the knifehowever, he expresses the hope that he willimitate the same father, who, 'quand il arrive a la chair vive, qu'ils'approche des nerfs et des veines, il retient et s'arreste tout court et segarde, en pensant guerir la playe, de luy augmenter son mal'.2 Speakingto the inhabitants of Marseille, Du Vair recommends Toubliance' asthe remedy for their ills, calling it Templastre que les plus sageshommes du monde ont appliqu6 a semblables playes [...] le vray antidotede ceste poison mortelle des citez, le tumulte et la sedition',30 and,addressing the Papal legate, he takes issue with the ligueurs in theseterms:

La guerre doncques, a ce qu'ils disent, est desirable: car bien qu'ellesoit la mine de 1 Estat, c'est la conservation de la religion. Premiere-ment nous leur pourrions respondre qu'ils nous proposent unremede bien cruel et aliene du nom et de l'effect de la religion; carce n'cst autre chose que crever l'oeil pour en oster la taye, coupper lagorge au malade pour le guerir d'une apostume.31

Thus we can see that the images of disease and cure are extremelycommon in political writing of the sixteenth century. Indeed at leasttwo works of the period, to my knowledge, are founded solely on sucha sustained metaphor. They are L'anatomie du corps politique*2 a transla-tion by one Paul du Mont of two Latin works of earlier date, one byJean Michel, docteur en thiologxe, and the other by Ren6 Benoist, andDe la maladie du grand corps de la France** a long poem by one GerardFrancois, midecin de sa Majeste".

However, alongside this naive view, if we may so term it, which seesthe state's ills as being caused by the rebelliousness of its members, wefind developing as the century progresses a more sophisticated applica-tion of the image of the state as organism. The aspect now dwelt uponis no longer the necessity of co-operation between the members, but

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rather the mysteriousness of the evolution of states and the occult laws,like those of living organisms, which govern their internal develop-ments. Like living organisms, states are declared to be subject to cor-ruption, decay and eventual death, and it is declared to be the ruler'sfunction not, indeed, to avert (for that would be impossible) this finaldissolution, but to delay it, and meanwhile to palliate the worst effectsof mortality in the body politic. Thus, like a doctor, the ruler must makehimself famihar with the symptoms of his patient, in order to counterthem: he must be versed in the pathology of states, so as to be able tomake correct prognoses and take correct action in time.

There is a suggestion of this approach in Claude de Seyssel's La grantmonarchic de Frame of 1519, bk. I, ch. 8, where he writes:

Une aultre chose y a que j'estime la principale pour la conserva-tion et augmentation d'icelle monarchic C'est que le chief et tousles membres d'icelle sont reglez par si bon ordre que a grant peinepeuvent venir a grande dissention et dissonance a tout le moingsjusques a ce que par voulunte" de Dieu et par le commun cours denature qui ne peult creer ne produire aucune chose perpetuelle etqui ne soit subjecte a corruption et mutation le temps de sa declina-tion et dissolution viegne ce qui est necessaire tout ou tard: ainsi quenous avons diet dessus tous les aultres. Mais tout ainsi que leshommes mortelz d'autent vivent plus longuement et en meilleuresante1 qu'ilz sont de meilleure complexion et vivent par meilleurregime tout ainsy s'entretiegnent plus longuement et en meilleuresorte les seigneuries et estatz qui sont mieulx establyz et policiez.34

We can see, however, that the important figure of the sovereign asdoctor is missing from this image, and De Seyssel's use of the phrase'le chief et les membres' recalls rather the older, hierarchical picture.His suggestion seems to be that once a suitable constitution is found,this itself will be a guarantee of more or less lasting stability, and hisbook is of course aimed at elaborating such a constitution for France.One looks in vain for that awareness of continual change, necessitatingthe continual expertise of the doctor-sovereign, which is so obviouslypresent in La Primaudaye or Bodin.

Thus La Primaudaye argues in the Academic franpise that a study ofstatecraft is necessary, because:

Pendant que le Medecin ignorera la cause de la maladie de sonpatient, il luy sera impossible de remedier a icelle, et dormer guarisonau malade. Ainsi en est-il des Estats et Monarchies, qui souSrentchangement, corruption et finalement ruyne, par diverses causes:

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lesquelles bien cogneues des Princes et Gouverneurs d'icelles, ils ypeuvent facilement obvier par prudence et raison, et dormerremedes a propos aux maulz qui les disposent a mutation, lors que lacorruption naturelle en iceux (comme chacune chose a son malpropre et interieur, qui le mange et corrompt) se veult estendrejusques aux parties meilleures pour gaster le tout.

The speech which follows echoes the same theme, beginning: 'Cor-ruption est naturelle en toutes choses', and explaining that states too aresubject to their 'maladies', which the wise ruler seeks to prevent ortreat.33

It is Bodin, however, among political writers, who makes the mostextensive use of this image. Chapter 3 of his Book W,36 for example, isalmost entirely built around it. He begins by saying:

Si doncques on a decouvert que la force des astres, qu'on pensoitinevitable, se peut affoiblir, et que les sages Medecins ont trouve"des moyens pour changer les maladies, et alterer les fiebvres,contre leur cours naturel, afin de les guerir plus ais&nent: pourquoyle sage Politique, prevoyant les changemens qui adviennentnaturellement aux Republiques, ne previendra par conseil, etremedes convenables la ruine d'icelles? ou si la force du mal estsi grande, qu'il soit contraint de luy obeir: si est-ce neantmoins qu'ilfera certain judgement, par les Symptomes qu'il verra au jourcritique, de 1 issue qui en adviendra, et advertira les ignorans de cequ'il faut faire, pour sauver ce qu'on pourra.

There follows a rather technical discussion of the study of symptoms,with the prognoses that can be drawn from them, with examples fromthe history of Rome and Carthage, of which the conclusion is:

Donques la premiere reigle qu'on peut avoir pour maintenir lesRepubliques en leur estat, c'est de bien cognoistre la nature dechacune Republique, et les causes des maladies qui leur adviennent.C'est pourquoy je me suis arreste" a discourir jusques icy l'un etl'autre: car il vaut beaucoup mieux entretenir le malade par dieteconvenable, qu'attenter de guarir une maladie incurable, au hazardde sa vie, et jamais ne faut essayer les remedes violents, si la maladien'est extreme, et qu'il n'y ait plus d'esperance.

Furdier examples are given of this point (i.e. of the need to introducenew legislation cautiously), and finally the action of Agis, king ofSparta, in attempting a precipitate return to universal equality isdeplored in these terms:

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Car il falloit premierement se faire maistre des forces: ou s'il estoitimpossible, sonder les cueurs et gaigner les plus grands l'un apresl'autre, comme Lycurgue avoit fait, et puis defendre la monnoyed'or et d'argent, et quelque temps apres les meubles precieux: maisd'user d'une saigne'e si violente devant que purger, et d'une si fortemedecine, devant que preparer, ce n'est pas guarir les maladies, ainsmeurtrir les malades.

Bodin's overall tone, however, is optimistic: he seems to feel thatprompt action on the part of the sovereign will avert most catastrophes.However, it is obvious that this new image of the state contains in itselfthe seeds of a potent fatalism, not to say pessimism. If states are to bethought of as living organisms in which corruption is natural, thentheir decay and eventual death must be considered as real possibilities.Even Bodin himself seems to admit this possibility when he writes, inhis chapter entitled De la naissance, accroissement, estat jieurissant, deca-dence et mynes des Republiques:

[...] tout ainsi qu'on juge la mort plus tolerable celle qui vient d'unevieillesse caducque, ou d'une maladie lente, et presque insensible:aussi peut on dire, que le changement d'une Republique, qui vientquasi de vieillesse, et apres avoir dur6 une longue suite de siecles, estnecessaire, et non pas toutesfois violent37

And in fact we find arising in many writers around this period thepessimistic conviction that they are living through the final decrepitude,or indeed the death-agony, of the state, if not of the world itself. ThusDu Vair in his De la Constance describes the death of the state in convul-sions. Could it not have died peacefully of old age, he asks rhetorically.No, he answers, 'ces animaux-la ne meurent point autrement, ils n'ontjamais la fin douce'.38 This 'old age of the world' motif is extremelystrong in Montaigne, as we shall find when we come to examine theuse he made of the stock medical metaphor.

The other image of the state which recurs (though by no means sofrequently as the medical image) in sixteenth-century writing is that ofthe state as building. The ideal state is a strong, well-constructed edificesuch as that described by La Primaudaye:

[Ceste Monarchic] comme un bastiment appuye" sur haultsfondemens, et construit de matieres durables, bien uny et joinct entoutes ses parties, ne craint ny les vents ny les orages, et resisteayse"ment aux efforts et violences: ne peult aussi souffrir ayse"mentalteration ny mutation, tant qu'elle demeurera unie et joincte entous ses membres sur le fondement de ses loix.39

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By a simple development, this or that desirable quality in the state isoften compared to the cornerstone of the building, or the mortarwhich holds it together. Thus Dampmartin writes that the prince mustbe careful to maintain the appearance of unshakeability:

d'autant que comme ce n'est la matiere, ains la liaison des piliers etfondemens qui porte les plus grans fardeaus, et comme c'est ladissolution de quelque piece mal arrestee qui affeblit et atterre lesmachines: de mesme c'est la crainte publique et timide reverencenon entamee ou esbranlee par quelque rebellion, qui maintientceluy qui commande, comme au contraire c'est le pernicieuxexemple du mepris et desunion domestique qui entrouvre l'estat ctle fait pancher a sa ruine.40

In similar vein, the anonymous author of the Apologie de la paix writes:

D'ailleurs la Paix est de tant plus recommandable que c'est le cimentet le mortier qui lie et joinct ensemble les pierres de l'EdificePolitic. Qui pourroit faire soustenir un bastiment sans le Her dequelque composition, qui retienne toutes les parcelles de la maison,qu'au premier vent qui viendra a souffler elles ne se desjoignent,s escoulent et facent un dangereux soubresaut.41

For Bodin, it is the laws which are the ultimate support of the state:

[...] tout changcment de loix qui touchent l'estat, est dangereux: carde changer les coustumes et ordonnances, concernant les successions,contrats ou servitudes de mal en bien, il est aucunement tolerable:mais de changer les loix qui touchent l'estat, il est aussi dangereuxcomme de remuer les fondements ou pierres angulaires qui soustien-nent le fez du bastiment: lequel en ce faisant s'esbranle, et recoit plusde dommage (outre le danger de sa ruine) que de profit de lanouvelle estofe: mesmement s'il est ja vieil et caduc. Ainsi est-ild'une Republique ja envieilh'e si on remue tant soit peu les fonde-mens qui la soustiennent, il y a grand danger de la ruine d'icelle.42

Again we notice in Bodin the suggestion of old age, of inevitable decayof the state.

Thus we can see that if, to evoke the political conditions of his time,Montaigne makes use of metaphors drawn from medicine and building,he is simply drawing on a fund of stock imagery which must have beenfamiliar to all his contemporary readers. 'Simply', however, is a mis-leading adverb to use in this context. For when, having spent some timereading the political authors quoted above, we return to Montaigne, wehave precisely the impression of passing from something simple, and

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rather stereotyped, to something much more complex and original.Why is this so?

The first difference which strikes us is the almost complete lack ofschematism in Montaigne's use of these images. The almost allegoricalworking-out (king = head/people = body, state = patient/ruler = doctor,state = building/laws = mortar) which we have come to expect, thecareful parallels neatly articulated at their mid-points with 'tout ainsi','ainsi en est-il', etc., are here virtually absent. We may of course see apractical reason for this in the fact that Montaigne was not writing forany polemical or even expository purpose: the Essais are neither apamphlet nor a treatise on government. The non-schematic character oftheir imagery is none the less remarkable in a sixteenth-century context.

Some images indeed do take the form of a fairly clearly articulatedparallel, as when the attempted reforms of the Protestants are thusdescribed:

II advient de la leur, comme des autres medecines foibles et malapplique"es: les humeurs qu'elle vouloit purger en nous, elle les aeschaufKes, exaspere"es et aigries par le conflict, et si nous estdemeure'e dans le corps. Elle n'a sceu nous purger par sa foiblesse, etnous a cependant affoiblis, en maniere que nous ne la pouvonsvuider non plus, et ne recevons de son operation que des douleurslongues et intestines,4*

or when Montaigne defends himself from the charge that his mayoraltywent unmarked by dramatic public events:

Est-il quelqu'un qui desire estre malade pour voir son medecin enbesogne, et faudroit-il pas foyter le medecin qui nous desireroit lapeste, pour mettre son art en practicque? Je n'ay point eu cett'humeur inique et assez commune, de desirer que le trouble etmaladie des affaires de cette cite' rehaussast et honnorast mon

. gouvernement: j'ay preste* de bon coeur l'espaule a leur aysance etfacilite",44

or, most notably of all, in the long passage, beginning 'II se trouve unemerveilleuse relation et correspondance en cette universelle police desouvrages de nature', which opens the early essay I, xxiii, and in whichVilley sees the influence of Bodin's Book IV.

In general, however, Montaigne's procedure is rather to establishvery wide and rather diffuse parallels between the internal economies ofstates, bodies and buildings, in order to convey an overall vision ofgeneral disagrigation and impending dissolution. It is his conviction thatstates, like bodies (and arguably buildings also) are extremely complex

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organic wholestoo complex, he is sure, for their workings ever reallyto be understood by medical or political science. Indeed, this ap-prehension of the complexity of living things, when contrasted with thesimplistic models, whether anatomical or political, that satisfied hiscontemporaries, is one of the things that make Montaigne seem mostmodern. Given this complexity, all that Montaigne can assert withconfidence is that no treatment applied to any part of a living organismcan fail to have repercussions on trie rest, often with quite unpredictableresults.

Thus he writes of the state that:

[...] une police, c'est comme un bastiment de diverses piecesjointesensemble, d'une telle liaison, qu'il est impossible d'en esbranler une,que tout le corps ne s'en sente [...] la liaison et contexture de cettemonarchic et ce grand bastiment ayant este" desmis et dissout [...]donne tant qu'on veut d'ouverture et d'entr^e a pareilles injures.43

But he writes of the body in very similar terms, declaring the impos-sibility of medicine because of the enormous number of factors to beconsidered in each case:

[Le medecin] a besoing de trop de pieces, considerations et circons-tances pour affiiter justement son dessin [...] et faut que toutes cespieces, il les scache proportionner et raporter Tune a l'autre pour enengendrer une parfaite symetrie. A quoy s'il faut tant soit peu, si detant de ressorts il y en a un tout seul qui tire a gauche, en voylaassez pour nous perdre.46

Recounting the experiment in which he bred a goat afflicted with thestone (the procedure employed was supposed to produce an animalwhose blood would be a specific against the diseasehowever whenMontaigne had it opened its own kidneys proved to contain a stone ofenormous dimensions), he argues:

Car de dire que le sang ne se sent pas de cette contagion et n'enaltere sa vertu accoustum6e, il est plustost a croire qu'il ne s'engendrerien en un corps que par la conspiration et communication detoutes les parties: la masse agit tout entiere, quoy que l'une piece ycontribue plus que 1'autre, selon la diversity des operations.47

Thus it is understandable that he should refer to the body as a'police': speaking of doctors, he says that:

La totale police de ce petit monde leur est indigestible ... pour neguerir le cerveau au prejudice de l'estomac, (ils) offencent l'estomacet empirent le cerveau par ces drogues tumultuaires et dissentieuses,48

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while when he speaks of the new names in medicine, Paracelsus,Fioravanti and Argenterius, it is medical science itself that is spoken ofas both a 'corps' and a 'police':

[ils] ne changent pas seulement une recepte, mais a ce qu'on mediet, toute la contexture et police du corps de la medecine.49

Nature itself is seen as an enormous 'machine' composed of inter-related parts: speaking of the love of parents for children, Montaignewrites:

[.. .1 nature semble nous l'avoir recommand6e, regardant a estandreet faire aller avant les pieces successives de cette sienne machine,50

while the disturbances of the civil war suggest a giant upheaval in themachine:

A voir nos guerres civiles, qui ne crie que cette machine se boule-verse, et que le jour du jugement nous prend au collet?31

It would seem that Montaigne saw buildings (especially large, oldbuildings of complex construction) as being endowed with a similarsort of occult life:

Tout ce qui branle ne tombe pas. La contexture d'un si grand corpstient a plus d'un clou. II tient mesme par son antiquiti: comme lesvieux bastimens, ausquels l'aage a desrobe" le pied, sans crouste etsans cyment, qui pourtant vivent et se soustiennent en leur proprepoix.32

And he can reverse the image and picture an old man as a rotten struc-ture, due for collapse:

[Mon esprit] diet que e'est pour mon mieux que j'ay la gravele; queles bastimens de mon aage ont naturellement a souffrir quelquegouttiere (il est temps qu'ils comment a se lacher et desmentir....33

However this interpenetration can be seen at its clearest, and with themost striking artistic effect, in the section, or movement as it mightmore appropriately be called, of Essay HI, ix (De la vaniti),54 whichevokes the civil war conditions from which Montaigne took refuge inwriting fL'escrivaillerie semble estre quelque simptome d'un siecledesborde" J33 or in travel. It was Montaigne's conviction (at least most ofthe time) that he was living through the final decrepitude and impend-ing dissolution of civilization as he knew it ('Or tournons les yeux partout', he writes, 'tout crolle autour de nous; en tous les grands estats,soit de Chrestienti, soit d'ailleurs, que nous cognoissons, regardez y:

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vous y trouverez une evidente menasse de changement et de ruyne [...] leplus voysin mal qui nous menace n'est pas alteration en la masseentiere et solide, mais sa dissipation et divulsion, l'extreme de nozcraintes').56 This old age of the world coincided in time with his ownold age ('la desolation de cest estat se rencontre a la desolation de monaage")37. And to render this vision of universal chaos and decay heconstructed these pages, beginning with stock images, but returning tothem and reworking them with additional material until the motifi ofstate as body and state as building are finally so closely interwoven as tobe almost inextricable.

The movement begins with a fairly schematic passage of 1588, whichis constructed round the building image, though shading into themedical one at the end:

Rien ne presse un estat que l'innovation: le changement donneseul forme a l'injustice et a la tyrannic Quand quelque piece sedemanche on peut 1'estayer: on peut s'opposer a ce que l'alterationet corruption naturelle a toutes choses ne nous esloigne trop denos commencemens et principes. Mais d'entreprendre a refondreune si grande masse et a changer les fondemens d'un si grandbastiment, c'est a faire a ceux qui pour descrasser effacent, quiveulent amender les defauts particuhers par une confusion univer-selle, et guarir les maladies par la mort.58

This is followed by a. passage on the medical theme, which begins:'Le monde est inepte a se guarir', and concerns the long-term effective-ness of most short-term remedies: 'la descharge du mal present n'est pasguarison, s'il n'y a general amendement de condition'. This theme is thendeveloped further in a 1595 passage beginning: 'La fin du chirurgienn'est pas de faire mourir la mauvaise chair: ce n'est que 1'acheminementde sa cure', and continuing through a series of examples.

The return to 1588 material on p. 1073 brings a note of qualifiedhope:

Pour nous voir bien piteusement agitez, je ne vay pas soudain meresolvant [...] Nous ne sommes pas pourtant, a l'aventure, a nostredernier periode. La conservation des estats est chose qui vray-semblabfement surpasse nostre inteUigence.

In 1588 the passage ends here, but in 1595 Montaigne adds:

C'est, comme diet Platon, chose puissante et de difficile dissolutionqu'une civile police. Elle dure souvent contre des maladies mortelleset intestines, contre l'injure des loix injustes, contre la tyrannie,

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contre le debordement et ignorance des magistrats, licence etsedition des peuples.

The state of Rome is taken as an example of this truth, and again thebuilding and medical metaphors are invoked:

Qui se doit desesperer de sa condition, voyant les secousses etmouvemens dequoy celuy-la fut agite et qu'il supporta? Sil'estenduede la domination est la santi d'un estat [...] celuy-la ne fut jamais sisain que quand il fut le plus malade. La pire de ses formes luy fut laplus fortunee.

This optimism of despair, if we may so term it, is developed furtherthrough the image, already quoted, of the ancient building continuingto stand long after it should logically have collapsed, the grand corps[qui] tient mesme par son antiquity'. Furthermore, Montaigne argues,can France really be in such danger when few neighbouring powers arein a position to attack her? For all the states of Christendom seem to bein much the same case. From this fact too he derives an almost super-stitious hope for the future of the state:

Nous n'avons pas seulement a tirer consolation de cette societiuniverselle de mal et de menasse, mais encores quelque esperancepour la dure de nostre estat; d'autant que naturellement rien netombe la ou tout tombe. La maladie universelle est la sant par-ticuliere; la conformite est quality ennemie a la dissolution [...]Qui scait si Dieu voudra qu'il en advienne comme des corps qui sepurgent et remettent en meilleur estat par longues et griefvesmaladies, lesquelles leur rendent une santi plus entiere et plus netteque celle qu'elles leur avoient oste?

However he cannot really sustain such optimism in the face of thefacts. 'A compter les simptomes de nostre mal', he finds them such as tosuggest Heaven itself has taken sides against France: 'II semble que lesastres mesmement ordonnent que nous avons assez dur outre lestermes ordinaires.' And he ends with the evocation of universal dis-solution already quoted, prophesying '[la] dissipation et divulsion [de lamasse], l'extreme de noz craintes'.

In these passages Montaigne is clearly drawing on the conventionalimage of states as quasi-living organisms, subject to corruption andtherefore to disease. What we immediately notice as lacking, however,is the figure of a doctor. We may connect this with Montaigne's lackof an obvious programme. The political writers we have referred to inthis article are all alike in that they have a solution to propose: despite

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their depiction of present ills they are basically optimistic.39 Thus, forBodin, the natural propensity of states to decay is a slow process, andone which can be, if not reversed, at least mitigated by the resoluteaction of the expert Montaigne refuses to admit this possibility ('Laconservation des estats est chose qui vray-semblablement surpassenostre intelligence"): for him, the disease is a galloping consumption,and no expert is at hand to provide a cure. Hope, such as it is, must bedistilled from such seemingly illogical formulae as 'rien ne tombe la outout tombe', or 'la maladie universelle est la sante' particuliere'propositions with which few engineers or public health experts wouldagree.

Yet the seeming confusion of Montaigne's thought on this pointseems to the modern reader to mirror far more exactly what must havebeen the state of mind of one who had to live through the horrors ofthe Wars of Religion than could the neat parallels or the projectors ofideal commonwealths; and in Montaigne the basically conventionalimages of building and medicine acquire, from the interweavingprocess to which they are subjected, a complexity and richness of over-tone which are quite absent from most odier sixteenth-century writingon political topics. Indeed it is only by examining the personal use madeby Montaigne of what was essentially stock imagery that one becomesaware of the gap that set him apart from the general run of his con-temporaries. His imagery thus becomes a measure of his originality,and in a real sense a key to his thought.

CAROL E. CLARKGLASGOW

1 F. Gray, Le style ic Montaigne, Paris, 1958, p. 155.2 Ibid., p. 164.I M. Baraz's artide 'La images dans lei Essais dc Montaigne' (BHR, 1965, pp. 360-94) avoids

this excessive ichematism of approach, and despite its lack of explicit 'programme' achieves, in ourview, a much more insightful correlation between Montaigne's images and his thought.

4 It is only fair to point out that Thibaudet's book (Montaigne, Pans, 1963) was edited by Grayfrom Thibaudet's unfinished notes. Thibaudet himiflf refers to his catalogue of the images as a'travail TT1"* micanique'.

3 F. Bacon, The Essays, Colours of Good and Evil and Advancement of Learning, ed. A. W. Pollard,London, 1000, p. 193.

Alice Harmon's article, 'How great was Shakespeare's debt to Montaigne?" (PMLA, LVII,1943, pp. 988-1008) makes salutary reading on this point. She is concerned to discount the valueof shared imagery as evidence of literary influence in the sixteenth century, and supports thispoint by a study of the stock imagery of sixteenth-century moralists in France and England.

7 All references are to the Pleiade edition of the Essais (1950), by A. Thibaudet. History, 2, 32. I Corinthians, 12.11 and Ephesians, 4.10 P. Archambault's recent article, "The analogy of the "body" in Renaissance political litera-

ture' (BHR, 1967, pp. 22-53) is an extremely interesting study of the comparison as it is used bypolitical theorists in England, France and Italy in the earlier part of the sixteenth century. Itcontains a section entitled 'Ancient and mediaeval ancestors', which traces the history of thecomparison from its rlawirai sources through the Middle Ages.

II La police chrestienne, f. 1 v.

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u Ibid15 Ch. Sevin, Complamte de la paix deschassee et banniepour lejourd'huy hors du royaumt de France,

Paris, 1570, 4 r.n Anon., Apologie de la paix, Paris, 1585. ( B N no. Lb34.2(59)13 P. dc Dampmartin, Amiable accusation et charitable excuse, des mans et evenemens ie la France,

Paris, 1576, 8 v. Ibid, 10 r.17 P. Constant, La cause desguenes avittes de la France, Langres, 1595, not paginated11 P. de la Primaudaye, Acodemie fiancoise, Paris, 1577, 309 v.", G. du Vair, Recueil des harangues et traiaez du ST. du Vair, Paris, 1607, p. 3." I b i d , p. 198.11 Ib id , p. 204.22 Erasmus, Parabolac sive simiiihidines. References are to the alphabetical arrangement o f these

appended to C. Lycosthenrs, Apophthegmata, Lugduni, 1574.11 See also e g . Talpin, 140 v : '[Les piecepteun] sont medecins des ames, en ce qu'ili les

repurgent de vitieuses affections, leur prescrivans remedes singuliers, antidotes et preservatifs dctous vices, en leur procurant par ceste spirituelle mederine la santl de leurs ames .

24 Police dtrestierme, 12 r. Talpin is very fond o f medical imagerysee for instance also his 8 r, 14 r, 275 v, 280 r, 303 v.

23 Anon. , Origene de la melodic de la France avec les remedes propres a la guarison cTiatle, avec uneexhortation A I'entretenement de la guerre. This work, printed at Paris, is undated but relates to thekilling o f the Guises at Blois. The spelling and punctuation o f our quotations are those o f theoriginal.

" Recueil des harangues, p. 2.27 Ib id , p. 25." Ib id , p. 35.2 Ib id , Harangue de Mr. Despeces, p. 2 7 a30 Ib id , pp. 199 and 201.31 Ib id , p. 181.32 P . d u M o n t , L'anatomie du corps politique compart" mi corps humain, pour cognoistre la source et

origine des maladies d'iceluy. Avec le vray et unicaue remede, pour Ie remettre en santi, D o u a i , 1581.13 G. Francois, D e la maladie du grand corps de la France, des causes et prtmietc origine de son mal:

Et des remedes pour le recouvrement de sa santi, Paris, 1595.34 PlanH de Scytsd, La grant monarchic de France, Paris, 1519, vii v .33 Academie fiancoise, 213 r and v .M J. Bodin, Les six litres de la rcpublupie, Paris, 1576, pp. 449 et seq.37 Ib id , p. 403.3 G. du Vair, De la Constance el consolation is calamitez publiaues, Rouen, 1604, p. 143. The first

o f this work dates from 1597.3 Academie fiancoise, 212 v. The margin-title is 'La France indomptable sans guerre civile'.* Amiable accusation, 27 r.41 Apologie, p. 22.4 2 Republique, p. 452.43 I, xxiii , 152.44 m , x, 1149.43 I, xriii, 148.* II, xxxvii, 865.47 II, xntvii, 874.4 O, xxxvii, 867.4 II, xxxvii, 864. 0, vii, 425.' I, xxvi, 191.32 HI, ix, 1075 (my italia).33 HI, Trii', 1224.34 It occupies pp. 1071-6 o f the Pleiade edition. HI, ix, 1058.* m, ix, 1075-6.37 m, ix, 1059.3 m, ix, 1071. '[...] qui pour descraiifr efiacent [...]' is an addition of 1595.3 The only exception to this remark is Du Vair. While not actually pessimistic, his speeches

display, rather than optimism, a somewhat disillusioned determination to make the best of a badsituation, while in the De la Constance the present 'calamitez publiqucs' are seen as a backgroundagainst which the sage may practise stoic virtue.

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