At the top

“…why, in giving your estimate of a man, do you prize him wrapped and muffled up in clothes…”

In his essay “Of the inequality amongst us” (Essays, Book I-42) Montaigne asks why we don’t judge humans by their own gifts. “We commend a horse for his strength and sureness of foot”, so Montaigne, “and not for his rich caparison; a greyhound for his speed of heels, not for his fine collar...” So why then don’t we just humans for their own qualities? Someone may have many servants, a beautiful house, much power, many thousand pounds a year: all these are about him, but not in him. If you buy a horse, you want to see him without a horse blanket; you want to see him naked and open to your eye. So, “why, in giving your estimate of a man, do you prize him wrapped and muffled up in clothes? He then discovers nothing to you but such parts as are not in the least his own, and conceals those by which alone one may rightly judge of his value. ‘Tis the price of the blade that you inquire into, not of the scabbard: you would perhaps not bid a farthing for him, if you saw him stripped.” … “Measure [a person] without his stilts; let him lay aside his revenues and his titles; let him present himself in his shirt. Then examine if his body be sound and sprightly, active and disposed to perform its functions. What soul has he? Is she beautiful, capable, and happily provided of all her faculties? Is she rich of what is her own, or of what she has borrowed? Has fortune no hand in the affair? … Is she settled, even and content? This is what is to be examined, and by that you are to judge of the vast differences betwixt man and man.” This is what counts, so Montaigne. Power and wealth are mere outer appearances. Nevertheless, we are blinded by them, and we ignore the actual person. That is foolishness: “If we consider a peasant and a king, a nobleman and a vassal, a magistrate and a private man, a rich man and a poor, there appears a vast disparity, though they differ no more, as a man may say, than in their breeches.”
You can argue that having power, money and possessions does have advantages. However, they don’t make those who have them better persons. Even more, those on the top are usually worse off than ordinary humans. If you see those on the top in private, “you will see nothing more than an ordinary man, perhaps more contemptible than the meanest of his subjects: … cowardice, irresolution, ambition, spite, and envy agitate him as much as another”. In other words, as Montaigne explains by quoting Seneca: Although an ordinary man has less wealth and power than someone at the top, “the one is happy in himself; the happiness of the other is counterfeit.”
Here we have come to the heart of this essay. Montaigne will certainly not deny that having some wealth is better than being poor. As a lord, he knew that having some wealth frees you from much misery and from the basic limitations of life. Indeed, he was a lord, but only a little one, though one with relations in the highest circles. And just because of those relations with the top, he knew how life there was. Despite all praise that the one at the top receives, Montaigne knew that “he is but a man at best, and if he be deformed or ill-qualified from his birth, the empire of the universe cannot set him to rights.” Wealth and power don’t make you a better person than you actually are. “What of all that, if he be a fool? Even pleasure and good fortune are not relished without vigour and understanding… Where the body and the mind are in disorder, to what use serve these external conveniences: considering that the least prick with a pin, or the least passion of the soul, is sufficient to deprive one of the pleasure of being sole monarch of the world… Assuredly, it can be no easy task to rule others, when we find it so hard a matter to govern ourselves... I am very much of opinion that it is far more easy and pleasant to follow than to lead; and that it is a great settlement and satisfaction of mind to have only one path to walk in, and to have none to answer for but a man’s self.”
Being at the top doesn’t make you happy, nor does being extremely wealthy and living in abundance. “Nothing is so distasteful and clogging as abundance,” Montaigne tells us. However, – what Montaigne also wants to tell us – the problem is that many at the top think it does. And those at the top do not only think that such a life is the best there is because they are at the top, but in addition they are surrounded by people who make them believe that life there is the best there is and that they themselves are the best. Moreover, they choose such people around them. No wonder then, that they think to fulfil a divine mission and that they deserve the Noble Prize for that. Here, too, Montaigne holds up a mirror to them. Like all rulers, also Alexander the Great, King of Macedon (356-323 BC) was surrounded by flatterers. They told him that he was the son of Jupiter. However, Montaigne tells us, one day Alexander was wounded, and seeing the blood streaming from his wound, he said: “What say you now, my masters, is not this blood of a crimson colour and purely human? This is not of the complexion of that which Homer makes to issue from the wounded gods.”
Let me end this blog in the same way as Montaigne ended his essay: Each person’s way of life shapes his own fortune.