On Books

In his essay “Of three employments” (Essays, III-3), Montaigne distinguishes between dealing with friends, with women, and with books. However, dealings with friends and women are problematical, so Montaigne, for they depend on chance and on the cooperation of others. Moreover, “one is troublesome by its rarity, the other withers with age”. And indeed, real friends are rare and difficult to find for everybody. However, to my mind, the second part of this remark represents a typical male, if not macho point of view – although, I think that Montaigne was not a macho type of man –, besides that as such I disagree with it. By saying that contacts with women withers away with age, Montaigne apparently thinks of sexual contacts that men (if not he himself) have with women, considering the paragraphs preceding this remark. Why would a pure normal friendship bet
ween a man and a woman not be possible and why would such a friendship wither away with age? Furthermore, (implicitly) Montaigne ignores here the friendships and contacts between women among each other, and also in this case there is no reason to suppose that they wither away with age. They do or don’t, just as friendships between men do or don’t, depending on the circumstances.
Anyway, Montaigne prefers contact with books, “which … is much more certain, and much more our own. It yields all other advantages to the two first, but has the constancy and facility of its service for its own share.” Especially, the latter is an advantage of books over humans, for they don’t protest when you need them and they are always there, and as he gets older, Montaigne needs them more. Contact with books, so he says, “comforts me in old age and solitude; it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness, and delivers me at all hours from company that I dislike: it blunts the point of griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, ’tis but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them and drive the other out of my thoughts…”. No wonder that Montaigne never travels without books.
Nevertheless, Montaigne is not a fervent reader. No day goes by that I don’t read a book but not so for Montaigne. Montaigne wants to have books around him and enjoy the reading when he needs it for the reasons just mentioned, but “sometimes I pass over several days, and sometimes months, without looking on them.” They simply must be there so that Montaigne can use his books when he needs them. When at home he likes spending his time in his library, then taking this book, then taking that book, and “I turn over now one book, and then another, on various subjects, without method or design. One while I meditate, another I record and dictate, as I walk to and fro, such whimsies as these I present to you here.”
Books give Montaigne consolation, emotional and mental support, and they help him write his essays. For me, it is different. Like Montaigne, I cannot do without them, but books give me a window on the world. Books stimulate my imagination and give me other perspectives. They help me discover what is outside of me and what is inside me. That’s why reading is so important; not just reading letters whatever they are, like an accounting text, as some think, but reading stories or texts with narrative aspects. And that’s why reading is not only important for the elderly but also and just for young people. Because reading narrative texts stimulates your imagination and broadens your view of and on the world, it stimulates your mental and social development. Nevertheless, as Montaigne tells us: “Every good has its ill.” Also books have, since, so he says,: “[t]he soul indeed is exercised therein; but the body, the care of which I must withal never neglect, remains in the meantime without action, and grows heavy and sombre. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining age.”
But why should I stop doing what gives me so much pleasure and which is mentally so advantageous for me, because it neglects my physical side? It’s true that reading does not train my body but I have my bike for that.

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Here you find a reconstruction of Montaigne’s library.