Part III, Chapter 20: Of the Bad Reasonings which are common in Civil Life and in Ordinary Discourse (second part)
Amongst the various ways by which self-love plunges men into error, or rather strengthens them in it, and prevents their escape from it, we must not forget one which is, without doubt, one of the principal and most common. This is the engaging to maintain any opinion, to which we may attach ourselves from other considerations than those of its truth. For this determination to defend our opinion leads us no longer to consider whether the reasons we employ are true or false, but whether they will avail to defend that which we maintain. We employ all sorts of reasons, good and bad, in order that there may be some to suit every one; and we sometimes proceed even to say things which we well know to be absolutely false, if they will contribute to the end which we seek. The following are some examples: —
An intelligent man would hardly ever suspect Montaigne of having believed all the dreams of judicial astrology. Nevertheless, when he needs them for the purpose of foolishly degrading mankind, he employs them as good reasons. " When we consider,” says he, " the dominion and power which these bodies have, not only on our lives, and on the state of our fortune, but also on our inclinations, which are governed, driven, and disturbed, according to their influences, how can we deprive them of a soul, of life, and of discourse?”
Does he wish to destroy the advantage which men have over beasts 1 He relates to us absurd stories, whose ex no he knew better than any one, and derives from them these still more absurd conclusions:—" There have been,” says he, " some who boasted that they understood the language of brutes, as Apollonius Thyaneus, Melampus, Tiresias, Thales, and others; and since what the cosmographers say is true, that there are some nations which receive a dog as their king, they must give a certain interpretation to his voice and movements.”
We might conclude, for the same reason, that when Caligula made his horse consul, the orders which he gave in the discharge of that office must have been clearly understood. But we should do wrong in accusing Montaigne of this bad consequence; his design was not to speak reasonably, but to gather together a confused mass of everything which might be said against men, which is, however, a vice utterly opposed to the justness of mind and sincerity of a good man.
Who, again, would tolerate this other reasoning of the same author, on the subject of the auguries which the pagans made from the flight of birds, and which the wisest amongst them derided? " Amongst all the predictions of time past,” says he, " the most ancient, and the most certain, were those which were derived from the flight of birds. We have nothing of the like kind—nothing so admirable; that rule, that order of the moving of the wing, through which the consequences of things to come were obtained, must certainly have been directed by some excellent means to so noble an operation; for it is insufficient to attribute so great an effect to some natural ordinance, without the intelligence, agreement, or discourse of the agent which produces it; and such an opinion is evidently false.”
Is it not a delightful thing to see a man who holds that nothing is either evidently true or evidently false, in a treatise expressly designed to establish Pyrrhonism, and to destroy evidence and certainty, deliver to us seriously these dreams as certain truths, and speak of the contrary opinion as evidently false? But he is amusing himself at our expense when he speaks in this way, and he is without excuse in thus sporting with his readers, by telling them things which he does not, and could not without absurdity, believe.
He was, without doubt, as good a philosopher as Virgil, who does not ascribe to any intelligence in the birds even those periodical changes which we observe in their movement according to the difference of the air, from which we may derive some conjecture as to rain and fine weather. This may be seen in these admirable verses from the Georgics: —
" Non equidem credo quia sit divinitus illis Ingenium, aut rerum fato prudentia major; Verum ubi tempestas et coeli mobilis humor. Mutavere vias, et Jupiter humidus austris Densat erant quae rara modo, et quae densa relaxat; Vertuntur species animorum, ut corpora motus Nunc hos, nunc alios: dum nubila ventus agebat; Concipiant, hinc ille avium concentus in agris, Et laetae pecudes, et ovantes gutture corvi.”
But these mistakes being voluntary, all that is necessary to avoid them is a little good faith. The most common, and the most dangerous, are those of which we are not conscious, because the engagement into which we have entered to defend an opinion disturbs the view of the mind, and leads it to take as true that which contributes to its end. The only remedy which can be applied to these is to have no end but truth, and to examine reasonings with so much care, that even prejudice shall not be able to mislead us.
We have already noticed that we ought not to separate the inward causes of our errors from those which are derived from objects, which may be called the outward, because the false appearance of these objects would not be capable of leading us into error, if the will did not hurry the mind into forming a precipitate judgment, when it is not as yet sufficiently enlightened.
Since, however, it cannot exert this power over the understanding in things perfectly evident, it is plain that the obscurity of the objects contributes somewhat to our mistakes; and, indeed, there are often cases in which the passion which leads us to reason ill is almost imperceptible. Hence it is useful to consider separately those illusions which arise principally from the things themselves: —
It is a false and impious opinion, that truth is so like to falsehood, and virtue to vice, that it is impossible to distinguish between them; but it is true that, in the majority of cases, there is a mixture of truth and error, of virtue and vice, of perfection and imperfection, and that this mixture is one of the most ordinary sources of the false judgments of men.
For it is through this deceptive mixture that the good qualities of those whom we respect lead us to approve of their errors, and that the defects of those whom we do not esteem lead us to condemn what is good in them, since we do not consider that the most imperfect are not so in everything, and that God leaves in the best imperfections, which, being the remains of human infirmity, ought not to be the objects of our respect or imitation.
The reason of this is, that men rarely consider things in detail; they judge only according to their strongest impression, and perceive only what strikes them most: thus, when they perceive a good deal of truth in a discourse, they do not notice the errors which are mixed with it; and, on the contrary, when the truths are mingled with many errors, they pay attention only to the errors,—the strong bears away the weak, and the most vivid impression effaces that which is more obscure.
It is, however, a manifest injustice to judge in this way. There can be no possible reason for rejecting reason, and truth is not less truth for being mixed with error. It does not belong to men, although men may propound it. Thus, though men, by reason of their errors, may deserve to be condemned, the truth which they advance ought not to be rejected.
Thus justice and truth require, that in all things which are thus made up of good and evil, we distinguish between them; and in this wise separation it is that mental precision mainly appears. Hence the fathers of the church have taken from pagan books very excellent things for their morals, and thus St Augustine has not scrupled to borrow from an heretical Donatist seven rules for interpreting Scripture.
Reason obliges us, when we can, to make this distinction; but since we have not always time to examine in detail the good and evil that may be in everything, it is right, in such circumstances, to give to them the name which they deserve from their preponderating element. Thus we ought to say that a man is a good philosopher who commonly reasons well, and that a book is a good book which has notoriously more of good than evil in it.
Men, however, are very much deceived in these general judgments; for they often praise and blame things from the consideration only of what is least important in them,—want of penetration leading them not to discover what is most important, when it is not the most striking: thus, although those who are wise judges in painting value infinitely more design than colour, or delicacy of touch, the ignorant are, nevertheless, more impressed by a painting whose colours are bright and vivid, than by another more sober in colour, however admirable in design.
It must, however, be confessed, that false judgments are not so common in the arts, since those who know nothing about them defer more readily to the opinion of those who are well informed; but they are most frequent in those things which lie within the jurisdiction of the people, and of which the world claims the liberty of judging, such as eloquence.
We call, for example, a preacher eloquent, when his periods are well turned, and when he uses no inelegant words; and from this M. Vaugelas says, in one place, that a bad word does a preacher or an advocate more harm than a bad reasoning. We must believe that this is simply a truth of fact which he relates, and not an opinion which he supports. It is true that we find people who judge in this way, but it is true also that there is nothing more unreasonable than these judgments; for the purity of language, and the multitude of figures, are but to eloquence what the colouring is to a painting—that is to say, only its lower and more sensuous part; but the most important part consists in conceiving things forcibly, and in expressing them so that we may convey to the minds of the hearers a bright and vivid image, which shall not only convey these things in an abstract form, but with the emotions, also, with which we conceive them; and this we may find in men of inelegant speech and unbalanced periods, while we meet with it rarely in those who pay so much attention to words and embellishments, since this care distracts their attention from things, and weakens the vigour of their thoughts,—as painters remark, that those who excel in colours do not commonly excel in design—the mind not being capable of this double application, and attention to the one injuring the other.
“We may say, in general, that the world values most things by the exterior alone, since we find scarcely any who penetrate to the interior and to the bottom of them; everything is judged according to the fashion, and unhappy are those who are not in favour. Such a one is clever, intelligent, solid, as much as you will, but he does not speak fluently, and cannot turn a compliment well; he may reckon on being little esteemed through the whole of his life by the generality of the world, and on seeing a multitude of insignificant minds preferred before him. It is no great evil not to have the reputation which we merit, but it is a vast one to follow these false judgments, and to judge of things only superficially; and this we are bound, as far as possible, to avoid.
Amongst the causes which lead us into error, by a false lustre, which prevents our recognising it, we may justly reckon a certain grand and pompous eloquence, which Cicero calls abundantem sonantibus verbis uberibusque sententiis; for it is wonderful how sweetly a false reasoning flows in at the close of a period which well fits the ear, or of a figure which surprises us by its novelty, and in the contemplation of which we are delighted.
These ornaments not only veil from our view the falsehoods which mingle with discourse, but they insensibly engender them, since it often happens that they are necessary to the completion of the period or the figure. Thus, when we hear an orator commencing a long gradation, or an antithesis of many members, we have reason to be on our guard, since it rarely happens that he finishes it without exaggerating the truth, in order to accommodate it to the figure. He commonly disposes of it as we do the stones of a building, or the metal of a statue: he cuts it, lengthens it, narrows it, disguises it, as he thinks fit, in order to adapt it to that vain work of words which he wishes to make.
How many false thoughts has the desire of making a good point produced? How many have been led into falsehood for the sake of a rhyme? How many foolish things have certain Italian authors been led to write, through the affectation of using only Ciceronian words, and of what is called pure Latinity? Who could help smiling to hear Bembo say that a pope had been elected by the favour of the immortal gods—Deorum immortalium beneficiis? There are poets, even, who imagine that the essence of poetry consists in the introduction of pagan divinities; and a German poet, a good versifier enough, though not a very judicious writer, having been justly reproached by Francis Picus Mirandola with having introduced into a poem, where he describes the wars of Christians against Christians, all the divinities of paganism, and having mixed up Apollo, Diana, and Mercury, with the pope, the electors, and the emperor, distinctly maintained that, without this, it would not have been a poem,—in proof of which he alleged this strange reason, that the poems of Hesiod, of Homer, and of Virgil, are full of the names and the fables of these gods; whence he concluded that he might be allowed to do the same.
These bad reasonings are often imperceptible to those who make them, and deceive them first. They are deafened by the sound of their own words, dazzled with the lustre of their figures; and the grandeur of certain words attaches them unconsciously to thoughts of little solidity, which they would doubtless have rejected had they exercised a little reflection.
It is probable, for instance, that it was the word vestal which pleased an author of our time, and which led him to say to a young lady, to prevent her from being ashamed of knowing Latin, that she need not blush to speak a language which had been spoken by the vestals. For, if he had considered this thought, he would have seen that he might as justly have said to that lady that she ought to blush to speak a language which had been formerly spoken by the courtezans of Rome, who were far more numerous than the vestals; or that she ought to blush to speak any other language than that of her own country, since the ancient vestals spoke only their natural language. All these reasonings, which are worth nothing, are as good as that of this author; and the truth is, that the vestals have nothing to do with justifying or condemning maidens who learn Latin.
The false reasonings of this kind, which are met with continually in the writings of those who most affect eloquence, show us how necessary it is for the majority of those who write or speak to be thoroughly convinced of this excellent rule,—that there is nothing beautiful except that which is true; which would take away from discourse a multitude of vain ornaments and false thoughts. It is true that this precision renders the style more dry, and less pompous; but it also renders it clearer, more vigorous, more serious, and more worthy of an honourable man. The impression which it makes is less strong, but much more lasting; whereas that produced by these rounded periods is so transient, that it passes away almost as soon as we have heard them.
It is a very common defect amongst men to judge rashly of the actions and intentions of others, and they almost always fall into it by a bad reasoning, through which, in not recognising with sufficient clearness all the causes which might produce any effect, they attribute that effect definitely to one cause, when it may have been produced by many others; or, again, suppose that a cause, which has accidentally, when united with many circumstances, produced an effect on one occasion, must do so on all occasions.
A man of learning is found to be of the same opinion with a heretic, in a matter of criticism, independent of religious controversies: A malicious adversary concludes from this that he is favourable to heretics; but he concludes this rashly and maliciously, since it is perhaps reason and truth which have led him to adopt that opinion.
A writer may speak with some strength against an opinion which he believes to be dangerous: he will, from this, be accused of hatred and animosity against the authors who have advanced it; but he will be so unjustly and rashly, since this earnestness may arise from zeal for the truth, just as well as from hatred of the men who oppose it.
A man is the friend of a vicious man: it is, therefore, concluded that he approves of his conduct, and is a partaker in his crimes. This does not follow,—perhaps he knows nothing about them,—perhaps he has no part in them.
We fail to render true civility to those to whom it is due: we are said to be proud and insolent,—but this was perhaps only an inadvertence or simple forgetfulness. All exterior things are but equivocal signs, that is to say, signs which may signify many things, and we judge rashly when we determine this sign to mean a particular thing, without having any special reason for doing so. Silence is sometimes a sign of modesty and wisdom, and sometimes of stupidity. Slowness sometimes indicates prudence, and sometimes heaviness of mind. Change is sometimes a sign of inconstancy, and sometimes of sincerity. Thus it is bad reasoning to conclude that a man is inconstant, simply from the fact that he has changed his opinion; for he may have had good reason for changing it.
The false inductions by which general propositions are derived from some particular experiences, constitute one of the most common sources of the false reasonings of men. Three or four examples are enough to make a maxim and a common-place, which they then employ as a principle for deciding all things.
There are many maladies hidden from the most skilful physicians, and remedies often do not succeed: rash minds, hence, conclude, that medicine is absolutely useless, and only a craft of charlatans.
There are light and loose women: this is sufficient for the jealous to conceive unjust suspicions against the most virtuous, and for licentious writers to condemn all universally.
There are some persons who hide great vices under an appearance of piety; libertines conclude from this that all devotion is no better than hypocrisy.
There are some things obscure and hidden, and we are often grossly deceived: all things are obscure and uncertain, say the ancient and modern Pyrrhonists, and we cannot know the truth of anything with certainty.
There is a want of equality in some of the actions of men, and this is enough to constitute a common place, from which none are exempt. " Reason/’ say they, " is so weak and blind, that there is nothing so evidently clear as to be clear enough for it; the easy and the hard are both alike to it; all subjects are equal, and nature, in general, disclaims its jurisdiction. We only think what we will in the very moment in which we will it;—we will nothing freely, nothing absolutely, nothing constantly.”
Most people set forth the defects or good qualities of others, only by general and extreme propositions. From some partial actions we infer a habit: from three or four faults we conclude a custom; and what happens once a month or once a year, happens every day, at every hour, and every moment, in the discourses of men, so little pains do they take to observe in them the limits of truth and justice.
It is a weakness and injustice which we often condemn, but which we rarely avoid, to judge of purposes by the event, and to reckon those who had taken a prudent resolution according to the circumstances, so far as they could see them, guilty of all the evil consequences which may have happened therefrom, either simply through accident, or through the malice of others who had thwarted it, or through some other circumstances which it was impossible for them to foresee.