Universals are the foundation of literary wisdom.
Montaigne wrote On Educating Children for his friend and admirer Diane de Foix, who was expecting a son at the time.
Though he opens condemning people who lean too heavily on quotes to prove one’s point, he himself draws from various classical literary sources to demonstrate the enduring wisdom of philosophy and poetry and their role in education.
Throughout the essay, he highlights the importance of wisdom over knowledge, as wisdom shapes character and equips one to better approach the process of acquiring knowledge. Thus, the role of a teacher is to guide and form a child’s character. They must have an equal power dynamic. Meaning and substance is more important than the content itself (169). He uses the example of bees gathering pollen to make honey to emphasize the necessity of digesting, synthesizing, and incorporating what one learns into their own ideas and worldview.
The responsibility of an educator or caregiver is to “make” a human — then, can literature make a human, too?
We learn through experiences and interacting with others. A good tutor teaches his pupil how to do so and lets him learn his lessons himself. The world is our looking-glass to know ourselves. If the world is our looking glass, then literature imitates the world, bringing the far near and teaching us about life and ourselves. The purpose of imitation is to be imitated. One learns by observing how other humans live.
Montaigne also highlights importance of flexibility. He says that a well educated person should be virtuous, but immoderation and excess is also excusable when the situation calls for it. In other words, exercising good judgment means reading the situation and going with its flow.
Ideas are more important than the words through which they are conveyed.
In the essay, Montaigne emphasizes education and philosophy heavily, but does not mention literature or poetry much. When he does mention poetry, he talks about how it amplifies the effect of ideas. Then, he talks about breaking the rules of it. When broken, its essence is still there.
However, in the context of Aristotle in Poetics, who says poetry imitates life, we can then make the connection that since poetry imitates life, and we learn from life, then we can also learn from poetry.
thoughts
Literary theory helps break down concepts, but one still must experience the lives of others through immersion to truly reap the benefits of literary wisdom. Literature is a renunciation of the self.
highlights
The other day I chanced upon such a borrowing. I had languished along behind some French words, words so bloodless, so fleshless and so empty of matter that indeed they were nothing but French and nothing but words. – p. 165
Anyway these are my humours, my opinions: I give them as things which I believe, not as things to be believed. My aim is to reveal my own self, which may well be different tomorrow if I am initiated into some new business which changes me. I have not, nor do I desire, enough authority to be believed. I feel too badly taught to teach others. – p. 167
Bear-cubs and puppies manifest their natural inclinations but humans immediately acquire habits, laws and opinions; they easily change or adopt disguises. – p. 167
The son of the house is seeking book-learning not to make money (for so abject an end is unworthy of the grace and favour of the Muses and anyway has other aims and depends on others) nor for external advantages, but rather for those which are truly his own, those which inwardly enrich and adorn him. – p. 168
Since I would prefer that he turned out to be an able man not an erudite one, I would wish you to be careful to select as guide for him a tutor with a well-formed rather than a well-filled brain. Let both be looked for, but place character and intelligence before knowledge; and let him carry out his responsibilities in a new way. – p. 168
He should not be learning their precepts but drinking in their humours. – p. 170
That which we rightly “know” can be deployed without looking back at the model, without turning our eyes back towards the book – p. 171
Yet in the school of conversation among men I have often noticed a perversion: instead of learning about others we labour only to teach them about ourselves and are more concerned to sell our wares than to purchase new ones. In our commerce with others, silence and modesty are most useful qualities. – p. 173
Let him not so much learn what happened as judge what happened. – p. 175
People whose bodies are too thin pad them out: those whose matter is too slender pad it out too, with words. – p. 176
Frequent commerce with the world can be an astonishing source of light for a man’s judgement. We are all cramped and confined inside ourselves: we can see no further than the end of our noses. – p. 176
This great world of ours (which for some is only one species within a generic group) is the looking-glass in which we must gaze to come to know ourselves from the right slant. – p. 177
For it seems to me that the first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die … and to live. – p. 178
The soul which houses philosophy must by her own sanity make for a sound body. Her tranquility and ease must glow from her; she must fashion her outward bearing to her mould, arming it therefore with gracious pride, a spritely active demeanour and a happy welcoming face. The most express sign of wisdom is unruffled joy: like all in the realms above the Moon, her state is ever serene. – p. 181
philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live – p. 183
I sometimes hear people who apologize for not being able to say what they mean, maintaining that their heads are so full of fine things that they cannot deliver them for want of eloquence. That is moonshine. Do you know what I think? It is a matter of shadowy notions coming to them from some unformed concepts which they are unable to untangle and to clarify in their minds: consequently they cannot deliver them externally. They themselves do not yet know what they mean. – p. 189
Once you have mastered the things the words will come freely. – p. 190
Note: from Horace’s The Art of Poetry.
I myself am more ready to distort a fine saying in order to patch it on to me than to distort the thread of my argument to go in search of one. – p. 193
I want things to dominate, so filling the thoughts of the hearer that he does not even remember the words. – p. 193