Montaigne's Attitude Toward Idleness (Blog Prompt 4)

Michel de Montaigne argues that leisure can be dangerous in his essay, "On Idleness." At the same time, however, he is subject to the very "risks" he believes idleness poses, as a retired man letting his mind wander in Essays.

Montaigne essay attempts to back up the adage with which I am familiar, 'an idle mind is the Devil's playground' - the notion that the when without purpose, one is subconsciously vulnerable to deviance. The quotations Montaigne incorporates serve the same purpose the dictum above does: they all substantiate this notion by referring to traditional belief.

Montaigne even combines famous quotations with his own clauses in order to place his belief in context. For instance, he writes: "If we do not occupy (our minds) with some definite subject which curbs and restrains them, they rush wildly to and fro in the ill-defined field of the imagination..." (27). Ending his words with a comma, Montaigne then quotes Virgil to complete his sentence: "as water, trembling in a brass bowl, reflects the sun's light or the form of the shining moon, and so the bright beams flit in all directions, darting up at times to strike the lofty fretted ceilings." Using quotations to both restate and as here, elaborate, his fear of inactivity, Montaigne locates his argument in history and in those of well-respected thinkers.

Montaigne does not admit, however, that all of his essays are the product of his own idle, wandering mind. Even "On Idleness" demonstrates Montaigne's thoughts on an abstract principle, as well as the connections he has made between the beliefs of thinkers in vastly different places and times. Montaigne neither works nor applies his intellect to practical means; he instead thinks and writes.

Perhaps Montaigne is aware of the hypocrisy of his criticism of idleness - he does begin Essays with a disclaimer, as it were, that the views he puts forth are subject to his own individual "imperfection": "Had my lot been cast among those peoples who are said still to live under the kindly liberty of nature's primal laws, I should, I assure you, most gladly have painted myself complete and in all my nakedness" (23). I gather that, whether or not Montaigne is aware of the paradox "On Idleness" reveals, he knows that an idle mind is vulnerable to bad and good. Maybe Montaigne believes that only the idle minds of Virgil, Horace, Martial, Lucan, and his own are susceptible to goodness.