Lecture: Michel de Montaigne; "On Cannibals"
(c) Russell McNeil, Malaspina University-College, 1996

Cannibals are people who eat human flesh. 

This is an essay titled: "On Cannibals," thus, here is an essay about 
people who do that--a straight up--catchy title--our interests in the 
bizarre are aroused--we read on. Montaigne has a way with words.

Cannibals make us nervous.

So, we look to Montaigne for relief. It's not relief he gives us. 

Montaigne never tells us who the cannibals are--who are the people this 
essay is really about. 

Yes, there is a Brazilian tribe of people who as part of one of their 
rituals of war, do eat dead human flesh--yes, but are they the cannibals? 

"I consider it more barbarous to eat a man alive than to eat him dead; 
to tear by rack and torture a body still full of feeling, to roast it by 
degrees, and then give it to be trampled and eaten by dogs and swine--a 
practice which we have not only read about but seen within recant 
memory, not between ancient enemies, but between neighbors and 
fellow citizens and, what is worse, under the cloak of piety and religion--
than to roast and eat a man after he is dead."

Who are the cannibals?

And who are these people? From whence do they derive their "corrupt" 
tastes--surely nothing is more corrupt than to consume the flesh of one's 
own kind.

"These people, " says Montaigne, "are wild in the same ways that fruits 
are wild, when nature has produced them in her ordinary way..." These, 
he says, "the true, most useful, and natural virtues and properties are 
alive and vigorous." He goes on, "...in fact, it is those that we have 
artificially modified (meaning us) ,..., we ought to call [those] 
wild...those we have bastardized and adapted to the gratification of our 
corrupt taste." 

"We," he goes on, "have so loaded the richness and beauty of [nature's] 
works with our [inventions] that we have altogether stifled her. 
Whenever [nature] shines forth in her purity [as here], she makes our 
vain and trivial enterprises marvelously shameful"

"All things said Plato are produced by nature, or chance or by art. The 
greatest by the first two, the most imperfect by the last."

Montaigne likes these people.

How does he characterize them? His references are to simplicity, 
innocence and a lack of artificiality. These are words we ascribe to 
children. But, these are far from childlike people. 

Two of them, Montaigne says, were brought to France, and shown the 
wonders of 16th century culture. They visited and spoke with the king, 
Charles the ninth, and were shown the magnificence and sights of a fine 
city. Montaigne spoke with them after, and asked them--these 
cannibals--what they found most remarkable. Montaigne reports two 
things:

"It was strange that so many strong armed men should obey a child--
rather than to choose one from their own number. Second, They found 
it strange that in a culture of halves and haves nots, rich and poor, that 
the poor who suffered from such injustice, did not take the rich by their 
throat and set fire to their homes." 

These "cannibal children," it seems, had an uncommon and refined 
instinct for social justice, and natural order: a view emerging from a 
sophisticated understanding and appreciation of humans as 
disconnected halves. If there were a Brazilian theology on the custom of 
cannibalism it might not be hard to imagine spiritual significance in the 
joining of halves through their unusual rituals of flesh. How different 
really is this from the Christian practice of consuming the living body 
and blood of Christ? Montaigne does not take us that far but it's not 
hard to imagine how he might.

Simplicity, innocence and lack of artificiality in this social structure 
might well mean this is as good as it gets. This is how he sees them: no 
lying, no treason, no greed, no envy, no slander: a functional society 
employing simple graceful arts and technologies which, in imitating 
nature, harmonize with rather than dominate and subdue the nature of 
which they are a part. 

This is a society that works. 

They refer their action to two principle virtues, valor in battle and love 
of their wives: these two and no more are needed to ensure integrity of 
community, and family. 

Lawgivers--prophets--provide a overview and stability from above--but 
face the sternest of penalties for misguiding their people--if they falsely 
advise they are cut into a thousand pieces.

The custom, practice of cannibalism is a form of ritualized vengeance 
mingled with respect for the victim. It is done only in the context of 
battle, in the taking of prisoners and as a way of completing the cycle 
that battles begin. 

These people fight and fiercely. 

But the motivation for fighting is valor alone. They do not fight to gain 
territory, political power, booty, or title. The fighting is noble, 
disinterested, excusable and beautiful. Community requires valor; valor 
requires ritual; the ritual is the battle; its spoils the intermingling of the 
flesh of victor and vanquished. The vanquished are of course are never 
vanquished because they never yield to the admission of loss that these 
rituals demand--machismo (savor this flesh--it is intermingled with that 
of your fathers and grandfathers) and ferocity ensure that whoever loses 
both sides win; in another year the roles will reverse.

Montaigne's perception of how the other virtue, love, is best exemplified 
is in the poetry and verse of a native song: 

"Adder, stay. Stay, adder, so that my sister may follow the pattern of 
your markings, to make and embroider a fine girdle fro me to give to my 
beloved. So shall your beauty and markings be preferred for ever above 
all the other serpents.' 

A barbaric poem? 

Montaigne judges the refrain and its sentiment as Anacreontic--
referring to Anacreon of Teos, a poet known for love songs and revered 
in antiquity as second only to Sappho from Lesbos--and honored in his 
day by a statue on the Athenian Acropolis near another statue of none 
other than Pericles.

"I am sorry that Lysurgus and Plato did not know these people," .... , in 
idea and aspiration they match those idea of happiness.

So, who are the cannibals?

On cannibals can be read as a contemporary political and religious 
critique, a genuine attempt at social anthropology,  a utopian fantasy, or 
an essay on cannibals. In some ways it is all and none of the above. 

Montaigne claims that we have no criterion for truth other than the 
opinions and customs of the place we live. We see the world through the 
prism of our own experience and belief.  These customs and opinions 
blind our understanding--yet, it is Montaigne who seems to do much the 
same thing here. He sees the cannibals through another prism--the eye 
of antiquity--and tries to mold these people as latter day Greeks--good 
and noble not because they are innocent, simple and lack artificiality, 
but good and noble because this simplicity and innocence mirrors the 
ideal and ideology of the Greek world.  So, we cannot be sure if in 
shaping the cannibals as such he has really done them justice.

This is an essay layered with opinion and synthesis built on limited 
second hand knowledge and anecdotal detail. He never went to Brazil. 
He is no Margaret Mead. He is no Charles Darwin or Gulliver. Scientific 
anthropology doesn't rest on such a slim catalogue of direct experience--
after all he himself met two men and spoke with them briefly through a 
lousy interpreter.

Of course this essay does not survive today as a classic piece of exact 
science. What is does do and does do very well is give us permission to 
remove our cultural blinders and to see others as fellow humans in an 
alien context. We'll never know if these Brazilian cannibals were latter 
day Athenians in fig leaves. It doesn't matter.

What matters is that Montaigne has no trouble with the premise--
human beings are unique and endowed with remarkable natural 
qualities. Custom and opinion are just that, custom and opinion. When 
we strip those layers away we see ourselves.