In his essay "Of the Rewards of Honour", Montaigne discourses on the "vain and in themselves valueless distinctions to honour and recompense virtue" that governments have instituted over the centuries: crowns of laurel, special uniforms, privileged seating, names, titles, coats of arms, and the like. Most commonly, these rewards of honor are used to encourage military valor among the citizenry. Montaigne then goes on to say:
There is no virtue that so easily spreads as that of military valour. There is another virtue, true, perfect, and philosophical, of which I do not speak, and only make use of the word in our common acceptation, much greater than this and more full, which is a force and assurance of the soul, equally despising all sorts of adverse accidents, equable, uniform, and constant, of which ours [i.e., military valor] is no more than one little ray.
Because Montaigne declines to speak at length about this "other virtue" (at least here), we must guess at what it is.
First, I'll note one potential point of confusion. Above I quote from the old translation by Charles Cotton, first made in the 17th century. In Donald Frame's highly acclaimed translation from the 1950s, he renders "another virtue" as "another valor"; however, I don't see that in the French: Montaigne simply says "there is another" - il y en a une autre - which as far as I can tell refers to the generic class of virtue rather than to the specific virtue of valor.
As much as I like the suggestion of "philosophical valor" (which I suppose would be intellectual honesty scrupulously applied to oneself), the equanimity or self-possession at which Montaigne gestures here likely has a more prosaic source: the multifarious ancient Greek virtue of σωφροσύνη, typically rendered as moderation. Consider, for example, Book III of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: after treating at length the topic of courage (which is the greatest human virtue in times of war), Aristotle immediately turns to the topic of moderation (which is, along with justice, the greatest human virtue in times of peace).
Here again Montaigne brings his insights to bear most directly on himself, in that he strives to cultivate inner peace, a certain detachment from the vicissitudes of life, and the kind of constancy that avoids becoming puffed up about successes or crestfallen about misfortunes. Not that this "force and assurance of the soul" is easy to achieve, mind you, but it has always been central to the normative ideal of the sage and to philosophy as a way of life.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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