What is suspension of judgment?

Michel de Montaigne, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Michel de Montaigne answers

The mind, left to its own devices, is a creature that cannot sit still. It ferrets and inquires, wheels and juggles, and in the end suffocates itself in its own work — like the silkworm that spins until it is buried in the thread.1 This is the natural disease of the mind, and suspension of judgment is, in a sense, the medicine, though a medicine that cures by refusing to cure.

The trouble begins with interpretation. We take a text, a law, a question, and we gloss it; the gloss breeds another gloss, and the hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty and perplexed than he found it.2 So many interpretations dissipate truth and break it; of one subject we make a thousand, and in multiplying and subdividing, fall again into the infinity of atoms of Epicurus.3

Aristotle wrote to be understood; if he could not accomplish it, what hope for the man who glosses Aristotle, or the man who glosses that gloss? The learned have made us, on the whole, less certain, not more. And then there is the deeper finding, which I have never been able to shake: never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly alike, not only in different men, but in the same man at different hours.4

I have confirmed this in myself. My judgment is so equally balanced in most occurrences that I could willingly refer it to the chance of a die.5 Human reason is a two-edged and dangerous sword; look at what it did even in the hands of Socrates, its most intimate friend, and count how many contradictory points it reached.6 I do not easily change my mind, but this is not because I am confident — it is because I discern the same weakness in the contrary opinion, the same slippery and unsure ground on one side as the other.7

So what is suspension? It is the honest resting place of a mind that has looked at the equal weight of arguments on both sides and found it cannot tip the scale. It is not indifference, and it is not laziness. It is the posture of a man who says, as Cicero taught me to say: I am not ashamed to confess my ignorance of what I do not know.8 I warrant no other certainty in what I say but that it is what I had then in my thought — a tumultuous and wavering thought.9

All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. There is a further thing worth marking. Diversity is not the failure of judgment but its natural condition: there never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains — their most universal quality is diversity.10 To suspend judgment is to take that diversity seriously rather than papering over it with a confidence one has not earned.

The mind that is satisfied has either grown shortsighted or has grown weary; there is always room for a further inquiry, always another road, and our end is not in this world but the other.11 Suspension is not the end of inquiry but its honest companion.

Sources

  1. Men do not know the natural disease of the mind; it does nothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and perplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work.
    The Essays, Complete
  2. The hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty and perplexed than he found it.
    The Essays, Complete
  3. So many interpretations dissipate truth and break it. Aristotle wrote to be understood; if he could not do this, much less will another that is not so good at it... of one subject we make a thousand, and in multiplying and subdividing them, fall again into the infinity of atoms of Epicurus.
    The Essays, Complete
  4. Never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing; and 'tis impossible to find two opinions exactly alike, not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse hours.
    The Essays, Complete
  5. The uncertainty of my judgment is so equally balanced in most occurrences, that I could willingly refer it to be decided by the chance of a die.
    The Essays, Complete
  6. Human reason is a two-edged and dangerous sword: observe in the hands of Socrates, her most intimate and familiar friend, how many several points it has.
    The Essays, Complete
  7. Yet I do not easily change, by reason that I discern the same weakness in contrary opinions.
    The Essays, Complete
  8. Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam — Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what I do not know.
    The Essays, Complete
  9. in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had then in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought. All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice.
    The Essays, Complete
  10. there never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains: their most universal quality is diversity.
    The Essays, Complete
  11. 'Tis a sign either that the mind has grown shortsighted when it is satisfied, or that it has got weary... there is no end of our inquisitions; our end is in the other world.
    The Essays, Complete