'A Kind of Mental Inertia'

From The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga:

"...an assiduous reader of the chronicles and the literature of the fifteenth century will hardly resist the impression that nobility and chivalry occupy a much more considerable place there than our general conception of the epoch would imply. The reason of this disproportion lies in the fact, that long after nobility and feudalism had ceased to be really essential factors in the state and in society, they continued to impress the mind as dominant forms of life. The men of the fifteenth century could not understand that the real moving powers of the political and social evolution might be looked for anywhere else than in the doings of a warlike and courtly nobility. They persisted in regarding the nobility as foremost of social forces and attributed a very exaggerated importance to it, undervaluing altogether the social significance of the lower classes.

So the mistake it may be argued, is theirs, and our conception of the Middle Ages is right. This would be so if, to understand the spirit of an age, it sufficed to know its real and hidden forces and not its illusions, its fancies and its errors. But for the history of civilization every delusion or opinion of an epoch has the value of an important fact...

...This failing to see the social importance of the common people, which is proper to nearly all authors of the fifteenth century, may be regarded as a kind of mental inertia, which is a phenomenon of frequent occurrence and vital importance in history."

'Mental inertia' is the kind of phrase that gets turned around in the mind. One wonders how much one suffers from it oneself. Or how much one's 'epoch' is given over to what, in retrospect, might be clearly seen as delusions of the most untethered sort.

'To Die Usefully and Manfully'

Among the things I admire most about Montaigne is his extensive grasp of military history, both ancient and of his own time, not a predominant trait of our would-be philosophers and clerisy. (What I wouldn’t give to have bagged half the classes I took in college and traded them for a better grounding in Thucydides and the World Wars.) In his first essay, By diverse means we arrive at the same end, he begins by dishing a series of military anecdotes: “As Scanderbeg, prince of Epirus, was pursuing one of his soldiers in order to kill him…” “Emperor Conrad III, having besieged Guelph, duke of Bavaria, would not come down to milder terms…” “Dionysius the Elder, having take the city of Rhegium after extreme delays and difficulties…” These are not the type of specimen one expects to find in contemporary essays. It gives the text muscle. It also gives Montaigne a preoccupation, I expect usual for his day, with matters of honor:

“It is a noble craving to want even to die usefully and manfully; but the outcome lies not so much in our good resolution as in our good fortune. A thousand have proposed to conquer or die fighting, who have failed to do either, wounds and prison crossing this design and lending them a forced life. There are maladies that lay low even our desires and our consciousness.” (Against do-nothingness)

Here’s Joseph Epstein reviewing a book called “Why Honor Matters”.