Of Dialectics and Goat's Blood in an Anecdote by Montaigne
N his essay 'De la ressemblance des enfants aux peres' (II, 37) Montaigne tells two stories, the second of which is the curious account of how, after hearing that goat's blood was good for one's health, he raised a billy goat and had it slaughtered in the hope of procuring for himself some of this marvelous elixir. Only after the animal had been killed did he begin to have doubts about the medicinal virtues of goat's blood. Amused by his earlier credulousness, Montaigne relates this anecdote in a tone so personal, so affable and self-deprecatory that the reader, won over by the amiability of the speaker, is likely to be sensitive to the human quality of the narrator but unlikely to be attentive to the subtle way in which the text determines his responses or to the author's ulterior motives for eliciting those very responses. By plotting the reader's reaction to this anecdote, by charting the path that Montaigne has carefully laid out so as to lead the reader to the desired conclusion, we can see, I believe, the use that Montaigne makes of dialectics, one of the most important strategies to which he resorts when he wishes to debunk an idea. The anecdote begins as follows: