ning, I was aware that my soul resumed
another kind of sight, another state, and
another judgment; the difficulties of retreat
appeared great and invincible, and the same
things had quite another taste and aspect
than the heat of desire had presented them
to me. Which of these most probably?
Pyrrho himself knows nothing about it. We
are never without sickness: fevers have their
hot and cold fits ; from the effects of an ardent
passion we fall into a shivering passion; as
far as I had advanced, so much I retired:
"As when the sea, rolling with alternate
tides, now rushes on the land and foaming
throws over the rocks its waves, and with
MONTAIGNE 213
its skirts overflows the extremity of the
strand: now, with rapid motion, and suck-
ing in the stones, rolled back with the tide
in its retreat, and with the ebbing current
leaves the shore.*'
Now, from the knowledge of this volubility
of mine, I have accidentally begot in myself
a certain constancy of opinion, and have not
much altered those that were :first and natural
in me : for what appearance soever there may
be in novelty, I do not easily change, for fear
of losing by the bargain: and since I am not
capable of choosing, I take other men's
choice, and keep myself in the state wherein
God has placed me; I could not otherwise
prevent myself from perpetual rolling. Thus
have I, by the grace of God, preserved myself
entire, without anxiety or trouble of con-
science, in the ancient belief of our religion,
amidst so many sects and divisions as our
age has produced. The writings of the
ancients, the best authors I mean, being full
and solid, tempt and carry me which way
almost they will: he that I am reading, seems
always to have the most force, and I find that
every one of them in turn has reason, though
214 MONTAIGNE
they contradict one another. The facility
that good wits have of rendering everything
they would recommend likely, and that there
is nothing so strange to which they will not
imdertake to give color enough to deceive
such a simplicity as mine, this evidently
shows the weakness of their testimony. The
heavens and the stars have been three
thousand years in motion; all the world were
of that belief till Cleanthes the Samian, or,
according to Theophrastus, Nicetas of Syra-
cuse, bethought him to maintain that it was
the earth that moved, turning about its axis
by the oblique circle of the zodiac; and in
our time Copernicus has so grounded this
doctrine, that it very regularly serves to all
astrological consequences: what use can we
make of this, except that we need not much
care which is the true opinion? And who
knows but that a third, a thousand years
hence, may overthrow the two former!
**Thus revolving time changes the seasons
of things; that which was once in estimation
becomes of no reputation at all, while another
thing succeeds and bursts forth from con-
tempt, is daily more sought, and, when found,
MONTAIGNE 215
flourishes among mankind with praises and
wonderful honor. ' '
So that when any new doctrine presents itself
to us, we have great reason to mistrust it, and
to consider that before it was set on foot the
contrary had been in vogue; and that as that
has been overthrown by this, a third inven-
tion in time to come may start up which may
knock the second on the head. Before the
principles that Aristotle introduced were in
reputation, other principles contented human
reason, as these satisfy us now. What let-
ters-patent have these, what particular privi-
lege, that the career of our invention must be
stopped by them, and that to them should
appertain for all time to come the possession
of our belief? They are no more exempt from
being thrust out of doors than their predeces-
sors were. When any one presses me with a
new argument, I ought to consider that what
I cannot answer, another may : for to believe
all likelihoods that a man cannot himself
confute is great simplicity; it would by that
means come to pass that all the vulgar, and
we are all of the vulgar, would have their be-
lief as tumable as a weathercock: for the
216 MONTAIGNE
soul, being so easily imposed upon and with-
out resisting power, would be forced inces-
santly to receive other and other impressions,
the last still effacing all footsteps of that
which went before. He that finds himself
weak, ought to answer as in law questions,
that he will speak with his counsel; or will
refer himself to the wise from whom he re-
ceived his teaching. How long is it that
physic has been practised in the world! 'Tia
said that a new comer, called Paracelsus,
changes and overthrows the whole order of
ancient rules, and maintains that till now it
has been of no other use but to kill men. I be-
lieve that he will easily make this good; but
I do not think it were wisdom to venture my
life in making trial of his new experiments.
"We are not to believe every one, says the
precept, because every one can say all things.
A man of this profession of novelties and
physical reformations, not long since told me
that all the ancients were notoriously mis-
taken in the nature and motions of the winds,
which he would evidently demonstrate to me,
if I would give him the hearing. After I
had with some patience heard his arguments,
MONTAIGNE 917,
which were all full of likelihood of truth:
''What then," said I, '^did those that sailed
according to Theophrastus, make way west-
ward when they had the prow towards the
east! did they go sideward or backward?"
"That was according to fortune," answered
he; "but be that as it may, they were mis-
taken." I then replied that I had rather
follow effects than reason. Now these things
often clash, and I have been told that in
geometry, which pretends to have gained the
highest point of certainty among all the
sciences, there are found inevitable demon-
strations that subvert the truth of all experi-
ence: as Jacques de Pelletier told me at my
own house, that he had found out two lines
stretching themselves one towards the other
to meet, which, nevertheless, he aflfirmed,
though extended to all infinity, could never
reach to touch one another. And the
Pyrrhonians make no other use of their argu-
ments and their reason than to ruin the
appearance of experience; and 'tis a
wonder how far the suppleness of our rea-
son has followed them in this design of con-
troverting the evidence of effects: for they
218 MONTAIGNE
affirm that we do not move, that we do not
speak, and that there is neither weight nor
heat, with the same force of argimient, that
we affirm the most likely things. Ptolemy,
who was a great man, had established the
bomids of this world of ours: all the ancient
philosophers thought they had the measure of
it, excepting some remote isles that might es-
cape their knowledge; it had been Pyrrhon-
ism, a thousand years ago, to doubt the
science of cosmography, and the opinions
that every one had thence received: it was
heresy to believe in Antipodes; and behold!
in this age of ours there is an infinite extent
of terra firma discovered, not an island or a
particular country, but a part very nearly
equal in greatness to that we knew before.
The geographers of our times stick not to
assure us, that now all is found, all is seen:
"For what is present pleases, and seems to
prevail."
But the question is whether, if Ptolemy was
therein formerly deceived, upon the founda-
tions of his reason, it were not very foolish
to trust now in what these later people say:
MONTAIGNE 219
and whether it is not more likely that this
great body, which we call the world, is not
quite another thing than what we imagine.
Plato says that it changes its aspect in all
respects; that the heavens, the stars, and
the snn have all of them sometimes motions
retrograde to what we see, changing east into
west. The Egyptian priests told Herodotus,
that from the time of their first king, which
was eleven thousand and odd years before
(and they showed him the effigies of all their
kings in statues taken from the life), the sun
had four times altered his course: that the
sea and the earth alternately change into one
another: that the beginning of the world is
undetermined: Aristotle and Cicero both say
the same; and one amongst us is of opinion
that it has been from all eternity, is mortal,
and renewed again by successive vicissitudes,
calling Solomon and Isaiah to witness: and
this to evade these objections that God has
once been a creator without a creature; that
He had had nothing to do ; that He abandoned
this idleness by putting His hand to this
work; and that, consequently, He is subject
to changes. In the most famous of the Greek
220 MONTAIGNE
schools, the world is taken for a god, made
by another god greater than he, and is com-
posed of a body, and of a soul fixed in his
centre, and dilating himself, by musical num-
bers, to his circumference: divine, infinitely
happy, infinitely great, infinitely wise, and
eternal: in him are other gods, the sea, the
earth, the stars, who entertain one another
with a harmonious and perpetual agitation
and divine dance: sometimes meeting, some-
times retiring; concealing, discovering them-
selves ; changing their order, one while before,
and another behind. Heraclitus was positive
that the world was composed of fire, and, by
the order of destiny, was one day to be en-
flamed and consumed in fire, and then to be
again renewed. And Apuleius says of men:
''That they are mortal in particular, and
immortal in general.'*
Alexander wrote to his mother the narra-
tion of an Egyptian priest, drawn from their
monuments, testifying the antiquity of that
nation to be infinite, and comprising the birth
and progress of other countries. Cicero and
Diodorus say, that in their time, the Chal-
MONTAIGNE 221
deans kept a register of four Imndred
thousand and odd years : Aristotle, Pliny, and
others, that Zoroaster flourished six thousand
years before Plato's time. Plato says that
they of the city of Sais have records in writ-
ing of eight thousand years, and that the city
of Athens, was built a thousand years before
the said city of Sais. Epicurus, that at the
same time things are here as we see them,
they are alike and in the same manner in
several other worlds; which he would have
delivered with greater assurance had he seen
the similitudes and concordances of the new
discovered world of the West Indies, with
ours present and past, in so many strange
examples.
In earnest, considering what has arrived
at our knowledge from the course of this
terrestrial polity, I have often wondered to
see in so vast a distance of places and times
such a concurrence of so great a number of
popular and wild opinions, and of savage
manners and beliefs, which by no tendency
seem to proceed from our natural meditation.
Human wit is a great worker of miracles. But
this relation has in it circumstances especially
222 MONTAIGNE
extraordinary; 'tis found to be in names also
and a thousand other things: for they dis-
covered nations there that, for aught we
know, never heard of us, where circumcision
was in use : where there were states and great
civil governments maintained by women
only, without men; where our fasts and Lent
were represented, to which was added the
abstinence from women: where our crosses
were several ways in repute: here they were
made use of to honor and adorn their sepul-
tures; there they were erected, and notably
that of St. Andrew, to protect people from
nocturnal visions, and to lay upon the cradles
of infants against enchantments; elsewhere
there was found one of wood, of very great
stature, which was adored as the god of rain,
and this a long way into the main land, and
there was also seen an express image of our
shriving-priests, with the use of mitres, the
celibacy of the priesthood, the art of divina-
tion by the entrails of sacrificed beasts,
abstinence from all sorts of flesh and fish in
their diet, the custom of priests oflSciating in
a particular and not the vulgar language : and
this fancy, that the first god was expelled by
MONTAIGNE 223
a second, his younger brother: that men were
created with all sorts of conveniences, which
have since been taken from them for their
sins, their territory changed, and their
natural condition made worse : that they were
of old overwhelmed by the inundation of
waters' frt)m heavfen; that bujt few families es-
caped, who retired into the caves of high
mountains, the mouths of which they stopped
so that the waters could not get in, having
shut up, together with themselves, sevieral
sorts of animals; that when they perceived
the r^in to cease-, they sent out dogs, which
returning clean and wet, they judged that
the water was not much abated; afterward,
sending out others, and seeing them return
dirty, they issued out to repeople the world,
which thjey found only full of serpents. In
one place some found the persuasion of a day
of judgment, insomuch that the people were
marvellously displeased with the Spaniards
for disturbing the bones of the dead in rifling
the sepultures for riches, saying that those
bones, so disordered, could not easily rejoin;
traffic by exchange, and no other way; fairs
and markets for that end; dwarfs and de-
224 MONTAIGNE
formed people for the ornament of the tables
of princes; the use of falconry, according to
the naturiB of their hawks; tyrannical sub-
sidies; great refinements in gardens; dances,
tumbling tricks, music of instruments, coats
of arms, tennis-courts, dice and game of
hazard, wherein they are sometimes so eager
and hot, as to stake and play themselves and
their liberty; physic, no otherwise than by
charms; the way of writing in cypher; the
belief of only one fir^t man, the father of all
nations; the adoration of a god, who formerly
lived a man in perfect virginity, fasting and
penitence, preaching the law of Nature and
the ceremonies of nsligion, and who vanished
from the world without a natural death; the
belief in giants; the custom of making them-
selves drunk with their beverages and drink-
ing to the utmost; religious ornaments painted
with bones and deajd men's skulls; surplices,
holy water sprinkling; wives and servants
who present themselves with emulation to
be burned and interred with the dead husband
or master; a Ijaw by which the eldest succeeds
to all the estate, no other portion being left
for the younger but obedience; the custom that
MONTAIGNE 225
upon promotion to a certain office of great
authority, the promoted is to take upon him
a new name and to leave that he had before:
another, to strew lime upon the knee of the
new-bom child, with these words, ''From
dust thou camest, and to dust thou must re-
turn:" the art of augury. These vain shadows
of our religion, which are observable in some
of these examples, are testimonies of its
dignity and divinity; not only has it in some
sort insinuated itself into all the infidel
nations on this side of the world, by a certain
imitation, but into these barbarians also, as
by a common and supernatural inspiration;
for we found there the belief of purgatory,
but of a new form ; that which we give to the
fire they give to the cold, and imagine that
souls are both purged and punished by the
rigor of an excessive coldness. And this ex-
ample puts me in mind of another pleasant
diversity: for as there were, on the one hand,
found people who took a pride to unmuffle the
glans of their members, and clipped off the
prepuce after the Mahommedan and Jewish
manner, there were others who made so great
a scruple about laying it bare, that they care-
226 MONTAIGNE
fully pursed it up with little strings to keep
that end from peeping into the air; and of
this other diversity, that whereas we, to
honor kings and festivals, put on the best
clothes we have, in some of these regions, to
express their disparity and submission to
their king, his subjects present themselves
before him in their vilest habits, and, enter-
ing his palace, throw some old tattered gar-
ment over their better apparel, to the end
that all the lustre and ornament may solely
remain in him. But to proceed.
If Nature enclose within the bounds of her
ordinary progress, as well as all other things,
the beliefs, judgments, and opinions of men:
if they have their revolution, their season,
their birth and death, like cabbages; if the
heavens agitate and rule them at their
pleasure, what magisterial and permanent au-
thority are we to attribute to them? If we
experimentally see that the form of our being
depends upon the air, upon the climate, and
upon the soil where we are bom, and not only
the color, the stature, the complexion, and the
countenances, but moreover the very faculties
of the soul itself:
MONTAIGNE 227
*'The climate is of great efficacy, not only
to the strength of bodies, but to that of minds
also,"
says Vegetius; and that the goddess who
founded the city of Athens chose to situate it
in a temperature of air fit to make men sharp,
as the Egyptian priests told Solon:
*'At Athens the air is thin; whence also
the Athenians are reputed to be more acute:
at Thebes more thick, therefore the Thebans
are looked upon as fatter-headed and stronger
of body,"
so that as fruits and animals are bom differ-
ing, men should also be bom more or less
warlike, just, temperate, and docile; here
given to wine, elsewhere to theft or lechery;
here inclined to superstition, elsewhere to
misbelief; in one place to liberty, in another
to servitude; capable of one science or of
one art; dull or ingenious, obedient or mutin-
ous, good or ill, according as the place where
they are seated inclines them; and assume a
new complexion, if removed like trees : which
was the reason why Cyrus would not grant
the Persians leave to quit their rough and
228 MONTAIGNE
craggy country to remove to another more
pleasant and level, saying, that soft and
fertile soils made men effeminate and un-
fertile. 11 we see one while one art, one be-
lief flourish, and another while another,
through some celestial influence: such an age
produce such natures and incline mankind in
such and such a direction: the spirits of men
one while gay and another grum, like our
fields: what becomes of all those fine preroga-
tives we so soothe ourselves with? Seeing
that a wise man may be mistaken, a hundred
men, a hundred nations, nay, that even human
nature itself, as we believe, is many ages wide
in one thing or another, what assurance have
we that she sometimes is not mistaken, or not
in this very age of ours?
Methinks, amongst other testimonies of our
imbecility, this ought not to be forgotten, that
man cannot, by his own wish and desire, find
out what is necessary for him; that, not in
fruition only, but in imagination and wish,
we cannot agree about what we would have
to content us. Let us leave it to our thought
to cut out and make up at its pleasure : it can-
not so much as covet what is proper for it,
and satisfy itself:
MONTAIGNE 229
''For what with reason do we fear or wish!
What is there dexterously conceived that
afterwards you do not repent, both the at-
tempt and even the success!"
And therefore it was that Socrates begged
nothing of the gods but what they knew to be
best for him ; and the, both private and pub-
lic, prayers of the Lacedaemonians were only
simply to obtain good and useful things, re-
ferring the choice and selection of these to
the discretion of the Supreme Power:
"We seek marriage and the lying-in of
the wife; but it is known to them (the gods)
what the children and wife will be;"
and Christians pray to God ''that His will
may be done:" that they may not fall into the
inconvenience the poets feign of King Midas.
He prayed to the gods that all he touched
might be turned into gold; his prayer was
heard; his wine was gold, his bread was gold,
the feathers of his bed, his shirt and clothes
were all turned into gold, so that he found
himself overwhelmed under the fruition of
his desire, and enriched with an intolerable
230 MONTAIGNE
commodity, and was fain to nnpray his
prayers:
"Astonished at the strangeness of the evil,
at once rich and wretched, he wishes now to
escape wealth, and hates the thing for which
iie had just prayed."
To instance in myself: when young, I de-
sired of fortune above all things the order of
St. Michael, which was then the utmost dis-
tinction of honor amongst the French
noblesse, and very rare. She pleasantly
gratified my longing; instead of raising me
and lifting me up from my own place to at-
tain it, she was much kinder to me, for she
brought it so low and and made it so cheap
that it stooped down to my shoulders, and
lower. Cleobis and Biton, Trophonius and
Agamedes, having requested, the first of their
goddess, the last of their god, a recompense
worthy of their piety, had death for a re-
ward; so differing are the heavenly opinions
concerning what is fit for us from our own.
God might grant us riches, honors, life, and
health itself, sometimes to our hurt; for
everything that is pleasing to us is not always
MONTAIGNE 231
good for us. If he send us death or an in-
crease of sickness, instead of a cure:
<<Thy rod and thy staff have comforted
me."
He does it by the reasons of His providence,
which better and more certainly discerns
what is proper for ns than we can do ; and we
ought to take it in good part, as coming from
a wise and most friendly hand:
**If you wish advice, you will let the gods
consider what is useful for us and our affairs,
for man is dearer to them than he is to him-
self: '
for to require from them honors or com-
mands is to ask them to throw you into a
battle, set you upon a cast at dice, or some-
thing of the like nature, whereof the issue
is to you unknown and the fruit doubtful.
There is no so sharp and violent dispute
amongst the philosophers, as about the ques-
tion of the sovereign good of man; out of
which, by the calculation of Varro, there
arose two hundred and four score and eight
sects :
232 MONTAIGNE
"For whoever enters into controversy con-
cerning the supreme good, disputes upon the
whole reason of philosophy.**
"Three guests of mine wholly differ, each
man's palate requiring something that the
others do not like. What am I to give!
What not give! You refuse what the others
desire: what you seek the two others say is
odious and sour:*'
nature should say the same to their contests
and debates. Some say that our well-being
lies in virtue, others in pleasure, others in
our submitting to nature; one in knowledge,
another in being exempt from pain; another,
in not suffering ourselves to be carried away
by appearances : and this fancy seems to have
relation to that of the ancient Pythagoras :
*'Not to admire is all the art I know,
To make men happy, and to keep them so;"
which is the point of the Pyrrhonian sect:
Aristotle attributes the wondering at nothing
to magnanimity, and Archesilaus said, that
constancy and a right and inflexible state of
judgment were the true goods, consent and
MONTAIGNE 233
application vices and evils; it is true that in
being thus positive and establishing it by
certain axiom, he quitted Pyrrhonism; for the
Pyrrhonians, when they say that Ataraxy,
which is the immobility of the judgment, is
the sovereign good, do not design to say it
affirmatively; but the same motion of the
soul which makes them avoid precipices and
take shelter from the evening damp, presents
to them this fancy, and makes them refuse
another.
How much do I wish, that whilst I live,
either some other, or Justus Lipsius, the most
learned man now living, of a most polished
and judicious understanding, truly resemb-
ling my Tumebus, had the will and health
and leisure sufficient candidly and carefully
as possible to collect into a register, accord-
ing to their divisions and classes, the opinions
of ancient philosophy on the subject of our
being and our manners; their controversies,
the succession and reputation of the parts,
the application of the lives of the authors
and their disciples to their own precepts on
memorable and exemplary occasions: what a
beautiful and useful work that would be!
234 MONTAIGNE
To continue: if it be from ourselves that
we are to extract the rules of our manners,
upon what a confusion are we thrown? for
that which our reason advises us to as the
most probable, is generally for every one to
obey the laws of his country, as was the
advice of Socrates, inspired, he tells us, by a