divine counsel; and thence what results but
that our duty has no other rule than what is
accidental? Truth ought to have a like and
universal visage: if man could know equity
and justice that had a body and a true being,
he would not fetter it to the conditions of
this country or that; it would not be from
the whimsies of the Persians or Indians that
virtue would receive its form. There is noth-
ing more subject to perpetual agitation than
the laws: since the time that I was bom, I
have known those of the English, our neigh-
bors, three or four times changed, not only in
matters of civil regimen, which is that
wherein constancy may be dispensed with, but
in the most important subject that can be,
namely, religion: at which I am the more
troubled and ashamed, because it is a nation
with which those of my province have for-



MONTAIGNE 235

merly had so great familiarity and acquaint-
ance, that there yet remain in my house some
traces of our ancient kindred. And here with
us at home, I have known a thing, that was a
capital offence become lawful; and we who
hold others to it, are likewise, according to
the chances of war, in a possibility of being
found one day guilty of high treason, both
divine and human, should ever justice fall
into the power of injustice, and, after a few
years' possession, taking a quite contrary
being. How could that ancient god more
clearly accuse the ignorance of human knowl-
edge concerning the Divine being, and give
men to understand that their religion was
but a thing of their own contrivance, useful
to bind their society, than declaring as he
did to those who came to his tripod for in-
struction, ''that every one's true worship
was that which he found in use in the place
where he chanced to be?" God, what in-
finite obligation have we to the benignity of
our sovereign Creator, for having disabused
our belief from these wandering and arbi-
trary devotions, and for having seated it upon
the eternal foundation of His Holy Word?



236 MONTAIGNE

What will, then, philosophy say to us in this
necessity? Why, "that we follow the laws
of our country," that is to say, that floating
sea of the opinions of a republic or a prince
that will paint justice for me in as many
colors and reform it as many ways as there
are changes of passion in themselves: I can-
not suffer my judgment to be so flexible.
What kind of goodness is that which I see
to-day in repute, and that to-morrow shall be
in none, and which the crossing of a river
makes a crime? What truth is it that these
mountains enclose, and which is a lie in the
world beyond them?

But they are pleasant, when to give some
certainty to the laws, they say that there
are some firm, perpetual and immutable,
which they call natural, that are imprinted in
mankind by the condition of their own proper
being; and of these, some reckon up three,
some four, some more, and some less, a sign
that it is a mark as doubtful as the rest. Now
they are so unfortunate (for what can I call it
else but misfortune, that of so infinite a num-
ber of laws there should not be found one at
least that fortune and the temerity of chance



MONTAIGNE 237

has suffered to be universally received by the
consent of all nations) 1 they are, I say, so
miserably unfortunate, that of these three or
four select laws there is not so much as one
that is not contradicted and disowned, not
only by one nation but by many. Now the
only likely sign by which they can argue or
infer some laws to be natural is the univer-
sality of approbation; for we should, with-
out doubt, follow by common consent that
which nature had really ordained for us ; and
not only every nation, but every particular
man would resent the force and violence that
any one should do him, who would impel him
to anything contrary to this law. Let them
produce me but one of this condition. Prota-
goras and Aristo gave no other essence to
the justice of laws than the authority and
opinion of the legislator; and that, these put
aside, the honest and the good would lose
their qualities, and remain empty names of
indifferent things: Thrasymachus in Plato
is of opinion that there is no other law but
the convenience of the superior. There is not
anything wherein the world is so various as
in laws and customs; such a thing is abomina-



238 MONTAIGNE

ble here, which is elsewhere in esteem, as in
Lacedaemon dexterity in stealing; marriages
within degrees of consanguinity are capi-
tally interdicted amongst us; they are else-
where in honor:

** *Tis said there are some nations where
mothers marry their sons, fathers their
daughters, and filial duty is enhanced by the
double tie;"

the murder of infants, the murder of fathers,
community of wives, traffic in robberies,
license in all sorts of voluptuousness; in
short, there is nothing so extreme that is not
allowed by the custom of some nation or
other.

It is credible that there are natural laws,
as we see in other creatures, but they are
lost in us; this fine human reason everywhere
so insinuating itself to govern and command,
as to shuffle and confound the face of things,
according to its own vanity and incon-
stancy:

* 'Therefore nothing is any longer ours;
what I call ours is artificial."



MONTAIGNE 239

Subjects have divers aspects and divers con-
siderations, and from this the diversity of
opinions principally proceeds; one nation
considers a subject in one aspect and stops
there; another takes it in another aspect.

There is nothing of greater horror to be
imagined than for a man to eat his father;
and yet the nations whose custom anciently it
was to do, looked upon it as a testimony of
piety and natural affection, seeking thereby to
give their progenitors the most worthy and
honorable sepulture; storing up in themselves,
and as it were in their own marrow, the
bodies and relics of their fathers; and in
some sort vivifying and regenerating them
by transmutation into their living flesh, by
means of nourishment and digestion: it is
easy to consider what a cruelty and abomina-
tion it must have appeared to men possessed
and embued with this superstition, to throw
their father's remains to the corruption of
the earth and the nourishment of beasts and
worms.

Lycurgus considered in theft the vivacity,
diligence, boldness, and dexterity of purloin-
ing anything from our neighbors, and the



240 MONTAIGNE

utility that redounded to the public that
every one should look more narrowly to the
conservation of what was his own; and be-
lieved that from this double institution of
assailing and defending advantage was to be
made for military discipline (which was the
principal science and virtue to which he
would inure that nation) of greater consider-
ation than the disorder and injustice of tak-
ing another man's goods.

Dionysius the tyrant offered Plato a robe
of the Persian fashion, long, damasked, and
perfumed; Plato refused it, saying that, be-
ing bom a man, he would not willingly dress
himself in woman's clothes; but Aristippus
accepted it, with this answer, that no ac-
coutrement could corrupt a chaste courage.
His friends reproaching him with meanness
of spirit, for laying it no more to heart that
Dionysius had spit in his face: ''Fishermen,'*
said he, ''suffer themselves to be dashed with
the waves of the sea from head to foot to
catch a gudgeon." Diogenes was washing
cabbages, and seeing him pass by: "If thou
couldst live on cabbage," said he, "thou
wouldst not fawn upon a tyrant," to whom



MONTAIGNE 241

Aristippus replied; ''And if thou knewest
how to live amongst men, thou wouldst not be
washing cabbages." Thus reason finds ap-
pearance for divers effects: 'tis a pot with
two ears that a man may take by the right or
left:

**War, foreign land, thou bringest us;
horses are armed for war, these herds
threaten war: and yet these animals having
long with patience borne the yoke and
yielded to the reins before, there is hope of
peace."

Solon, being importuned by his friends not
to shed powerless and unprofitable tears for
the death of his son: *'It is for that reason
that I the more justly shed them," said he,
** because they are powerless and unprofit-
able." Socrates' wife exasperated her grief
by this circumstance; *'0h, how unjustly do
these wicked judges put him to death!"
"Why," replied he, "hadst thou rather they
should justly execute me?" We have our
ears bored; the Greeks looked upon that as
a mark of slavery. We retire in private to
enjoy our wives; the Indians do it in public.



242 MONTAIGNE

The Scythians immolated strangers in their
temples; elsewhere temples were a refuge;

"Thence the popular fury, that every
locality hates its neighbors' gods, when it be-
lieves only the gods which it worships itself. ' '

I have heard of a judge who, where he met
with a sharp conflict betwixt Bartolus and
Baldus, and some point discussed with many
contrarieties, wrote in the margin of his note-
book: ''A question for a friend," that is to
say that truth was there so controverted and
confused that in a like cause he might favor
which of the parties he thought fit. 'Twas
only for want of wit that he did not write,
**A question for a friend" throughout; the
advocates and judges of our time find bias
enough in all causes to accommodate them
to what they themselves think fit. In so in-
finite a science, depending upon the authority
of so many opinions, and so arbitrary a sub-
ject, it cannot but be that an extreme con-
fusion of judgments must arise. There is
hardly any suit so clear wherein opinions do
not very much differ; what one court has de-
termined, another determines quite contrary,



MONTAIGNE 243

and itself also contrary at another time. By
this license, which is a marvellous blemish
on the ceremonious authority and lustre of
our justice, we see frequent examples of per-
sons not abiding by decrees, but running from
judge to judge, and court to court, to decide
one and the same cause.

As to the liberty of philosophical opinions
concerning vice and virtue, 'tis not necessary
to be expatiated upon, as therein are found
many opinions that are better concealed than
published to weak minds. Arcesilaus said,
that in fornication it was no matter how or
with whom it was conmaitted:

"And obscene pleasures, if nature requires,
Epicurus thinks are not to be measured either
by kind, place, or order, but by age and
beauty. Neither are holy loves thought to
be interdicted to the wise men we are to in-
quire till what age young men are to be
loved."

These two last Stoical quotations, and the re-
proach that Dicaearchus threw in the teeth of
Plato himself upon this account, show how
much the soundest philosophy indulges



244 MOMTAIGNE

license and excess, very remote from common
usage.

Laws derive their authority from posses-
sion and use: 'tis dangerous to trace them
back to their beginning; they grow great and
ennoble themselves, like our rivers, by run-
ning; follow them upward to their source,
'tis but a little spring, scarce discernible,
that swells thus, and thus fortifies itself by
growing old. Do but consult the ancient con-
siderations that gave the first motion to this
famous torrent, so full of dignity, awe and
reverence; you will find them so light and
weak that it is no wonder if these people, who
weigh and reduce everything to reason, and
who admit nothing by authority or upon
trust, have their judgments very remote and
differing from those of the public. It is no
wonder, if people, who take their pattern
from the first image of nature, should in most
of their opinions, swerve from the common
path: as, for example, few amongst them
would have approved of the strict conditions
of our marriages, and most of them have been
for having women in conmion, and without
obligation : they would refuse our ceremonies.



MONTAIGNE 245

Chrysippus said that a philosopher will make
a dozen somersaults without his breeches for
a dozen of olives; he would hardly have ad-
vised Callisthenes to have refused to Hippo-
elides the fair Agarista his daughter, for hav-
ing seen him stand on his head upon a table.
Metrocles let wind a little indiscreetly in dis-
putation in the presence of his school, and
kept himself hid in his own house for shame,
till Crates coming to visit him, and adding to
his consolations and reasons the example of
his own liberty, falling to let wind with him
who should let most, cured him of that
scruple, and withal drew him to his own Stoi-
cal sect, more free than that more reserved
one of the Peripatetics, of which he had been
till then. That which we call decency, not
to dare to do that in public which it is decent
enough to do in private, the Stoics call folly;
and to mince it and be so modest as to con-
ceal and disown what nature, custom, and our
desires publish and proclaim of our actions,
they reputed a vice ; but the others thought it
was to undervalue the mysteries of Venus, to
draw them out of her private temples to ex-
pose them to the view of the people, and that



246 MONTAIGNE

to bring them out from behind the curtain
was to lose them. Modesty is a thing of
weight; secrecy, reserve, circumspection are
parts of esteem: that pleasure does very
rightly when, under the visor of virtue, she
desires not to be prostituted in the open
streets, trodden under foot and exposed to
the public view, wanting the dignity and con-
venience of her private cabinets. Hence some
say that to put down public stews is not only
to disperse fornication into all places that
was assigned to one, but moreover by the
very difficulty to incite idlers to this vice:

**Thou, Schaevinus, once Aufidia's hus-
band, art now her gallant. He who was once
your rival is now her husband. How is it
that she who now pleases thee, being
another's, did not please thee when thou wert
her husband! Cannot you find your vigor
where you are immolestedf*

This experience diversifies itself in a
thousand examples:

"Not a man in the whole city, Caecilianus,
would touch your wife gratis, while it was
easy to do so: now that you have set guards



MONTAIGNE 247

upon her, there 's a vast crowd of lovers after
her. You are a clever man.'*

A philosopher being taken in the very act,
and asked what he was doing, coolly replied,
*'I am planting a man:" no more blushing
to be so caught than if they had found him
planting garlic.

It is, I suppose, out of tenderness and re-
spect to the natural modesty of mankind that
a great and religious author is of opinion
that this act is so necessarily bound to
privacy and shame that he cannot persuade
himself there could be any absolute perform-
ance in those impudent embraces of the
Cynics, but that they only made it their busi-
ness to represent lascivious gestures to main-
tain the impudence of their schools' profes-
sion ; and that to eject what shame had with-
held it was afterwards necessary for them to
withdraw into the shade. But he had not
thoroughly examined their debauches: for
Diogenes, playing the beast with himself in
public, wished in the presence of all who saw
him that he could fill his belly by that exer-
cise. To those who asked him why he did



248 MONTAIGNE

not find out a more commodious place to eat
in than the open street, he made answer,
''Because I am hungry in the open street.'*
The women philosophers who mixed with
their sect, mixed also with their persons in
all places without reservation: and Hip-
parchia was not received into Crates ' society
but upon conditions that she should in all
things follow the uses and customs of his rule.
These philosophers set a great price upon
virtue, and renounced all other discipline but
the moral: and yet in all their actions they
attributed the sovereign authority to the elec-
tion of their sage as above the laws, and gave
no other curb to voluptuousness but modera-
tion only, and the conservation of the liberty
of others.

Heraclitus and Protagoras, forasmuch as
wine seemed bitter to the sick and pleasant
to the sound; the rudder crooked in the water
and straight when out, and such like contrary
appearances as are found in subjects, thence
argued that all subjects had in themselves
the causes of these appearances; and that
there wa^ some bitterness in the wine which
had sympathy with the sick man 's taste, and



MONTAIGNE 249

the rudder some bending quality, sympathiz-
ing with him who looks upon it in the water,
and so of all the rest; which is as much as to
say that all is in all things, and, consequently,
nothing in any one, for where all is, there is
nothing.

This opinion put me in mind of the experi-
ence we have, that there is no sense nor aspect
of anything, whether bitter or sweet, straight
or crooked, that human wit does not find
out in the writings it undertakes to rummage
over. Into the simplest, purest, and most
perfect speaking that can possibly be, how
many lies and falsities have we suggested?
What heresy has not there found ground and
testimony sufficient to set forth and defend
itself? 'Tis on this account that the authors
of such errors will never surrender this proof
of the testimony of the interpretation of
words. A person of dignity who would prove
to me by authority the search of the philoso-
pher's stone wherein he was over head and
ears engaged, alleged to me the other day
five or six passages in the Bible upon which
he said he first founded his attempt, for the
discharge of his conscience (for he is a



250 MONTAIGNE

divine); and in truth the invention was not
only amnsing, I5nt, moreover, very well ac-
commodated to the defence of this fine
science.

By this way the reputation of divining
fables is acquired; there is no fortune-teller,
if he have but this authority that people will
condescend to turn over and curiously peep
into all the folds and glosses of his words, but
we may make him, like the Sybils, say what
we will. There are so many ways of inter-
pretation that it will be hard but that, either
obliquely or in a direct line, an ingenious wit
will find out in every subject some air that
will serve for his purpose: therefore 'tis we
find a cloudy and ambitious style in so fre-
quent and ancient use. Let the author but
contrive to attract and busy posterity about
his predictions; which not only his own parts,
but as much or more the accidental favor of
the matter itself, may effect; that, as to the
rest, he express himself foolishly or subtlely,
somewhat obscurely and contradictorily, 'tis
no matter: a number of wits, shaking and
sifting him, will bring out a great many
several forms, either according to his own,



MONTAIGNE 251

or collateral, or contrary to it, wliich will all
redound to his honor: he will see himself en-
riched, by the means of his disciples, like the
regents of colleges by their pupils at Landy.
This is it which has given reputation to many
things of no worth at all; that has brought
several writings into vogue, and given them
the fame of containing all sorts of matter that
can be desired; one and the same thing re-
ceiving a thousand and a thousand images
and various considerations, even as many as
we please.

Is it possible that Homer could design to
say all that they make him say, and that he
devised so many and so various figures as
that divines, lawgivers, captains, philoso-
phers, all sorts of men who treat of sciences,
how variously and oppositely soever, should
cite him, and support their arguments by
his authority, as the sovereign master of all
oflSces, works, and artisans; counsellor-gen-
eral of all enterprises? Whoever has had oc-
casion for oracles and predictions has there
found sufficient to serve his turn. 'Tis won-
derful how many and how admirable con-
currences an intelligent person and a par-



252 MONTAIGNE

ticular friend of mine has there found out in
favor of our religion, and he cannot easily
be put out of the conceit that this was
Homer's design: and yet he is as well ac-
quainted with that author as any man what-
ever of our time; and so what he has found
out there in favor of our religion, many
anciently found there in favor of theirs. Do
but observe how Plato is tumbled and tossed
about: every one ennobling his own opinions
by applying him to himself, makes him take
what side he pleases; they draw him in and
engage him in all the new opinions the world
receives, and make him, according to the
different course of things, differ from him-
self; they make him, according to their sense,
disavow the manners and customs lawful in
his age, because they are unlawful in ours:
and all this with vivacity and power, accord-
ing to the force and sprightliness of the wit
of the interpreter. From the same founda-
tion that Heraclitus and this sentence of his
had, ''that all things have in them those
forms that we discern in them," Democritus
drew a quite contrary conclusion namely,
"that subjects had nothing at all in them of



MONTAIGNE 253

what we there find;" and, forasmuch as
honey is sweet to one and bitter to another,
he thence argned that it was neither sweet
nor bitter. The Pyrrhonians would say that
they know not whether it is sweet or bitter,
or neither the one nor the other, or both;
for these always gain the highest point
of dubitation. The Cyrenaics held that
nothing was perceptible from without,
and that that only was perceptible
which internally touched us, as grief
and pleasure; acknowledging neither tone nor
color, but certain affections only that we re-
ceive from them, and that man's judgment
had no other seat. Protagoras believed that
**what seemed to every one was true to every
one." The Epicureans lodged all judgment
in the senses, both in the knowledge of things
and in pleasure. Plato would have the judg-
ment of truth, and truth itself, derived from
opinions and the senses, appertain to the
mind and cogitation.

This discourse has put me upon the con-
sideration of the senses, in which lie the
greatest foundation and proof of our ignor-
ance. Whatsoever is known is doubtless



254 MONTAIGNE

known by the faculty of the knower; for see-
ing the judgment proceeds from the opera-
tion of him who judges, 'tis reason that he
perform this operation by his means and will,
not by the constraint of another, as would
happen if we knew things by the power and
according to the law of their essence. Now
all knowledge is conveyed to us by the senses;
they are our masters:

*'It is the path by which faith finds its way
to enter the human heart and the temple of
the mind:*'

science begins by them, and is resolved into
them. After all, we should know no more
than a stone, if we did not know that there
is sound, odor, light, taste, measure, weight,
softness, hardness, sharpness, color, smooth-
ness, breadth, and depth; these are the plat-
form and principles of all the structure of
our knowledge, and, according to some,
science is nothing else but sensation. He
that could make me contradict the senses
would have me by the throat, he could not
make me go further back; the senses are the
beginning and the end of human knowl-
edge:



MONTAIGNE 255

"You will find that all knowledge of truth
is first conveyed to the soul by the senses.
The senses cannot be disputed. What can
be held in greater faith than them!"

Attribute to them the least we can, we must
still of necessity grant them this, that it is
by their means and mediation that all our
instruction is directed. Cicero says, that
Chrysippus, having attempted to depreciate
the force and virtue of the senses, presented
to himself arguments and so vehement op-
positions to the contrary, that he could not
satisfy them; whereupon Cameades, who
maintained the contrary side, boasted that
he would make use of the same words and
arguments that Chrysippus had done where-
with to controvert him, and therefore thus
cried out against him: **0 miserable! thy
force has destroyed thee." There can, in
our estimate, be nothing absurd to a greater
degree than to maintain that fire does not
warm, that light does not shine, and that
there is no weight nor solidity in iron, which
are knowledges conveyed to us by the senses;
there is no belief or knowledge in man that
can be compared to that for certainty.



256 MONTAIGNE

The first consideration I have upon the
subject of the senses is, that I make a doubt
whether man is furnished with all natural
senses. I see several animals that live an
entire and perfect life, some without sight,
others without hearing: who knows whether
to us also one, two, or three, or many other