senses, may not be wanting? For if any one
be wanting, our examination cannot discover
the defect. 'Tis the privilege of the senses
to be the utmost limit of our discovery; there
is nothing beyond them that can assist us
in exploration, not so much as one sense in the
discovery of another:
"Can ears correct the eyes, or eyes the
touch, or can touch be checked by tasting;
or can nose or eyes confute other faculties ? ' '
they all constitute the extremest limits of our
ability:
''Each has its own special power assigned
to it, and its strength is its own."
It is impossible to make a man, naturally
blind, conceive that he does not see; impos-
sible to make him desire sight, or to regret
MONTAIGNE 257
his defect: for which reason we ought not to
derive any assurance from the soul's being
contented and satisfied with those we have,
considering that it cannot be sensible herein
of its infirmity and imperfection, if there be
any such thing. It is impossible to say any-
thing to this blind man, either by argument
or similitude, that can possess his imagina-
tion with any apprehension of light, color, or
sight; nothing remains behind that can push
on the senses to evidence. Those that are
bom blind, whom we hear to wish they could
see, it is not that they understand what they
desire: they have learned from us that they
want something, that there is something to
be desired that we have which they can name
indeed, and speak of its effects and conse-
quence; but yet they know not what it is, nor
at all apprehend it.
I have seen a gentleman of a good family
who was bom blind, or at least blind from
such an age that he knows not what sight is,
who is so little sensible of his defect that he
makes use, as we do, of words proper for see-
ing, and applies them after a manner wholly
special and his own. They brought him a
258 MONTAIGNE
child to whom he was godfather; having
taken him into his arms: ''Good God," said
he, **what a fine child is this: how beautiful
to look upon, what a pleasant face he has!'*
He will say, like one of us, "This room has
a very fine prospect; it is clear weather; the
sun shines bright;" and, moreover, hunting,
tennis, and butts being our exercises, as he
has heard, he has taken a liking to them,
makes them his exercises, and believes he has
as good a share of the sport as we have; and
will express himself as angry or pleased as
the best of us all, and yet knows nothing of
it but by the ear. One cries out to him,
''Here's a hare," when he is upon some even
plain where he may safely ride; and after-
wards, when they tell him the hare is killed,
he will be as proud of it as he hears others
say they are. He will take a tennis-ball in
his left hand and strike it away with the
racket! he will shoot with a musket at ran-
dom, and is contented with what his people
tell him, that he is over or beside the mark.
Who knows whether all human kind com-
mit not the like absurdity, for want of some
sense, and that through this default the great-
MONTAIGNE 259
est part of the face of things is concealed
from us? What do we know but that the
diflficulties which we find in several works
of nature do not thence proceed! and that
several effects of animals, which exceed our
capacity, are not produced by the faculty of
some sense that we are defective in? and
whether some of them have not by this means
a life more full and entire than ours? We
seize an apple as it were with all our senses:
we there find redness, smoothness, odor, and
sweetness: but it may have other virtues be-
sides these, as drying up or binding, to which
no sense of ours can have any reference. Is
it not likely that there are sentient faculties
in nature that are fit to judge and discern
what we call the occult properties in several
things, as for the loadstone to attract iron;
and that the want of such faculties is the
cause that we are ignorant of the true essence
of such things? 'Tis, peradventure, some
particular sense that gives cocks to under-
stand what hour it is at midnight and when
it grows to be towards day, and that makes
them crow accordingly; that teaches
chickens, before they have any experience of
260 MONTAIGNE
what they are, to fear a sparrow-hawk, and
not a goose or a peacock, though birds of a
much larger size; that cautions them of the
hostile quality the cat has against them, and
makes them not fear a dog; to arm them-
selves against the mewing, a kind of flatter-
ing voice, of the one, and not against the
barking, a shrill and threatening voice, of
the other; that teaches wasps, ants, and rats
to select the best pear and the best cheese,
before they have tasted them, and which in-
spires the stag, the elephant, the serpent, with
the knowledge of a certain herb proper for
their cure. There is no sense that has not a
mighty dominion, and that does not by its
power introduce an infinite number of knowl-
edges. If we were defective in the intelli-
gence of sounds, of harmony, and of the
voice, it would cause an unimaginable con-
fusion in all the rest of our science; for, be-
sides what appertains to the proper effect of
every sense, how many arguments, conse-
quences, and conclusions do we draw as to
other things, by comparing one sense with
another? Let an understanding man imagine
MONTAIGNE 261
human nature originally produced without
the sense of seeing, and consider what ignor-
ance and trouble such a defect would bring
upon him, what a darkness and blindness in
the soul; he will see by that of how great im-
portance to the knowledge of truth the priva-
tion of such another sense, or of two, or
three, should we be so deprived, would be.
We have formed a truth by the consultation
and concurrence of our five senses; but, per-
adventure, we should have the consent and
contribution of eight or ten, to make certain
discovery of it in its essence.
The sects that controvert the knowledge
of man, do it principally by the uncertainty
and weakness of our senses; for since all
knowledge is by their means and mediation
conveyed unto us, if they fail in their report,
if they corrupt or alter what they bring us
from without, if the light which by them
creeps into the soul be obscured in the pas-
sage, we have nothing else to hold by. From
this extreme difficulty all these fancies pro-
ceed ; ' ' that every subject has in itself all we
there find: that it has nothing in it, of
what we think we there find;" and that of
262 MONTAIGNE
the Epicureans, "that the sun is no bigger
than 'tis judged by our sight to be:"
**But be it what it will, in our esteem, it
is no bigger than it seems to our eyes ; ' '
"that the appearances, which represent a
body great to him that is near, and less to
him that is more remote, are both true:"
"Yet we deny that the eye is deluded; do
not then charge it with the mind's fault;"
and resolutely, "that there is no deceit in
the senses; that we are to lie at their mercy,
and seek elsewhere reasons to excuse the dif-
ference and contradictions we there find,
even to the inventing of lies and other flams
(they go that length) rather than accuse the
senses." Timagoras vowed that, by press-
ing or turning his eye, he could never per-
ceive the light of the candle to double, and
that the seeming so proceeded from the vice
of opinion, and not from the organ. The most
absurd of all absurdities, according to the
Epicureans, is in denying the force and effect
of the senses: |j
"Therefore, whatever has to them at any
MONTAIGNE 263
time seemed true, is true, and if our reason
cannot explain why things seem to be square
when near, and at a greater distance appear
round, 'tis better for him that's at fault in
reasoning to give of each figure a false cause,
than to permit manifest things to go out of
his hands, to give the lie to his first belief,
and overthrow all the foundations on which
life and safety depend; for not alone reason,
but life itself will fall together with sudden
ruin, unless we dare trust our senses to avoid
precipices, and other such like dangers that
are to be avoided."
This so desperate and unphilosophical ad-
vice, expresses only this, that human loiowl-
edge cannot support itself but by reason that
is unreasonable, foolish, and mad; but that
it is better that man, to set a greater value
upon himself, should make nse of this or any
other remedy how fantastic soever, than con-
fess his necessary ignorance; a truth so dis-
advantageous to him. He cannot avoid own-
ing that the senses are the sovereign lords of
his knowledge; but they are uncertain and
falsifiable in all circumstances; 'tis there
that he is to fight it out to the last; and if
his just forces fail him, as they do, supply
264 MONTAIGNE
that defect with obstinacy, temerity, and im-
pudence. If what the Epicureans say be
true, viz., * * that we have no knowledge if the
appearances of the senses be false;" and if
that also be true which the Stoics say, ''that
the appearances of the senses are so false
that they can furnish us with no manner of
knowledge," we shall conclude, to the dis-
advantage of these two great dogmatical
sects, that there is no science at all.
As to what concerns the error and uncer-
tainty of the operation of the senses, every
one may furnish himself with as many ex-
amples as he pleases; so ordinary are the
faults and tricks they put upon us. In the
echo of a valley the sound of the trumpet
seems to meet us, which comes from some
place behind:
"And mountains rising up at a distance
from the middle of the sea, between which
a free passage for ships is open, yet appear,
though far separated, one vast island united
of the two, . . . and the hills and plains, past
which we row or sail, seem to flee away
astern. When a spirited horse sticks fast
with us in the middle of a river, and we look
MONTAIGNE 265
down into the stream, the horse seems to be
carried by its force in a contrary direction,
though he stands still:"
just as a musket bullet under the forefinger,
the middle finger being lapped over it, feels
so like two that a man will have much ado
to persuade himself there is but one, the
senses so vividly representing them as two.
For that the senses are very often masters
of our reason and constrain it to receive im-
pressions which it judges and knows to be
false, is frequently seen. I set aside the sense
of feeling, that has its functions nearer, more
vivid and substantial, that so often by the
effect of the pains it inflicts on the body sub-
verts and overthrows all those fine Stoical
resolutions, and compels him to cry out from
his belly who has resolutely established this
doctrine in his soul, ''that the gout and all
other pains and diseases are indifferent
things, not having the power to abate any-
thing of the sovereign felicity wherein the
sage is seated by his virtue;" there is no
heart so effeminate that the rattle and sound
of our drxmis and trumpets will not enflame
with courage; nor so sullen that the sweet-
266 MONTAIGNE
ness of music will not rouse and cheer; nor
a soul so stubborn that will not feel itself
struck with some reverence in considering
the sombre vastness of our churches, the
variety of ornaments and order of our cere-
monies, and in hearing the solemn music of
our organs, and the grace and devout har-
mony of our voices; even those, who come in
with contempt, feel a certain shivering in
their hearts, and something of dread that
makes them begin to doubt their opinion.
For my part, I do not find myself strong
enough to hear an ode of Horace or Catullus
sung by a beautiful young mouth without
emotion ; and Zeno had reason to say that the
voice is the flower of beauty. Some one once
wanted to make me believe that a certain
person, whom all we Frenchmen know, had
imposed upon me in repeating some verses
that he had made; that they were not the
same upon the paper that they were in the
air, and that my eyes would make a contrary
judgment of them to my ears: so great a
power has pronunciation to give fashion and
value to works that are left to the efficacy
and modulation of the voice. Therefore
MONTAIGNE 267
Philoxenus was not so much to blame who,
hearing one give an ill accent to some com-
position of his, stamped on and broke certain
earthen vessels of his, saying, "I break what
is thine, because thou spoilest what is mine.'*
To what end did those men, who have with
a positive resolution destroyed themselves,
turn away their faces that they might not
see the blow that was by themselves ap-
pointed? and that those who, for their
health, desire and command incisions and
cauteries, cannot endure the sight of the
preparations, instruments, and operations of
the surgeons, seeing that the sight is not in
any way to participate in the pain? are not
these proper examples to verify the authority
the senses have over the reason? 'Tis to much
purpose that we know these tresses were bor-
rowed from a page or a lacquey; that this red
came from Spain, and that white and polish
from the ocean; our sight will nevertheless
compel us to confess the object more agree-
able and more lovely against all reason; for
in this there is nothing of its own.
'*We are carried away by dress; all things
are hidden by jewels and gold; the girl is of
268 MONTAIGNE
herself the smallest part. Often, when
amongst so many decorations we seek for
her we love, wealthy love deceives our eyes
with this mask.**
What a strange power do the poets attribute
to the senses, who make Narcissus so desper-
ately in love with his own shadow?
**He admires all things by which he is ad-
mired: silly fellow, he desires himself; the
praises which he gives, he claims; he seeks,
and is sought; he is inflamed and inflames:"
and Pygmalion's judgment so troubled by the
impression of the sight of his ivory statue,
that he loves and adores it, as if it were a
living woman:
**He kisses, and believes that he is kissed
again, seizes her, embraces her; he thinks
her limbs yield to the pressure of his fingers,
and fears lest they should become black and
blue with his ardor.**
Let a philosopher be put into a cage of
small thin-set bars of iron, and hang him on
the top of the high tower of Notre Dame of
Paris; he will see, by manifest reason, that
MONTAIGNE 269
he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find,
unless he have been used to the tiler's trade,
that he cannot help but that the excessive
height will frighten and astound him; for
we have enough to do to assure ourselves in
the galleries of our steeples, if they are
railed with an open baluster, although they
are of stone; and some there are that cannot
endure so much as to think of it. Let there
be a beam thrown over betwixt these two
towers, of breadth sufficient to walk upon;
there is no philosophical wisdom so firm that
can give us the courage to walk over it, as
we should do upon the ground. I have often
tried this upon our mountains in these parts,
and though I am not one who am much sub-
ject to be afraid of such things, yet I was not
able to endure to look into that infiinite depth
without horror and trembling in legs and
arms, though I stood above my length from
the edge of the precipice, and could not have
fallen down unless I had chosen. I also
observed that what height soever the preci-
pice were provided there were some
tree or some jutting out of a rock
a little to support and divide the sight, it a
270 MONTAIGNE
little eases our fears and gives some assur-
ance, as if they were things by which in fall-
ing we might have some help ; but that direct
precipices we are not able to look upon with-
out being giddy:
**Not to be seen without dizziness of the
eyes and mind:"
which is a manifest imposture of the sight.
And therefore it was, that the fine philoso-
pher put out his own eyes to free the soul
from being diverted by them, and that he
might philosophize at greater liberty: but
by the same rule, he should have stopped up
his ears, which Theophrastus says are the
most dangerous instruments about us for re-
ceiving violent impressions to alter and dis-
turb us; and, in short, should have deprived
himself of all his other senses, that is to
say, of his life and being; for they have all
the power to command our soul and reason:
"For it often falls out that minds are more
vehemently struck by some sight, by the loud
sound of the voice, or by singing, and oft-
times by grief and fear."
MONTAIGNE 271
Physicians hold that there are certain com-
plexions that are agitated by some somids
and instrmnents even to fury. I have seen
some who could not hear a bone gnawed
under the table without impatience; and
there is scarce any man who is not disturbed
at the sharp and shrill noise that the file
makes in grating upon the iron; and so, to
hear chewing near them or to hear any one
speak who has any impediment in the throat
or nose, will move some people even to anger
and hatred. Of what use was that piping
prompter of Gracchus, who softened, raised,
and moved his master's voice whilst he de-
claimed at Rome, if the movements and
quality of the sound had not the power to
move and alter the judgments of the audi-
tory? Truly, there is wonderful reason to
keep such a clutter about the firmness of this
fine piece that suffers itself to be turned and
twined by the motions and accidents of so
light a wind!
The same cheat that the senses put upon
our understanding, they have in turn put
upon them; the soul also sometimes has its
revenge; they lie and contend which should
272 MONTAIGNE
most deceive one another. What we see and
hear when we are transported with passion,
we neither see nor hear as it is:
**The snn seemed two suns, and Thebes a
double city:"
the object that we love appears to us more
beautiful than it really is:
**We often see the ugly and the vile held
in highest honor and warmest love:"
and that we hate, more ugly. To a discon-
tented and afflicted man, the light of the day
seems dark and overcast. Our senses are not
only corrupted, but very often utterly stupe-
fied by the passions of the soul; how many
things do we see that we do not take notice
of, if the mind be occupied with other
thoughts !
''Nay, as to the most distinct objects, you
may observe that unless the mind take notice
of them, they are no more seen than if they
were far removed in time and distance;"
it seems as though the soul retires within
MONTAIGNE 273
and amnses the powers of the senses. And so
both the inside and the outside of man is full
of infirmities and falsehood.
They who have compared onr life to a
dream were, peradventure, more in the right
than they were aware of. When we dream,
the soul lives, works, exercises all its facul-
ties, neither more nor less than when awake;
hut if more gently and obscurely, yet not so
much certainly, that the difference should be
as great as betwixt night and the meridional
brightness of the sim; nay, as betwixt night
and shade; there she sleeps, here she slum-
bers, but whether more or less, 'tis still dark
and Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleep-
ing, and sleep waking, I do not see so clearly
in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I
never find it clear enough and free from
clouds: moreover, sleep, when it is profound,
sometimes rocks even dreams themselves
asleep ; but our awaking is never so sprightly
that it rightly and thoroughly purges and
dissipates those reveries which are waking
dreams, and worse than dreams. Our rea-
son and soul receiving those fancies and
opinions that come in dreams, and authoriz-
274 MONTAIGNE
ing the actions of our dreams, in like manner
as they do those of the day, why do we not
doubt whether our thought and action is not
another sort of dreaming, and our waking a
certain kind of sleep!
If the senses be our first judges, it is not
our own that we are alone to consult; for in
this faculty beasts have as great or greater,
right than we : it is certain that some of them
have the sense of hearing more quick than
man, others that of seeing, others that of
feeling, others that of touch and taste. Demo-
critus said, that the gods and brutes had the
sensitive faculties much more perfect than
man. Now, betwixt the effects of their
senses and ours, the difference is extreme;
our spittle cleanses and dries up our wounds ;
it kills the serpent:
**And in those things the difference is so
great that what is one man*s poison is
another man's meat; for the serpent often,
when touched with human spittle, goes mad,
and bites itself to death.*'
What quality do we attribute to our spittle,
either in respect to ourselves or to the ser-
MONTAIGNE 275
pent! by which of the two senses shall we
prove the true essence that we seek? Pliny
says, that there are certain sea-hares in the
Indies that are poison to us, and we to them,
insomuch that with the least touch we kill
them; which shall be truly poison, the man
or the fish? which shall we believe, the fish
of the man, or the man of the fish? One
quality of the air infects a man that does the
ox no harm; some other infects the ox but
hurts not the man; which of the two shall in
truth and nature be the pestilent quality? To
them who have the jaundice all things seem
yellow and paler than to us:
"Whatever jaundiced eyes view looks yel-
low."
They who are troubled with the disease that
the physicians call hyposphagma, which is a
suffusion of blood under the skin, see all
things red and bloody. What do we know
but that these humors, which thus alter the
operations of sight, predominate in beasts
and are usual with them? for we see some
whose eyes are yellow like onr people who
have the jaundice, and others of a bloody
276 MONTAIGNE
color; to these 'tis likely that the color of
objects seems other than to us; which judg-
ment of the two shall be right? for it is not
said that the essence of things has a rela-
tion to man only: hardness, whiteness, depth,
and sharpness have reference to the service
and knowledge of animals as well as to ns,
and Nature has equally designed them for
their use. When we press down the eye,
the body that we look upon we perceive to
be longer and more extended; many beasts
have their eyes so pressed down: this length
therefore is, peradventure, the true form of
that body, and not that which our eyes give
it in their usual state. If we close the lower
part of the eye, things appear double to us :
**Two lights in the lamps seem blossoming
with flames, and each man appears to have a
double body and two heads."
If our ears be obstructed or the passage
stopped with anything, we receive the sound
quite otherwise than we usually do; the ani-
mals likewise, who have either the ears hairy
or but a very little hole instead of an ear,
do not, consequently, hear as we do, but
MONTAIGNE 277
another kind of sound. We see at festivals
and theatres that painted glass of a certain
color reflecting the light of the flambeaux,
and all things in the room appear to us
green, yellow, or violet:
''And thus yellow, red, and purple cur-
tains, stretched over the spacious theatre,
sustained by poles and pillars, wave about
in the air, and whole streams of colors flow
from the top, and tinge the scenes, and men,
and women, and g'ods:"
'tis likely that the eyes of animals, which we
see to be of divers colors, produce the ap-
pearance of bodies to them the same with
their eyes.
We sh/)uld, therefore, to make a right
judgment of the operations of the senses, be
first agreed with beasts; and secondly,
amongst ourselves, which we by no means
are, but enter at every turn into dispute, see-
ing that one man hears, sees, or tastes some-
thing othei*wise than another does; and con-
test as much as upon any other thing about
the diversity of the images that the senses
represent to us. A child, by the ordinary
278 MONTAIGNE
rule of natnre, hears, sees, and tastes other-
wise than a man of thirty years old, and he
than one of threescore ; the senses are in some
more obscure and dusky, and in others more
open and quick. We receive things vari-
ously, according as we are and according as
they appear to us ; now, our perception being
so uncertain and controverted, it is no won-
der if we are told that we may declare that
snow appears white to us, but that to affirm
that it is in its own essence really so, is more
than we are able to justify: and this founda-
tion being shaken, all the knowledge in the
world must of necessity fall to pieces. Then
our senses themselves hinder one another: a