much from the conclusion, which with them is
of daily occurrence and common to every
judge, as from the dispute and heat of diverse
and contrary arguments, that questions of
law permit. And the largest field for repre-
hension that some philosophers have against
others is drawn from the diversities and con-
tradictions wherewith every one of them finds
himself perplexed; either on purpose, to show
the vacillation of human wit concerning
78 MONTAIGNE
everything; or ignorantly compelled by the
volubility and incomprehensibility of all mat-
ter; which is the meaning of this phrase: in a
slippery and sliding place let us suspend
our belief: for, as Euripides says:
*'The works of God in various ways per-
plex us:"
like that which Empedocles, as if shaken by
a divine fury and compelled by truth, often
strewed here and there in his writings. **No,
no; we feel nothing, we see nothing; all things
are concealed from us ; there is not one thing
of which we can positively say it is;" ac-
cording to the divine saying:
**For the thoughts of mortal men are timid;
and our devices are but uncertain. ' *
It is not to be thought strange if men, despair-
ing to overtake what they hunt after, have
yet not lost the pleasure of the chase, study
being of itself a pleasant employment, and
so pleasant that amongst pleasures the Stoics
forbid that also which proceeds from the ex-
ercise of the intellect, will have it curbed, and
MONTAIGNE 79
find a kind of intemperance in too much
knowledge.
Democritns having eaten figs at his table
that tasted of honey, fell presently to consider
within himself whence they should derive
this unusual sweetness, and to be satisfied in
it, was about to rise from the table to see the
place whence the figs had been gathered;
which his chamber-maid observing, and hav-
ing understood the cause, she smilingly told
him that he need not trouble himself about
that, for she had put them into a vessel in
which there had been honey. He was vexed
that she had thus deprived him of the oc-
casion of this inquisition, and robbed his
curiosity of matter to work upon. "Go thy
way," said he, ''thou hast done me wrong;
but for all that I will seek out the cause, as if
it were natural;" and would willingly have
found out some true reason for a false and
imaginary effect. This story of a famous and
great philosopher very clearly represents to
us the studious passion, that puts us upon the
pursuit of things of the acquisition of which
we despair. Plutarch gives a like example
of one who would not be satisfied in that
80 MONTAIGNE
whereof he was in doubt, that he might not
lose the pleasure of inquiring into it ; like the
other, who would not that his physician
Bhould allay the thirst of his fever that he
might not lose the pleasure of quenching it
by drinking:
" 'Tis better to learn more than is neces-
sary than nothing at all."
As in all sorts of feeding, there is often only
the mere pleasure of eating, and that what
we take, which is acceptable to the palate,
is not always nourishing or wholesome; so
that which our understandings extract from
learning does not cease to be pleasant, though
there be nothing in it either nutritive or
healthful. Thus say they: the consideration
of nature is a diet proper for our minds; it
raises and elevates us, makes us disdain low
and terrestrial things, by comparing them
with those that are celestial and high: even
the inquisition of great and occult things is
very pleasant, even to those who acquire no
other benefit than the reverence and fear of
judging it. This is what they profess. The
vain image of this sickly curiosity is yet more
MONTAIGNE 81
manifest in this other example that they so
often urge: Eudoxus wished and begged of
the gods that he might once see the sim near
at hand, to comprehend its form, greatness,
and beauty, though on the condition that he
should thereby be immediately burned. He
would, at the price of his life, purchase a
knowledge of which the use and possession
should at the same time be taken from him;
and for this sudden and vanished knowledge,
lose all the other knowledges he had in the
present, or might afterwards acquire.
I do not easily persuade myself that Epi-
curus, Plato, and Pythagoras have given us
their Atoms, Ideas, and Numbers as current
money: they were too wise to establish their
articles of faith upon a thing so uncertain
and so disputable. But, in that obscurity
and ignorance of the world, each of these
great personages endeavored to present some
kind or other of image of light; and worked
their brains for inventions that might, at
all events, have a pleasant and subtle appear-
ance, provided that, false as they were, they
might make good their ground against those
that would oppose them:
82 MONTAIGNE
"These things every one fancies according
to his wit, and not by any power of knowl-
edge."
One of the ancients, who was reproached
that he professed philosophy, of which he
nevertheless, in his own judgment, made no
great account, answered that this was truly
to philosophize. They would consider all,
balance everything, and found this an em-
ployment well suited to our natural curiosity;
some things they have written for the benefit
of public society, as their religions, and, for
that consideration, it was but reasonable that
they should not examine public opinions too
closely, that they might not disturb the com-
mon obedience to the laws and customs of
their country.
Plato treats of this mystery with a raillery
manifest enough; for where he writes as for
himself, he gives no certain rule: when he
plays the legislator, he borrows a magisterial
and positive style, and boldly there foists in
his most fantastic inventions as fit to per-
suade the vulgar as ridiculous to be believed
by himself; knowing very well how fit we are
to receive all sorts of impressions, especially
MONTAIGNE 83
the most immoderate and violent : and there-
fore in his laws he takes singular care that
nothing be sung in public but poetry, of which
the fabulous relations tend to some useful
end; it being so easy to imprint all sorts of
phantoms in the human mind, that it were
injustice not to feed them rather with profit-
able untruths than with untruths that are un-
profitable or hurtful. He says very plainly in
his Republic, ''that it is very often necessary
for the profit of men to deceive them. " It is
very easy to distinguish that some of the sects
have more followed truth, and others utility,
by which the last have gained their reputa-
tion. 'Tis the misery of our condition, that
often that which presents itself to our imagi-
nation for the most true does not also appear
the most useful to life; the boldest sects, as
the Epicurean, Pyrrhonian, the new
Academic, are yet, after all is said and done,
constrained to submit to the civil law.
Other subjects there are that they have
tumbled and tossed, some to the right and
others to the left, every one endeavoring,
right or wrong, to give them some kind of
color; for having found nothing so abstruse
84 MONTAIGNE
that they would not venture to touch it, they
are often forced to forge weak and ridiculous
conjectures, not that they themselves look
upon them as any foundation, nor as estab-
lishing any certain truth, but merely for
exercise:
"Not so much that they themselves be-
lieved what they said, as that they seem to
have had a mind to exercise their wits in the
difficulty of the matter."
And if we did not take it thus, how should
we palliate so great inconstancy, variety, and
vanity of opinions as we see have been pro-
duced by those excellent and admirable souls 1
as, for example, what can be more vain than
to imagine to dominate God by our analogies
and conjectures? to regulate Him and the
world by our capacities and our laws? and
to make use, at the expense of the Divinity,
of that small portion of knowledge He has
been pleased to impart to our natural condi-
tion? and, because we cannot extend our
sight to His glorious throne, to have brought
Him down to our corruption and our
miseries ?
MONTAIGNE 85
Of all human and ancient opinions con-
ceming religion, that seems to me the most
likely and most excusable that recognized in
God an incomprehensible power, the original
and preserver of all things, all goodness, all
perfection, receiving and taking in good part
the honor and reverence that man paid unto
Him, under what method, name, or cere-
monies soever:
"All-powerful Jove, father and mother of
the world, of kings and gods.**
This zeal has universally been looked upon
from heaven with a gracious eye. All govern-
ments have reaped fruit from their devotion:
impious men and actions have everywhere
had suitable result. Pagan histories recog-
nize dignity, order, justice, prodigies, and
oracles, employed for their profit and instruc-
tion in their fabulous religions: God, per-
adventure, through His mercy, vouchsafing
by these temporal benefits to cherish the ten-
der principles of a kind of brutish knowledge
that natural reason gave them of Him amid
the deceiving images of their dreams. Not
only deceiving and false, but impious also,
86 MONTAIGNE
and injurious, are those that man has forged
from his own invention; and of all the re-
ligions that St. Paul found in repute at
Athens, that which they had dedicated to The
Unknown God seemed to him the most to be
excused.
Pythagoras shadowed the truth a little
more closely, judging that the knowledge of
this first Cause and Being of beings ought to
be indefinite, without prescription, without
declaration; that it was nothing else than the
extreme effort of our imagination towards
perfection, every one amplifying the idea ac-
cording to his capacity. But if Numa at-
tempted to conform the devotion of his people
to this project, to attach them to a religion
purely mental, without any prefixed object
and material mixture, he undertook a thing
of no use; the human mind could never sup-
port itself floating in such an infinity of in-
form thoughts; it requires some certain
image thereof to be presented according to
its own model. The Divine Majesty has thus,
in some sort, suffered Himself to be circum-
scribed in corporeal limits for our advantage :
His supernatural and celestial sacraments
MONTAIGNE 87
have signs of our earthly condition: His ador-
ation is by sensible offices and words, for 'tis
man that believes and prays. I omit the
other arguments upon this subject ; but a man
would have much ado to make me believe that
the sight of our crucifixes, that the picture of
our Saviour's piteous passion, that the
ornaments and ceremonious motions of our
churches, that the voices accommodated
to the devotion of our thoughts, and
that emotion of the senses, do not warm the
souls of the people with a religious passion
of very advantageous effect.
Of those, to whom they have given a body,
as necessity required in that universal blind-
ness, I should, I fancy, most incline to those
who adored the sun:
"The common light that shines indifferently
On all alike, the world's enlightening eyes.
And if the Almighty ruler of the skies
Has eyes, the sunbeams are His radiant eyes.
That life to all impart, maintain, and guard,
And all men's actions upon earth regard.
This great, this beautiful, and glorious sim.
That seasons give by revolution:
That with his influence fills the universe.
88 MONTAIGNE
And with one glance does sullen shades dis-
perse.
Life, soul of the world, that flaming in his
sphere.
Surrounds the heavens in one day's career.
Immensely great, moving, yet firm and
round,
Who the whole world below has fixed his
bound,
At rest without rest, idle without stay.
Nature's firs son, and father of the day:"
forasmuch as besides this grandeur and
beauty of his, 'tis the piece of this machine
that we discover at the remotest distance
from us, and, by that means, so little known
that they were pardonable for entering into
so great admiration and reverence of it.
Thales, who first inquired into this matter,
believed God to be a spirit, that made all
things of water: Anaximander, that the gods
were always dying and re-entering into life at
divers seasons, and that there were an
infinite number of worlds: Anaximenes, that
the air was God, that he was produced and
immense, ever moving. Anaxagoras was the
first who held that the description and sys-
MONTAIGNE 89
tern of all things were conducted by the power
and reason of an infinite spirit. Alcmaeon
gave divinity to the sun, moon, and stars,
and to the soul. Pythagoras made God a
spirit diffused through the nature of all
things, from which our souls are extracted:
Parmenides, a circle surrounding the heaven
and supporting the world by the heat of
light. Empedocles pronounced the four ele-
ments, of which all things are composed, to
be gods: Protagoras had nothing to say,
whether they were or not, or what they were:
Democritus was one while of opinion that the
images of objects and their orbs were gods;
another while, the nature that darts out those
images, and again, our science and intelli-
gence. Plato divides his belief into several
opinions: he says in his Timaeus, that the
father of the world cannot be named;
in his Laws, that men are not to in-
quire into his being; and elsewhere,
in the same books, he makes the world,
the heavens, the stars, the earth, and
our souls, gods; admitting, moreover, those
which have been received by ancient institu-
tion in every republic. Xenophon reports a
90 MONTAIGNE
like perplexity in Socrates' doctrine; one
while, tliat men are not to inquire into the
form of God, and presently makes him main-
tain that the smi is God, and the soul, God;
first, that there is but one God, and after-
wards that there are many. Speusippus, the
nephew of Plato, makes God a certain power
governing all things, and that it is animal.
Aristotle, one while says it is the mind, and
another while the world; now he gives this
world another master, and again makes God
the heat of heaven. Xenocrates makes eight;
five named amongst the planets, the sixth
composed of all the fixed stars, as of so many
members ; the seventh and the eighth, the sun
and the moon. Heraclides Ponticus does
nothing but float in his opinions, and finally
deprives God of sense and making him shiift
from one form to another: and at last says,
that 'tis heaven and earth. Theophrastus
wanders in the same irresolution amongst his
various fancies, attributing the superintend-
ence of the world one while to the under-
standing, another while to heaven, and then
to the stars: Strato says 'tis nature having
the power of generation, augmentation and
MONTAIGNE 91
diminution, without form and sentiment:
Zeno says 'tis the law of nature commanding
good and prohibiting evil, which law is ani-
mal; and abolishes the accustomed gods,
Jupiter, Juno, and Vesta : Diogenes ApoUoni-
ates says 'tis air. Xenophanes makes God
round, seeing and hearing, not breathing, and
having nothing in common with human
nature. Aristo thinks the form of God to be
incomprehensible, deprives Him of sense, and
knows not whether He be animal or some-
thing else : Cleanthes one while supposes Him
to be reason, another while the world, then
the soul of nature, and then the supreme heat
surrounding and enveloping all things.
Perseus, Zeno's disciple, was of opinion
that men have given the title of gods to such
as have added any notable advantage to
human life, and even to profitable things
themselves. Chrysippus made a confused
heap of all the preceding lucubrations, and
reckons, amongst a thousand forms of gods
that he makes, the men also that have been
deified. Diagoras and Theodorus flatly de-
nied that there were any gods at all. Epi-
curus makes the gods shining, transparent,
92 MONTAIGNE ;
and perflable, lodged, as betwixt two forts,
betwixt two worlds, secure from blows;
clothed in a human figure and with such mem-
bers as we have, which members are to them
of no use:
*'I have ever thought, and still think, there
are gods above, but I do not conceive that
they care what men do."
Trust to your philosophy, my masters, and
brag that you have found the bean in the
cake, with all this rattle from so many philo-
sophical heads! The perplexity of so many
worldly forms has gained this for me, that
manners and opinions contrary to mine do not
so much displease as instruct me ; nor so much
make me proud, as they humble me in com-
paring them; and all other choice than what
comes from the express and immediate hand
of God, seems to me a choice of very little
prerogative. The polities of the world are no
less opposed upon this subject than the
schools: by which we may understand that
fortune itself is not more variable and
diverse, nor more blind and inconsiderate,
than our reason. The things that are most
MONTAIGNE 93
unknown are the most proper to be deified;
wherefore, to make gods of ourselves, as the
ancients did, exceeds the extremest weakness
of understanding. I should much rather have
gone along with those who adored the ser-
pent, the dog, or the ox; forasmuch as their
nature and their being are less known to us,
and that we are more at liberty to imagine
what we please of those beasts, and to at-
tribute to them extraordinary faculties; but
to have made gods of our own condition, of
which we should know the imperfection, and
to have attributed to them desire, anger, re-
venge, marriages, generation, alliances, love
and jealousy, our members and bones, our
fevers and pleasures, our death and obsequies,
this must needs proceed from a marvellous
intoxication of human understanding:
''Which things are so remote from the
divine nature, that they are unworthy to be
ranked among the gods."
** Their forms, ages, clothes, ornaments are
known: their descents, marriages, kindred,
and all appropriated to the similitude of
human weakness ; for they are represented to
94 MONTAIGNE
us with anxious minds, and we read of the
lusts, sickness, and anger of the gods;**
as having attributed divinity not only to
faith, virtue, honor, concord, liberty, victory,
piety, but also to voluptuousness, fraud,
death, envy, old age, misery ; to fear, fever, ill
fortune, and other injuries of our frail and
transitory life:
"Into our temples to what end introduce
our own corrupt manners? souls, bending
to the earth, devoid of all heavenly senti-
ments!'*
The Egyptians with a bold foresight inter-
dicted, upon pain of hanging, that any one
should say that their gods Serapis and Isis
had formerly been men, and yet no one was
ignorant that they had been such; and their
eJ05gies, represented with the finger upon the
mouth, signified, says Varro, this mysterious
decree to their priests, to conceal their mortal
original, as it must, by necessary consequence,
annul all the veneration paid to them. See-
ing that man so much desired to equal him-
self to God, he had done better, says Cicero,
MONTAIGNE 95
to have attracted the divine conditions to
himself, and have drawn them down hither
below, than to send his corruption and misery
up on high: but, in truth, he has in several
ways done both the one and the other, with
like vanity of opinion.
When the philosophers search narrowly
into the hierarchy of their gods, and make a
great bustle about distinguishing their alli-
ances, offices, and power, I cannot believe they
speak with any seriousness. When Plato de-
scribes Pluto's verge to us, and the bodily
pleasures or pains that await us after the ruin
and annihiliation of our bodies, and accom-
modates them to the notions we have of them
in this life:
** Secret paths hide them, and myrtle groves
environ them; their cares do not leave them
when they die
j>
when Mohammed promises his followers a
paradise hung with tapestry, adorned with
gold and precious stones, furnished with
wenches of excelling beauty, rare wines and
delicate dishes, I easily discern that these
are mockers who accommodate their promises
96 MONTAIGNE
to our stupidity, to attract and allure us by
hopes and opinions suitable to our mortal ap-
petite. And yet some amongst us are fallen
into the like error, promising to thelnselves,
after the resurrection, a terrestrial and tem
poral life, accompanied with all sorts of
worldly conveniences and pleasures. Can we
believe that Plato, he who had such heavenly
conceptions, and was so conversant with
Divinity as thence to derive the name of the
Divine Plato, ever thought that the poor
creature, man, had anything in him applica-
ble to that incomprehensible power? and that
he believed that the weak holds we are able
to take were capable, or the force of our un-
derstanding robust enough to participate of
eternal beatitude or pain? We should then
tell him, on behalf of human reason: if the
pleasures thou dost promise us in the other
life are of the same kind that I have enjoyed
here below, that has nothing in common with
infinity: though all my five natural senses
should be loaded with pleasure and my soul
full of all the contentment it could hope or
desire, we know what all this amounts to ; all
this would be nothing: if there be anything of
MONTAIGNE 97.
mine there, there is nothing divine ; if it be no
more than what may belong to our present
condition, it cannot be reckoned; all content-
ment of mortals is mortal^ the recognition of
our parents, children, and friends, if that can
touch and delight us in the other world, if
there it still continue a satisfaction to us, we
still remain in earthly and finite con-
veniences: we cannot, as we ought, conceive
the grandeur of those high and divine
promises, if we can in any sort conceive them;
to have a worthy imagination of them we
must imagine them unimaginable, inexplica-
ble, and incomprehensible, and absolutely
another thing than any in our miserable ex-
perience. ''Eye hath not seen," says St.
Paul, ''nor ear heard, neither have entered
into the heart of man, the things which God
hath prepared for them that love Him. ' ' And
if to render us capable of them, our being be
reformed and changed (as thou, Plato, sayest
by thy purifications), it must be so extreme
and total a change that, by physical doctrine,
it will be no more us:
"He was Hector whilst he was fighting; but
98 MONTAIGNE
when dragged by Achilles' steeds, he was no
longer Hector:"
it must be something else that must receive
these recompenses:
**What is changed is dissolved, and there-
fore perishes; for the parts are separated, and
depart from their order."
For, in Pythagoras ' metempsychosis, and the
change of habitation that he imagined in
souls, can we believe that the lion in whom
the soul of Caesar is enclosed espouses
Caesar's passions, or that the lion is he? If
it were still Caesar, they would be in the right
who, controverting this opinion with Plato,
reproach him that the son might be seen to
ride his mother transformed into a mule, and
the like absurdities. And can we believe that
in the mutations that are made of the bodies
of animals into others of the same kind, the
newcomers are not other than their predeces-
sors? From the ashes of a phoenix a work,
they say, is engendered, and from that
another phoenix; who can imagine that
this second phoenix is not other than
MONTAIGNE 99
the first! We see our silkworms as it
were die and wither; and from this withered
body a butterfly is produced, and from that
another worm; how ridiculous would it be to
imagine that this were still the first? that
which has once ceased to be is no more :
*'Nor, though time should collect after
death our material atoms, and restore them
to the form they had before, and give us again
new light of life, would that new figure con-
cern us at all; the sense of our being, once
interrupted, is gone."
And, Plato, when thou sayest, in another
place, that it shall be the spiritual part of
man that will be concerned in the fruition of
the recompenses of another life, thou tellest
us a thing wherein there is as little appear-
ance of truth:
"No more than eyes once torn from their
sockets can ever after see anything;'*
for, by this account, it would no more be
man, nor consequently us, who should be con-
cerned in this enjoyment: for we are com-
posed of two principally essential parts, the
100 MONTAIGNE
separation of which is the death and ruin of
our being:
"For, when life is extinct, all motions of
sense are dispersed and banished;"
we cannot say that the man suffers when the