these deified souls with their heels upwards,
towards heaven. 'Tis a pity that we should
fool ourselves with our own fopperies and in-
ventions :



MONTAIGNE 123

"They fear what they themselves have in-
vented:"

like children who are frightened with the face
of their companion that they themselves have
smutted:

**As if anything conld be more unhappy
than man, who is domineered over by his own
fancies.'*

'Tis far from honoring Him who made ns, to
honor him whom we have made. Augustus
had more temples than Jupiter, served with
as much religion and belief of miracles. The
Thasians, in return for the benefits they had
received from Agesilaus, coming to bring him
word that they had canonized him: "Has your
nation," said he to them, "the power to make
gods of whom they please? Pray first deify
some one amongst yourselves, and when I see
what advantage he has by it, I will thank you
for your offer." Man is certainly stark mad;
he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be
making gods by dozens. Hear what Tris-
megestus says in praise of our sufficiency:
"Of all the wonderful things, it surmounts
all wonder that man could find out the divine



124 MONTAIGNE

nature and make it." And take here the
arguments of the school of philosophy
itself:

**To whom alone it is given to know the
gods and deities of heaven, or know that we
can know them not."

"If there be a God, He is a corporeal
creature; if He be a corporeal creature, He
has sense; and if He has sense, He is subject
to corruption. K He be without a body. He
is without a soul, and consequently without
action: and if He have a body it is perish-
able." Is not here a triumph! We are in-
capable of having made the world; there
must, then, be some more excellent nature
that has put a hand to the work. It were a
foolish and ridiculous arrogance to esteem
ourselves the most perfect thing of this uni-
verse: there must, then, be something that is
better and more perfect, and that is God.
When you see a stately and stupendous
edifice, though you do not know who is the
owner of it, you would yet conclude it was
not built for rats: and this divine structure
that we behold of the celestial palace, have



MONTAIGNE 125

we not reason to believe that it is the resi-
dence of some possessor, who is much greater
than we ! Is not the highest always the most
worthy; and we are placed lowest to Him.
Nothing without a soul and without reason
can produce a living creature capable of
reason; the world produces us; the world,
then, has soul and reason. Every part of us
is less than we: we are part of the world; the
world, therefore, is endued with wisdom and
reason, and that more abundantly than we.
'Tis a fine thing to have a great government:
the government of the world, then, appertains
to some happy nature. The stars do us no
harm: they are, then, full of goodness. "We
have need of nourishment; then so have the
gods also; and they feed upon the vapors of
the earth. "Worldly goods are not goods to
God; therefore they are not goods to us. Of-
fending, and being offended, are equally
testimonies of imbecility: 'tis, therefore, folly
to fear God. God is good by His nature; man
by his industry, which is more. The divine
and human wisdom have no other distinction,
but that the first is eternal : but duration is no
accession to wisdom; therefore, we are com-



126 MONTAIGNE

panions. We have life, reason, and liberty;
we esteem goodness, charity, and justice:
these qualities, then, are in Him." In fine,
the building and destroying the conditions
of the divinity are forged by man, according
as they bear relation to himself. What a pat-
tern! what a model! Let us stretch, let us
raise and swell human qualities as much as
we please: puff up thyself, poor creature, yet
more and more, and more:

**Not if thou burst, said he."

"Certainly they do not imagine God, whom
they cannot imagine; but they imagine them-
selves in His stead: they do not compare
Him, but themselves, not to Him, but to
themselves."

In natural things the effects but half relate
to their causes: what about this? it is above
the order of nature; its condition is too
elevated, too remote, and too mighty to per-
mit itself to be bound and fettered by our con-
clusions. *Tis not through ourselves that we
arrive at that place: our ways lie too low: we
are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount
Cenis than at the bottom of the sea : take the



MONTAIGNE 127

distance with your astrolabe. They debase
God even to the carnal knowledge of women,
to so many times, to so many propagations:
Panlina the wife of Satnminus, a matron of
great reputation at Eome, thinking she lay
with the god Serapis, found herself in the
arms of a lover of hers, through the pan-
darism of the priests of the temple. Varro,
the most subtle and most learned of all the
Latin authors, in his book of theology, writes
that the sacristan of Hercules* temple, throw-
ing dice with one hand for himself and with
the other for Hercules, played after that man-
ner with him for a supper and a wench: if he
won, at the expense of the offerings: if he
lost, at his own. He lost, and paid the supper
and the wench. Her name was Laurentina:
she saw by night this god in her arms, who,
moreover, told her that the first she met the
next day, should give her a heavenly reward;
which proved to be Taruncius, a rich young
man, who took her home to his house, and in
time left her his heiress. She, in her turn,
thinking to do a thing that would be pleasing
to his god, left the people of Eome her heirs,
and therefore had divine honors voted to her.



128 MONTAIGNE

As if it were not sufficient that Plato was
originally descended from the gods by a
double line, and that he had Neptune for the
common father of his race, it was certainly
believed at Athens that Aristo, having a mind
to enjoy the fair Perictione, could not, and
was warned by the god Apollo in a dream to
leave her xmpolluted and untouched till she
should first be brought to bed. These were
the father and mother of Plato. How many
ridiculous stones are there of like cuckold-
ings conmaitted by the gods against poor
mortals ? and how many husbands injuriously
disgraced in favor of their children? In the
Mohammedan religion, there are plenty of
Merlins, found by the belief of the people,
that is to say, children without fathers,
spiritual, divinely conceived in the wombs
of virgins, and who bear a name that signifies
as much in their language.

We are to observe that to every creature
nothing is more dear and estimable than its
own being; the lion, the eagle, dolphin priz-
ing nothing beyond their own kind, and that
everything refers the qualities of all other
things to its own proper qualities, which we



MONTAIGNE 129

may indeed extend or contract, but that^s
all; for beyond that relation and principle,
our imagination cannot go, can guess at noth-
ing else, nor possibly go out thence or stretch
beyond it. From which spring these ancient
conclusions: *'0f all forms, the most beauti-
ful is that of man; therefore God must be of
that form. No one can be happy without
virtue, nor virtue be without reason, and
reason cannot inhabit anywhere but in a
human shape: God is therefore clothed in a
human shape:"

**It is so imprinted in our minds, and the
fancy is so prepossessed with it, that when
a man thinks of God, a human figure ever
presents itself to the imagination."

Therefore it was that Xenophanes pleasantly
said, that if beasts frame any gods to them-
selves, as 'tis likely they do, they make them
certainly such as themselves are, and glorify
themselves therein as we do. For why may
not a goose say thus: "All parts of the uni-
verse have I an interest in; the earth serves
me to walk upon, the sun to light me, the
stars to spread their influence upon me; I



130 MONTAIGNE

have such an advantage by the winds, such
conveniences by the waters: there is nothing
that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favor-
ably as me; I am the darling of nature. Is it
not man that feeds, lodges, and serves met
'Tis for me that he sows and grinds; if he
eats me, he does the same by his fellow-man,
and so do I the worms that kill and devour
him.'* As much might be said by a crane,
and more magnificently, upon the account of
the liberty of his flight, and the possession
of that high and beautiful region:

**So flattering and wheedling is nature to
herself."

By the same consequence, the destinies are,
then, for us, for us the world; it shines, it
thunders for us; creator and creatures all are
for us: 'tis the mark and point to which the
universality of things is directed. Look into
the records that philosophy has kept, for two
thousand years and more, of the affairs of
heaven; the gods all that while have neither
acted nor spoken but for man: she does not
allow them any other consultation or voca-
tion. See them, here, against us in war:



MONTAIGNE 131

' ' The sons of earth, subdued by the hand of
Hercules, in the rude shock made old
Saturn's refulgent palace shake."

And here see them participate of our
troubles, to make a return for having so
often shared in theirs:

** Neptune with his massive trident made
the walls and foundations shake, and over-
turned the whole city; here most cruel Juno
first holds the Scaean gates."

The Caunians, jealous of the authority of
their own especial gods, arm themselves on
the days of their devotion, and run all about
their precincts cutting and slashing the air
with their swords, by that means to drive
away and banish all foreign gods out of their
territory. Their powers are limited accord-
ing to our necessity; this divinity cures
horses, that men, this the plague, that the
scurf, that the cough; one, one sort of itch,
another another:

*'At such a rate does false religion create
gods for the most contemptible uses."

This makes the grapes grow, this the waters ;



132 MONTAIGNE

that has presidence over lechery; this the
superintendence over merchandise; for every
sort of artisan a god: this has his province
and credit in the east, that in the west;

"Here were her arms, here her chariot."

"O sacred Phoehns, who hast sway over
the navel of the earth.'*

*'The Athenians worship Pallas; Minoian
Crete, Diana; Vulcan is worshipped on the
Lemnian shore; Sparta and Mycene adore
Juno; the Arcadians worship Faunus; Mars
in Latium was adored;'*

this deity has only one town or one family
in his possession; that lives alone; this in
company either voluntary or upon neces-
Bity;

** Temples to the grandson are joined to
that of the great-grandfather;"

there are some so common and mean (for the
number amounts to six-and-thirty thousand)
that they must pack five or six together to
produce one ear of com, and thence take their



MONTAIGNE 133

several names; three to a door, that of the
plank, that of the hinge, and that of the
threshold; four to a child, protectors of his
swathing clouts, his drink, meat, sucking;
some certain, some uncertain and doubtful;
some that are not yet entered paradise:

**Whom, since we think them not yet
worthy of heaven, we permit to inhabit the
earth we have given/*

There are amongst them physicians, poets,
lawyers: some, a mean betwixt the divine and
human nature, mediators betwixt God and
us; adored with a certain second and diminu-
tive sort of adoration; infinite in titles and
offices; some good, others evil; some old and
decrepit, some that are mortal: for Chrysip-
pus was of opinion that in the last conflagra-
tion of the world all the gods will have to
die except Jupiter. Man forges a thousand
pretty societies betwixt God and him: is
He not his countryman?

''Crete, the cradle of Jove.**

This is the excuse that, upon consideration



134 MONTAIGNE

of this subject, Scaevola, a high priest, and
Varro, a great divine, in their time make us :
*'That it is necessary the people should be
ignorant of many things that are true, and
believe many things that are false:

' * Seeing he inquires into the truth, so that
he may be made free, 'tis thought fit he would
be deceived."

Human eyes cannot perceive things but by
the forms they know: and do we not remem-
ber what a leap miserable Phaeton took for
attempting to govern the reins of his father's
horses with a mortal handt Our mind falls
into as great a profundity, and is after the
same manner bruised and shattered by its
own temerity. If you ask philosophy of what
matter is heaven, of what the sun, what
answer will she return, but that it is of iron,
with Anaxagoras of stone, or some other
matter that she makes use of? If a man in-
quire of Zeno what Nature isf *' A mechanical
fire," says he, ** proper for generation, pro-
ceeding regularly." Archimedes, master of
that science which attributes to itself the
precedence before all others for truth and



MONTAIGNE 135

certainty: 'Hhe sun," says he, *'is a god of
red-hot iron." Was not this a fine imagina-
tion, extracted from the beauty and inevit-
able necessity of geometrical demonstrations?
yet not so inevitable and useful, but that
Socrates thought it was enough to know so
much of geometry only as to measure the
land a man bought or sold; and that Polyae-
nus, who had been a great and famous master
in it, despised it as full of falsity and mani-
fest vanity, after he had once tasted the deli-
cate fruits of the effeminate garden of Epi-
curus. Socrates in Xenophon concerning this
proposition of Anaxagoras, reputed by an-
tiquity learned above all others in celestial
and divine matters, says that he had disor-
dered his brain, as all men do who too im-
moderately search into knowledges which
nothing appertain unto them: when he made
the sun to be a burning stone, he did not con-
sider that a stone does not shine in the fire;
and which is worse,,, that it will there con-
sume; and in making the sun and fire one,
that fire does not turn complexions black in
shining upon them; that we are able to look
fixedly upon fire: and that fire kills herbs and



136 MONTAIGNE

plants. 'Tis Socrates' opinion, and mine too,
that it is best judged of heaven not to judge
of it at all. Plato having occasion in his
Timaeus to speak of daemons: "This under-
taking," says he, *' exceeds our ability; we
are to believe those ancients who said they
were begotten by them: 'tis against reason to
refuse faith to the children of the gods,
though what they say should not be proved
by any necessary or probable reasons, seeing
they engaged to speak of domestic and quite
familiar things."

Let us see if we have a little more light in
the knowledge of human and natural things.
Is it not a ridiculous attempt for us to devise
for those, to whom by our own confession our
knowledge is not able to attain, another body,
and to lend a false form of our own inven-
tion: as is manifest in the motion of the
planets, to which, seeing our wits cannot
possibly arrive nor conceive their natural
conduct, we lend them material, heavy, and
substantial springs of our own, by which to
move:

**A golden beam, wheels of gold, silver
spokes ' '



MONTAIGNE 137

you would say that we had had coach-makers,
wheelwrights, and painters that went up on
high to make engines of various movements,
and to range the wheels and interlacings of
the heavenly bodies of differing colors about
the axis of Necessity, according to Plato:

**The world is the great home of all things,
which five thundering zones enfold, through
which a girdle, painted with twelve glittering
constellations, shines high in the oblique
roof, marks the diurnal course, and receives
the biga of the moon:"

these are all dreams and fantastic follies.
Why will not Nature please, once for all, to
lay open her bosom to us, and plainly dis-
cover to us the means and conduct of her
movements, and prepare our eyes to see
them? Good God! what blunders, what mis-
takes should we discover in our poor science!
I am mistaken if it apprehend any one thing
as it really is: and I shall depart hence more
ignorant of all other things than of my own
ignorance.

Have I not read in Plato this divine say-
ing, that ''Nature is nothing but an enigmatic



138 MONTAIGNE

poesy T" as if a man might, peradventure,
say, a veiled and shaded picture, breaking
out here and there with an infinite variety of
false lights to puzzle our conjectures:

"All those things lie concealed and in-
volved in so caliginous an obscurity, that no
point of human wit can be so sharp as to
pierce heaven or penetrate the earth."

And certainly philosophy is no other than a
sophisticated poesy. "Whence do the ancient
writers extract their authorities but from the
poets? and the first of them were poets them-
selves, and wrote accordingly. Plato him-
self is but a disconnected poet: Timon in-
juriously calls him the great forger of
miracles. All superhuman sciences make use
of the poetic style. Just as women for them-
selves make use of teeth of ivory where the
natural are wanting, and instead of their true
complexion make one of some foreign mat-
ter; legs of cloth or felt, and plumpness of
cotton, and in the sight and knowledge of
every one paint, patch, and trick up them-
selves with false or borrowed beauty: so does
science (and even our law itself has, they



MONTAIGNE 139

say, legal fictions whereon it builds the truth
of its justice); she gives us, in presupposi-
tion and for current pay, things which she
herself informs us were invented: for these
epicycles, excentric and concentric, which
astrology makes use of to carry on the
motions of the stars, she gives us as the best
she could contrive upon that subject; as also,
in all the rest, philosophy presents us, not
that which really is or what she really be-
lieves, but what she has contrived with the
most plausible likelihood and the fairest
aspect. Plato upon the subject of the state
of human bodies and those of beasts: "I
should know that what I have said is truth,**
says he, '*had I the confirmation of an oracle:
but this I will affirm, that what I have said
is the most likely to be true of anything I
could say.**

'Tis not to heaven only that she sends her
ropes, engines, and wheels; let us consider
a little what she says of ourselves and of our
contexture: there is not more retrogradation,
trepidation, accession, recession, aberration,
in the stars and celestial bodies than they
have found out in this poor little human body.



140 MONTAIGNE

Truly they have good reason upon that very
account to call it the Little World, so many
tools and parts have they employed to erect
and build it. To accommodate the motions
they see in man, the various functions and
faculties that we find in ourselves, into how
many parts have they divided the soul! in
how many places lodged, into how many
orders have they divided, to how many
stories have they raised this poor creature
man, besides those that are natural and to be
perceived? and how many offices and voca-
tions have they assigned him? They make
of him an imaginary public thing; 'tis a sub-
ject that they hold and handle; and they have
full power granted to them to rip, place, dis-
place, piece, and stuff it, every one accord-
ing to his own fancy, and yet to this day they
possess it not. They cannot, not in reality
only but even in dreams, so govern it that
there will not be some cadence or sound that
will escape their architecture, enormous as it
is, and botched with a thousand false and
fantastic patches. And it is not reason to ex-
cuse them; for though we are content with
painters when they paint heaven, earth, seas,



MONTAIGNE 141

mountains, remote islands, if they gave ns
but some slight mark of them, and, as of
things unknown, are satisfied with a feigned
and obscure shadowing forth; yet when they
come to draw us by the life, or any other sub-
ject which is known and familiar to us, we
then require of them a perfect and exact rep-
resentation of lineaments and colors, and
despise them if they fail in it.

I am very well pleased with the Milesian
girl who, observing the philosopher Thales
to be always contemplating the celestial arch
and with eyes ever gazing upward, laid some-
thing in his way that he might stumble at, to
put him in mind that it would be time to take
up his thoughts about things in the clouds
when he had provided for those under his
feet. Certes, she advised him very well,
rather to look to himself than to gaze at
heaven; for, as Democritus says, by the mouth
of Cicero:

'*No man regards what is under his feet;
they are always prying towards heaven."

But our condition will have it so, that the
knowledge of what we have in hand is as



142 MONTAIGNE

remote from us, and as much above the clouds
as that of the stars : as Socrates says in Plato,
that whoever tampers with philosophy may
be reproached, as Thales was by the woman,
that he sees nothing of that which is before
him; for every philosopher is ignorant of
what his neighbor does; yes, and of what he
does himself, and is ignorant of what they
both are, whether beasts or men.

And these people who find Sebonde's argu-
ments too weak, who are ignorant of noth-
ing, who govern the world, and who know
all things:

"What governs the sea, what rules the
year, whether the planets move spontaneously
or under compulsion, what obscures the
moon, what the concordant discord of all
things will or can effect;**

have they not sometimes in their books
sounded the difficulties they have met with of
knowing their own being? We see very well
that the finger moves, that the foot moves,
that some parts have motion of themselves
without our leave, and that others work by
our direction; that one sort of apprehension



MONTAIGNE 143

occasions blushing, another paleness ; such an
imagination works upon the spleen only,
another upon the brain; one occasions laugh-
ter, another tears; another stupefies and
astounds all our senses and arrests the move-
ment of our members; at one object the
stomach will rise, at another a member that
lies somewhat lower: but how a spiritual im-
pression should make such a breach into a
massive and solid subject, and the nature of
the connection and contexture of these ad-
mirable springs and movements, never man
yet knew:

"All things are imcertain in reason, and
concealed in the majesty of nature,'*

says Pliny; and St. Augustin:

**The manner whereby souls adhere to
bodies is altogether marvellous; and cannot
be conceived by man, and this union is man ; ' '

and yet it is not so much as doubted; for the
opinions of men are received according to
ancient beliefs, by authority and upon trust,
as if it were religion and law: that which is
commonly held about it is an accepted jargon;



144 MONTAIGNE

this assumed truth, with all its clutter of
arguments and proofs, is admitted as a firm
and solid body that is no more to be shaken,
no further to be judged of; on the contrary,
every one, as best he may, corroborates and
fortifies this received belief with the utmost
power of his reason, which is a supple utensil,
pliable and to be accommodated to any figure:
and thus the world comes to be filled with
lies and fopperies. The reason that men do
not doubt of so few things is that they never
examine common impressions; they do not
dig to the root where the faults and weak-
ness lie; they only debate about the branches:
they do not ask whether such and such a
thing be true, but if it has been so and so
understood; it is not inquired whether Galen
said anything to purpose, but whether he
said this or that. In truth, there was very
good reason that this curb and constraint on
the liberty of our judgments and this tyranny
over our beliefs should be extended to the
schools and arts ; the god of scholastic knowl-
edge is Aristotle; 'tis irreligion to question
any of his decrees, as it was those of Lycur-
gus at Sparta; his doctrine is magisterial law,



MONTAIGNE 145

-which, peradventure, is as false as another.
I do not know why I should not as willingly
accept either the ideas of Plato, or the atoms
of Epicurus, or the plenum and vacuum of
Leucippus and Democritus, or the water of
Thales, or the infinity of nature of Anaxi-
mander, or the air of Diogenes, or the num-
bers and symmetry of Pythagoras, or the
infinity of Parmenides, or the One of
Musaeus, or the water and fire of Apollo-
dorus, or the similar parts of Anaxagoras, or
the discord and friendship of Empedocles,
or the fire of Heraclitus, or any other opinion
of that infinite confusion of opinions and de-