those they do not approve,**
and that we receive the arts by civil au-
thority and decree, so that the schools have
but one pattern and a like circumscribed in-
stitution and discipline, we no longer take
notice what the coin weighs and is really
worth, but every one receives it according to
the estimate that the common approbation
and the ordinary course put upon it: the alloy
is not disputed, but for how much it is cur-
rent. In like manner, all things pass ; we take
physic as we do geometry, and tricks of
hocus-pocus, enchantments, codpiece points,
correspondence with the souls of the dead,
MONTAIGNE 191
prognostications, domifications, and even that
ridicnlons pursuit of the philosopher's stone,
all things pass for current pay, without
scruple or contradiction. We need to know
no more but that Mars' house is in the middle
of the triangle of the hand, that of Venus in
the thumb, and that of Mercury in the little
finger; that when the table-line cuts the
tubercle of the forefinger, 'tis a sign of
cruelty; that when it falls short of the mid-
dle finger, and that the natural medium line
makes an angle with the vital in the same
side, 'tis a sign of a miserable death ; that if,
in a woman, the natural line be open, and does
not close the angle with the vital, this de-
notes that she will not be very chaste; I leave
you to judge whether a man, thus qualified,
may not pass with reputation and esteem in
all companies.
Theophrastus said that human knowledge,
guided by the senses, might judge of the
causes of things to a certain degree: but that
being arrived at extreme and first causes, it
must stop short, and retire, by reason either
of its own infirmity, or the difficulty of things.
*Ti8 a moderate and gentle opinion, that our
192 MONTAIGNE
own understanding may conduct us to the
knowledge of some things, and that it has
certain measures of power, beyond which 'tis
temerity to employ it; this opinion is plausi-
ble, and introduced by men of well-composed
minds. But 'tis hard to limit our mind; 'tis
inquisitive and greedy, and will no more stop
at a thousand, than at fifty paces ; having ex-
perimentally found that, wherein one man has
failed, another has hit; that what was un-
known to one age, the age following has ex-
plained: and that arts and sciences are not
cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected
by degrees, by often handling and polishing,
as bears leisurely lick their cubs into shape;
what my force cannot discover, I do not yet
desist to soimd and to try; and, handling and
kneading this new matter over and over
again, turning and heating it, I lay open to
him, that shall succeed me, a kind of facility
to enjoy it more at his ease, and make it more
manageable and supple for him:
**As Hymettian wax grows softer in the
Bun, and tempered by the fingers assumes
various forms, and is rendered fit for use:"
MONTAIGNE 193
as much will the second do to the third, which
is the reason that difficulty ought not to make
me despair; and my own incapacity as little;
for 'tis only my own.
Man is as capable of all things, as of some:
and if he confess, as Theophrastus says, the
ignorance of first causes and principles, let
him boldly surrender to me all the rest of his
knowledge; if he is defective in foundation,
his reason is on the ground: disputation and
inquisition have no other aim but principles;
if this does not stop his career, he runs into
an infinite irresolution:
**One thing can be no more or less com-
prehended than another, because there is only
one definition for comprehending all things. ' '
Now 'tis very likely, that if the soul knew
anything, it would in the first place know
itself; and if it knew anything out of itself,
it would be its own body and case, before
anything else: if we see the gods of physic,
to this very day, debating about our
anatomy:
** Vulcan against, for Troy Apollo stood:'*
194 MONTAIGNE
when are we to expect that they will be
agreed! We are nearer neighbors to our-
selves than the whiteness of snow or the
weight of stones are to us: if man does not
know himself, how should he know his func-
tions and powers? It is not, peradventure,
that we have not some real knowledge in us,
but 'tis by chance; and forasmuch as errors
are received into our soul by the same way,
after the same manner, and by the same con-
duct, it has not wherewithal to distinguish
them, nor wherewithal to choose the truth
from falsehood.
The Academics admitted a certain inclina-
tion of judgment, and thought it too crude
to say, "that it was not more likely that snow
was white than black, and that we were no
more assured of the motion of a stone thrown
by the hand than of that of the eighth
sphere;" and to avoid this difficulty and
strangeness, which can, in truth, not easily
lodge in our imagination, though they con-
clude that we are in no sort capable of knowl-
edge, and that truth is engulfed in so pro-
found an abyss as is not to be penetrated by
human sight; yet do they acknowledge some
MONTAIGNE 195
things to be more likely than others, and re-
ceived into their judgment this faculty that
we have a power to incline to one appearance
more than to another: they allowed this pro-
pension, interdicting all resolution. The
opinion of the Pyrrhonians is more bold, and
also more likely: for this Academic inclina-
tion, and this propension to one proposition
rather than to another, what is it other than
a recognition of some more apparent truth in
this than in that! If our understanding be
capable of the form, lineaments, comport-
ment, and face of truth, it would as well see it
entire as by halves, springing and imperfect:
this appearance of likelihood, which makes
them rather take the left hand than the right,
augments it: multiply this ounce of veri-
similitude that turns the scales, to a hundred,
to a thousand ounces: it will happen in the
end that the balance will itself end the con-
troversy, and determine one choice and one
entire truth. But how is it they suffer them-
selves to incline to and be swayed by proba-
bility, if they know not the truth itself? How
should they know the similitude of that
whereof they do not know the essence!
196 MONTAIGNE
Either we can absolutely judge, or absolutely
we cannot. If our intellectual and sensible
faculties are without foot or foundation, if
they only float and waver about, 'tis to no
purpose that we suffer our judgment to be
carried away by any part of their operation,
what appearance soever it may seem to pre-
sent to us; and the surest and most happy
seat of our understanding would be that
where it kept itself temperate, upright and
inflexible, without tottering and without agi-
tation:
"As between things that seem true or false,
it signifies nothing to the assent of the mind. ' '
That things do not lodge in us in their form
and essence, and do not there make their
entry by their own force and authority we
sufficiently see: because if it were so, we
should receive them after the same manner:
wine would have the same relish with the sick
as with the healthful; he who has his finger
chapped or benumbed would find the same
hardness in wood or iron that he handles that
another does; outside subjects, then,
submit themselves to our disposal, and
MONTAIGNE 197
are seated in us as we please. Now, if
on our part we received anything without
alteration, if human grasp were capable and
strong enough to seize on truth by our
own means, these being common to all men,
this truth would be conveyed from hand to
hand from one to another; and at least there
would be some one thing to be found in the
world, amongst so many as there are, that
would be believed by men with a universal
consent: but this, that there is no one propo-
sition that is not debated and controverted
amongst us, or that may not be, makes it very
manifest that our natural judgment does not
very clearly comprehend what it embraces;
for my judgment cannot make itself accepted
by the judgment of my companion, which is
a sign that I seized it by some other means
than by a natural power that is in me and in
all other men.
Let us lay aside this infinite confusion of
opinions which we see even amongst the
philosophers themselves, and this perpetual
and universal dispute about the knowledge of
things: for this is very truly presupposed,
that men I mean those highest and best bom
198 MONTAIGNE
in knowledge and of the greatest parts are
not agreed about any one thing, not even
that heaven is over our heads, for they that
doubt of everything also doubt of that; and
they who deny that we are able to compre-
hend anything, say that we have not com-
prehended that the heaven is over our heads;
and these two opinions are without com-
parison the stronger in number.
Besides this infinite diversity and division,
through the trouble that our judgment gives
to ourselves, and the uncertainty that every
one is sensible of in himself, 'tis easy to per-
ceive that its seat is very unstable and un-
secure. How variously do we judge of
things'? how often do we alter our opinions!
"What I hold and believe to-day, I hold and
believe with* my whole belief: all my instru-
ments and engines seize and take hold of this
opinion, and become responsible to me for it
as much as in them lies; I could not embrace
nor preserve any truth with greater assur-
ance than I do this; I am wholly and entirely
possessed with it: but has it not befallen me,
not only once, but a thousand times, and
every day, to have embraced some other thing
MONTAIGNE 199
with the same instniments, and in the same
condition, which I have since judged to he
false? A man must, at least, become wise at
his own expense ; if I have often found myself
betrayed under this color, if my touch prove
ordinarily false and my balance unequal and
unjust, what assurance can I now have more
than at other times? is it not folly to suffer
myself to be so often deceived by my guide?
Nevertheless, let fortune remove and shift
us five hundred times from place to place,
let her do nothing but incessantly empty and
fill into our belief, as into a vessel, other and
other opinions, yet still the present and the
last is the one certain and infallible: for this
we must abandon goods, honor, life, health,
and all:
**The last thing we find out is ever the best,
and makes us disrelish all the former."
Whatever is preached to us, whatever we
learn, we should still remember that it is man
that gives and man that receives ; 'tis a mortal
hand that presents it to us, 'tis a mortal hand
that accepts it. The things that come to us
from heaven have the sole right and authority
200 MONTAIGNE
of persuasion, the sole mark of truth: which
also we do not see with our own eyes nor re-
ceive by our own means: that great and
sacred image could not abide in so wretched
a habitation, if God, for this end, did not pre-
pare it, if God did not, by His particular and
supernatural grace and favor, fortify and re-
form it. At least our frail and defective con-
dition ought to make us comport ourselves
with more reservedness and moderation in
our innovations and changes: we ought to
remember that whatever we receive into the
understanding we often receive things that
are false, and that it is by the same instru-
ments that so often give themselves the lie,
and are so often deceived.
Now, it is no wonder they should so often
contradict themselves, being so easy to be
turned and swayed by very light occurrences.
It is certain that our apprehension, our judg-
ment, and the faculties of the soul in general,
suffer according to the movements and altera-
tions of the body, which alterations are con-
tinual: are not our wits more sprightly, our
memory more prompt, our discourse more
lively, in health than in sickness? Do not joy
MONTAIGNE 201
and gaiety make us receive subjects that
present themselves to our souls, quite other-
wise than care and melancholy? Do you be-
lieve that the verses of Catullus or of Sappho
please an old doting miser as they do a vigor-
ous and amorous young man? Cleomenes,
the son of Anaxandridas, being sick, his
friends reproached him that he had humors
and whimsies that were new and unaccus-
tomed: *'I believe it,** said he, "neither am
I the same man now as when I am in health:
being now another thing, my opinions and
fancies are also other than they were before.**
In our courts of justice 'tis said of criminals,
when they find the judges in a good humor,
gentle and mild,
**Let him rejoice in his good fortune.**
For it is most certain that men*s judgments
are sometimes more prone to condemnation,
more sharp and severe, and at others more
facile, easy, and inclined to excuse. He that
carries with him from his house the pain of
the gout, jealousy, or theft by his man, hav-
ing his whole soul possessed with anger, it is
not to be doubted but that his judgment will
202 MONTAIGNE
be warped in that direction. That venerable
senate of the Areopagus was wont to hear and
determine by night, for fear lest the sight of
the parties might corrupt their justice. The
very air itself and the serenity of heaven will
cause some mutation in us, according to the
Greek verses rendered in Cicero:
**Such are the minds of men, as Father
Jupiter himself has shed light on the earth
with his growing luminary."
'Tis not only fevers, debauches, and great
accidents that overthrow our judgment; the
least things in the world will do it; and we
are not to doubt, though we are not sensible
of it, but that if a continued fever can over-
whelm the soul, a tertian will in some propor-
tionate measure alter it; if an apoplexy can
stupefy and totally extinguish the sight of
our xmderstanding, we are not to doubt but
that a great cold will dazzle it; and conse-
quently there is hardly a single hour in a
man's life wherein our judgment is in its due
place and right condition, our bodies being
subject to so many continual changes, and
replete with so many several sorts of springs,
MONTAIGNE 203
that I believe what the physicians say, how
hard it is but that there will not be always
some one or other out of order.
As to what remains, this malady does not
very easily discover itself, unless it be ex-
treme and past remedy; forasmuch as reason
goes always lame and halting, and that as
well with falsehood as with truth; and there-
fore 'tis hard to discover her deviations and
mistakes. I always call that appearance of
meditation which every one forges in him-
self, reason: this reason, of the condition of
which there may be a hundred contrary ones
about the same subject, is an instrument of
lead and wax, ductile, pliable, and accom-
modable to all sorts of biases and to all
measures, so that nothing remains but the
knowledge how to turn and mould it. How
uprightly soever a judge may resolve to act,
if he do not well look to himself, which few
care to do, his inclination to friendship, to
relationship, to beauty, or revenge, and not
only things of that weight, but even the for-
tuitous instinct that makes us favor one thing
more than another, and that, without the
reason's leave, puts the choice upon us in
204 MONTAIGNE
two equal subjects, or some other shadowy
futility may insensibly insinuate into his
judgment the recommendation or disfavor
of a cause, and make the balance dip.
I, who watch myself as narrowly as I can,
and who have my eyes continually bent upon
myself, like one that has no great business
elsewhere to do:
** Alone secure, whatever king be dreaded
in the frozen North, or what affrights Tiri-
dates,"
dare hardly tell the vanity and weakness I
find in myself; my foot is so unstable and
stands so slippery, I find it so apt to totter
and reel, and my sight so disordered, that
fasting I am quite another man than when
full; if health and a fair day smile upon me,
I am a very good fellow; if a com trouble my
toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inacces-
sible. The same pace of a horse seems to me
one while hard and another easy; the same
way, one while shorter and another while
longer; the same form, one while more and
another while less taking. Now I am for
doing everything, and then for doing nothing
MONTAIGNE 205
at all; what pleases me now would be a
trouble to me at another time. I have a
thousand senseless and casual humors within
myself; either I am possessed by melancholy,
or swayed by choler; and, by its own private
authority, now sadness predominates in me,
and now cheerfulness. When I take books, I
have discovered admirable graces in such and
such passages, and such as have struck my
soul: let me light upon them at another time,
I may turn and toss, tumble and rattle the
leaves to much purpose; 'tis then to me a
shapeless and incongruous mass. Even in my
own writings, I do not always find the air of
my first fancy: I know not what I meant to
say; and am often put to it to correct and
pimip for a new sense, because I have lost the
first, that was better. I do nothing but go
and come: my judgment does not always ad-
vance; it floats and wanders:
"Like a small bark surprised upon the
great sea, when the winds ruffle it."
Very often, as I am apt to do, having for sport
and exercise imdertaken to maintain an
opinion contrary to my own, my mind bend-
206 MONTAIGNE
ing and applying itself that way, so strongly
engages me there, that I no longer discern
the reason of my former belief, and forsake
it. I am, as it were, drawn on to the side to
which I lean, be it what it will, and carried
away by my own weight.
Every one would almost say the same of
himself, if he considered himself as I do;
preachers very well know that the emotions
which steal npon them in speaking animate
them towards belief; and in a passion we are
more stiff in the defence of our proposition,
receive a deeper impression of it and em-
brace it with greater vehemence and appro-
bation, than we do in our colder and more
temperate senses. You give your counsel a
simple brief of your cause; he returns you a
dubious and uncertain answer: you feel that
he is indifferent which side he takes: have
you fee'd him well that he may consider it
the better? does he begin to be really con-
cerned? and do you find him truly interested
and zealous in your quarrel? His reason and
learning wUl by degrees grow hot in your
cause; a manifest and undoubted truth pre-
MONTAIGNE 207
sents itself to his understanding; he discovers
an altogether new light in your business, and
does in good earnest believe and persuade
himself that it is so. Nay, I do not know
whether the ardor that springs from spite and
obstinacy, against the power and violence of
the magistrate and danger, or the interest of
reputation, may not have made some men,
even to the stake, maintain the opinion for
which, at liberty and amongst friends, he
would not have burned the tip of his finger.
The shocks and jostles that the soul receives
from the passions of the body can do much in
it, but its own can do a great deal more; to
the which it is so subjected that, per ad ven-
ture, it may be established that it has no
other pace and motion but from the breath of
those winds, without the agitation of which it
would be becalmed and without action, like
a ship in the open sea, to which the winds
have denied their assistance: and whoever
should maintain this, siding with the Peri-
patetics, would do us no great wrong, seeing
it is very well known that most of the finest
actions of the soul proceed from and stand
in need of this impulse of the passions; valor.
208 MONTAIGNE
they say, cannot be perfect without the as-
sistance of anger:
**Ajax was always brave, but bravest when
in frenzy,**
neither do we encounter the wicked and the
enemy vigorously enough if we be not angry;
nay, the advocate has to inspire the judges
with anger to obtain justice.
Strong desires moved Themistocles, moved
Demosthenes, and have pushed on the philo-
sophers to work, watching, and pilgrimages;
they lead us to honor, learning, health, all
very useful ends: and this weakness of the
soul in suffering anxiety and trouble serves
to breed in the conscience penitence and re-
pentance, and to make us see in the scourge
of God and political troubles the chastisement
of our offences. Compassion is a spur to
clemency; and prudence to preserve and
govern ourselves is aroused by our fear; and
how many brave actions have been bom of
ambition? how many by presumption? In a
word, there is no eminent and sprightly virtue
without some irregular agitation. Should not
this be one of the reasons that moved the
MONTAIGNE 209
Epicureans to discharge God from all care
and solicitude of our affairs, because even
the effects of His goodness could not be ex-
ercised in our behalf, without disturbing His
repose, by the means of passions, which are
so many spurs and instruments pricking on
the soul to virtuous actions? or have they
thought otherwise, and taken them for
tempests that shamefully hurry the soul from
her tranquillity?
**As it is understood to be a calm at sea
when there is not the least breath of air
stirring, so the state of the soul is discerned
to be quiet and appeased when there is no
perturbation to move it."
What varieties of sense and reason, what
contrarieties of imaginations, do the diversi-
ties of our passions present to us? What as*
surance, then, can we take of a thing so
mobile and unstable, subject, by its condi-
tions, to the dominion of trouble, and never
going other than a forced and borrowed pace?
If our judgment be in the power even of sick-
ness and perturbation; if it be from craze
and temerity that it has to receive the im-
210 MONTAIGNE
pression of things, what security can we ex-
pect from it!
Is it not a great boldness in philosophy to
believe that men perform the greatest actions,
those nearest approaching the divinity, when
they are furious, mad, and beside themselves!
we are to better ourselves by the deadening
and privation of our reason; the two natural
ways to enter into the cabinet of the gods,
and there to foresee the course of destiny,
are fury and sleep: this is pleasant to con-
sider; by the dislocation that passions cause
in our reason, we become virtuous; by its ex-
tirpation, occasioned by fury, or the image
of death, we become diviners and prophets.
I was never so willing to believe philosophy
in anything as in this. *Tis a pure enthusiasm
wherewith sacred truth has inspired the spirit
of philosophy, which makes it confess, con-
trary to its own proposition, that the most
calm, composed, and healthful estate of the
soul that philosophy can seat it in, is not its
best condition: our wisdom is less wise than
folly: our dreams are worth more than our
meditation: the worst place we can take is
in ourselves. But does not philosophy think
MONTAIGNE 211
that we are wise enough to remark that the
voice that the spirit utters, when dismissed
from man, so clear-sighted, so grand, so per-
fect, and, whilst it is in man, so terrestrial,
ignorant, and obscure, is a voice proceeding
from the spirit which is in obscure, terres-
trial, and ignorant man, and, for this reason,
a voice not to be trusted and believed?
I have no great experience of these
vehement agitations, being of a soft and
heavy complexion, the most of which surprise
the soul on a sudden, without giving it leisure
to recollect itself: but the passion that is
said to be produced by idleness in the hearts
of young men, though it proceed leisurely
and with a measured progress, evidently
manifests to those who have tried to oppose
its power, the violence our judgment suffers
in the alteration and conversion. I have for-
merly attempted to withstand and repel it;
for I am so far from being one of those who
invite vices, that I do not so much as follow
them, if they do not haul me along: I per-
ceived it to spring, grow, and increase in
despite of my resistance, and at last, living
and seeing as I was, wholly to seize and pos-
212 MONTAIGNE
sess me, so that, as if newly roused from
drunkenness, the images of things began to
appear to me quite other than they were
wont to be; I evidently saw the person I de-
sired, grow and increase in advantages of
beauty, and to expand and develop fairer by
the influence of my imagination; the diflScul-
ties of my pursuit to grow more easy and
smooth; and both my reason and conscience
to be laid aside; but, this fire being evapor-
ated, in an instant, as from a flash of light-