Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 044

of truth. For this our good St. Louis was in the right, who, when the
Tartar king, who was become Christian, designed to come to Lyons to kiss
the Pope’s feet, and there to be an eye-witness of the sanctity he hoped
to find in our manner, immediately diverted him from his purpose; for
fear lest our disorderly way of living should, on the contrary, put
him out of conceit with so holy a belief! And yet it happened quite
otherwise since to that other, who, going to Rome, to the same end, and
there seeing the dissoluteness of the prelates and people of that time,
settled himself so much the more firmly in our religion, considering
how great the force and divinity of it must necessarily be that could
maintain its dignity and splendour among so much corruption, and in so
vicious hands. If we had but one single grain of faith, we should remove
mountains from their places, saith the sacred Word; our actions, that
would then be directed and accompanied by the divinity, would not be
merely human, they would have in them something of miraculous, as well
as our belief: _Brevis est institutio vitæ honestæ beauæque, si
credos._ “Believe, and the way to happiness and virtue is a short one.”
Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not;
others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not
being able to penetrate into what it is to believe. We think it strange
if, in the civil war which, at this time, disorders our state, we see
events float and vary aller a common and ordinary manner; which is
because we bring nothing to it but our own. Justice, which is in one
party, is only there for ornament and palliation; it, is, indeed,
pretended, but ‘tis not there received, settled and espoused: it is
there, as in the mouth of an advocate, not as in the heart and affection
of the party. God owes his extraordinary assistance to faith and
religion; not to our passions. Men there are the conductors, and therein
serve themselves with religion, whereas it ought to be quite contrary.
Observe, if it be not by our own hands that we guide and train it, and
draw it like wax into so many contrary figures, from a rule in itself so
direct and firm. When and where was this more manifest than in France in
our days? They who have taken it on the left hand, they who have taken
it on the right; they who call it black, they who call it white, alike
employ it to their violent and ambitious designs, conduct it with
a progress, so conform in riot and injustice that they render the
diversity they pretended in their opinions, in a thing whereon the
conduct and rule of our life depends, doubtful and hard to believe. Did
one ever see, come from the same school and discipline, manners more
united, and more the same? Do but observe with what horrid impudence
we toss divine arguments to and fro, and how irreligiously we have both
rejected and retaken them, accord--as fortune has shifted our places in
these intestine storms.
This so solemn proposition, “Whether it be lawful for a subject to rebel
and take up arms against his prince for the defence of his religion,” do
you remember in whose mouths, the last year, the affirmative of it
was the prop of one party, and the negative the pillar of another? And
hearken now from what quarter comes the voice and instruction of the
one and the other, and if arms make less noise and rattle for this cause
than for that. We condemn those to the fire who say that truth must be
made to bear the yoke of our necessity; and how much worse does France
than say it? Let us confess the truth; whoever should draw out from the
army, even that raised by the king, those who take up arms out of pure
zeal to religion, and also those who only do it to protect the laws of
their country, or for the service of their prince, could hardly, out
of both these put together, make one complete company of gens-d’armes.
Whence does this proceed, that there are so few to be found who have
maintained the same will and the same progress in our civil commotions,
and that we see them one while move but a foot-pace, and another run
full speed? and the same men one while damage our affairs by their
violent heat and fierceness, and another by their coldness, gentleness,
and slowness; but that they are pushed on by particular and casual
considerations, according to the variety wherein they move?
I evidently perceive that we do not willingly afford devotion any other
offices but those that least suit with our own passions.
There hostility so admirable as the Christian. Our zeal performs
wonders, when it seconds our inclinations to hatred, cruelty, ambition,
avarice, detraction, and rebellion: but when it moves, against the hair,
towards bounty, benignity, and temperance, unless, by miracle, some
rare and virtuous disposition prompts us to it, we stir neither hand nor
toot. Our religion is intended to extirpate vices, whereas it screens,
nourishes, and incites them. We must not mock God. If we believed in
him, I do not say by faith, but with a simple belief, that is to say
(and I speak it to our great shame) if we believed in him and recognised
him as we do any other history, or as we would do one of our companions,
we should love him above all other things for the infinite bounty and
beauty that shines in him;--at least, he would go equal in our affection
with riches, pleasure, glory, and our friends. The best of us is not so
much afraid to outrage him as he is afraid to injure his neighbour, his
kinsman, or his master. Is there any understanding so weak that, having
on one side the object of one of our vicious pleasures, and on the other
(in equal knowledge and persuasion) the state of an immortal glory,
would change the first for the other? and yet we often renounce this out
of mere contempt: for what lust tempts us to blaspheme, if not, perhaps,
the very desire to offend. The philosopher Antisthenes, as he was being
initiated in the mysteries of Orpheus, the priest telling him, “That
those who professed themselves of that religion were certain to receive
perfect and eternal felicity after death,”--“If thou believest that,”
answered he, “why dost thou not die thyself?” Diogenes, more rudely,
according to his manner, and more remote from our purpose, to the priest
that in like manner preached to him, “To become of his religion, that he
might obtain the happiness of the other world;--“What!” said he, “thou
wouldest have me to believe that Agesilaus and Epaminondas, who were so
great men, shall be miserable, and that thou, who art but a calf, and
canst do nothing to purpose, shalt be happy, because thou art a priest?”
Did we receive these great promises of eternal beatitude with the same
reverence and respect that we do a philosophical discourse, we should
not have death in so great horror:

Non jam se moriens dissolvi conqurreretur;
Sed magis ire foras, stemque relinquere ut angais,
Gauderet, prealonga senex aut cornua cervus.
“We should not on a death bed grieve to be
Dissolved, but rather launch out cheerfully
From our old hut, and with the snake, be glad
To cast off the corrupted slough we had;
Or with th’ old stag rejoice to be now clear
From the large horns, too ponderous grown to bear.”

“I desire to be dissolved,” we should say, “and to be with Jesus Christ”
The force of Plato’s arguments concerning the immortality of the soul
set some of his disciples to seek a premature grave, that they might the
sooner enjoy the things he had made them hope for.
All this is a most evident sign that we only receive our religion
after our own fashion, by our own hands, and no otherwise than as other
religions are received. Either we are happened in the country where it
is in practice, or we reverence the antiquity of it, or the authority
of the men who have maintained it, or fear the menaces it fulminates
against misbelievers, or are allured by its promises. These
considerations ought, ‘tis true, to be applied to our belief but as
subsidiaries only, for they are human obligations. Another religion,
other witnesses, the like promises and threats, might, by the same way,
imprint a quite contrary belief. We are Christians by the same title
that we are Perigordians or Germans. And what Plato says, “That there
are few men so obstinate in their atheism whom a pressing danger will
not reduce to an acknowledgment of the divine power,” does not concern
a true Christian: ‘tis for mortal and human religions to be received by
human recommendation. What kind of faith can that be that cowardice and
want of courage establish in us? A pleasant faith, that does not believe
what it believes but for want of courage to disbelieve it! Can a vicious
passion, such as inconstancy and astonishment, cause any regular product
in our souls? “They are confident in their judgment,” says he, “that
what is said of hell and future torments is all feigned: but an occasion
of making the expedient presenting itself, when old age or diseases
bring them to the brink of the grave, the terror of death, by the horror
of that future condition, inspires them with a new belief!” And by
reason that such impressions render them timorous, he forbids in his
_Laws_ all such threatening doctrines, and all persuasion that anything
of ill can befall a man from the gods, excepting for his great good when
they happen to him, and for a medicinal effect. They say of Bion that,
infected with the atheism of Theodoras, he had long had religious men in
great scorn and contempt, but that death surprising him, he gave
himself up to the most extreme superstition; as if the gods withdrew and
returned according to the necessities of Bion. Plato and these examples
would conclude that we are brought to a belief of God either by reason
or by force. Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous,
difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how
arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to
be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly
to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have,
nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. Yet
will they not fail to lift up their hands towards heaven if you give
them a good thrust with a sword in the breast, and when fear or sickness
has abated and dulled the licentious fury of this giddy humour they will
easily re-unite, and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled
to the public faith and examples. A doctrine seriously digested is one
thing, and those superficial impressions another; which springing from
the disorder of an unhinged understanding, float at random and great
uncertainty in the fancy. Miserable and senseless men, who strive to be
worse than they can!
The error of paganism and the ignorance of our sacred truth, let this
great soul of Plato, but great only in human greatness, fall also into
this other mistake, “That children and old men were most susceptible of
religion,” as if it sprung and derived its credit from our weakness.
The knot that ought to bind the judgment and the will, that ought to
restrain the soul and join it to our creator, should be a knot that
derives its foldings and strength not from our considerations, from our
reasons and passions, but from a divine and supernatural constraint,
having but one form, one face, and one lustre, which is the authority
of God and his divine grace. Now the heart and soul being governed and
commanded by faith, ‘tis but reason that they should muster all our
other faculties, according as they are able to perform to the service
and assistance of their design. Neither is it to be imagined that all
this machine has not some marks imprinted upon it by the hand of the
mighty architect, and that there is not in the things of this world
some image that in some measure resembles the workman who has built and
formed them. He has, in his stupendous works, left the character of his
divinity, and ‘tis our own weakness only that hinders us from discerning
it. ‘Tis what he himself is pleased to tell us, “That he manifests his
invisible operations to us by those that are visible.” Sebond applied
himself to this laudable and noble study, and demonstrates to us that
there is not any part or member of the world that disclaims or derogates
from its maker. It were to do wrong to the divine goodness, did not the
universe consent to our belief. The heavens, the earth, the elements,
our bodies and our souls,--all things concur to this; we have but to
find out the way to use them; they instruct us, if we are capable
of instruction. For this world is a sacred temple, into which man is
introduced, there to contemplate statues, not the works of a mortal
hand, but such as the divine purpose has made the objects of sense; the
sun, the stars, the water, and the earth, to represent those that are
intelligible to us. “The invisible tilings of God,” says St. Paul,
“appear by the creation of the world, his eternal wisdom and divinity
being considered by his works.”

And God himself envies not men the grace
Of seeing and admiring heaven’s face;
But, rolling it about, he still anew
Presents its varied splendour to our view,
And on oar minds himself inculcates, so
That we th’ Almighty mover well may know:
Instructing us by seeing him the cause
Of ill, to revcreoce and obey his laws.”

Now our prayers and human discourses are but as sterile and undigested
matter. The grace of God is the form; ‘tis that which gives fashion and
value to it. As the virtuous actions of Socrates and Cato remain vain
and fruitless, for not having had the love and obedience to the true
creator of all things, so is it with our imaginations and discourses;
they have a kind of body, but it is an inform mass, without fashion and
without light, if faith and grace be not added thereto. Faith coming to
tinct and illustrate Sehond’s arguments renders them firm and stolid;
and to that degree that they are capable of serving for directions, and
of being the first guides to an elementary Christian to put him into the
way of this knowledge. They in some measure form him to, and render him
capable of, the grace of God, by which means he afterwards completes and
perfects himself in the true belief. I know a man of authority, bred up
to letters, who has confessed to me to have been brought back from the
errors of unbelief by Sebond’s arguments. And should they be stripped of
this ornament, and of the assistance and approbation of the faith,
and be looked upon as mere fancies only, to contend with those who are
precipitated into the dreadful and horrible darkness of irréligion, they
will even there find them as solid and firm as any others of the same
quality that can be opposed against them; so that we shall be ready to
say to our opponents:

Si melius quid habes, arcesse; vel imperium fer:
“If you have arguments more fit.
Produce them, or to these submit.”

let them admit the force of our reasons, or let them show us others,
and upon some other subject, better woven and of finer thread. I am,
unawares, half engaged in the second objection, to which I proposed to
make answer in the behalf of Sebond. Some say that his arguments are
weak, and unable to make good what he intends, and undertake with great
ease to confute them. These are to be a little more roughly handled, for
they are more dangerous and malicious than the first Men willingly wrest
the sayings of others to favour their own prejudicate opinions. To an
atheist all writings tend to atheisïm: he corrupts the most innocent
matter with his own venom. These have their judgments so prepossessed
that they cannot relish Sebond’s reasons. As to the rest, they think we
give them very fair play in putting them into the liberty of combatting
our religion with weapons merely human, whom, in her majesty, full of
authority and command, they durst not attack. The means that I shall
use, and that I think most proper to subdue this frenzy, is to crush and
spurn under foot pride and human arrogance; to make them sensible of
the inanity, vanity, and vileness of man; to wrest the wretched arms
of their reason out of their hands; to make them bow down and bite the
ground under the authority and reverence of the Divine Majesty. ‘Tis to
that alone that knowledge and wisdom appertain; that alone that can make
a true estimate of itself, and from which we purloin whatever we value
ourselves upon: [--Greek--] “God permits not any being but himself to be
truly wise.” Let us subdue this presumption, the first foundation of the
tyranny of the evil spirit _Deus superbis re-sistit, humilibus autem
dal gratiam._ “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
“Understanding is in the gods,” says Plato, “and not at all, or very
little, in men.” Now it is in the mean time a great consolation to a
Christian man to see our frail and mortal parts so fitly suited to our
holy and divine faith that, when we employ them to the subjects of their
own mortal and frail nature they are not even there more unitedly or
more firmly adjusted. Let us see, then, if man has in his power other
more forcible and convincing reasons than those of Sebond; that is to
say, if it be in him to arrive at any certainty by argument and reason.
For St. Augustin, disputing against these people, has good cause to
reproach them with injustice, “In that they maintain the part of our
belief to be false that our reason cannot establish.” And to show that
a great many things may be, and have been, of which our nature could
not sound the reason and causes, he proposes to them certain known and
undoubted experiments, wherein men confess they see nothing; and this he
does, as all other things, with a curious and ingenious inquisition.
We must do more than this, and make them know that, to convince the
weakness of their reason, there is no necessity of culling out uncommon
examples: and that it is so defective and so blind that there is no
faculty clear enough for it; that to it the easy and the hard are all
one; that all subjects equally, and nature in general, disclaim its
authority and reject its mediation.
What does truth mean when she preaches to us to fly worldly philosophy,
when she so often inculcates to us, “That our wisdom is but folly in the
sight of God: that the vainest of all vanities is man: that the man who
presumes upon his wisdom does not yet know what wisdom is; and that man,
who is nothing, if he thinks himself to be anything, does seduce and
deceive himself.” These sentences of the Holy Spirit do so clearly and
vividly express that which I would maintain that I should need no other
proof against men who would with all humility and obedience submit to
his authority: but these will be whipped at their own expense, and will
not suffer a man to oppose their reason but by itself.
Let us then, for once, consider a man alone, without foreign assistance,
armed only with his own proper arms, and unfurnished of the divine grace
and wisdom, which is all his honour, strength, and the foundation of his
being. Let us see how he stands in this fine equipage. Let him make me
understand, by the force of his reason, upon what foundations he has
built those great advantages he thinks he has over other creatures. Who
has made him believe that this admirable motion of the celestial arch,
the eternal light of those luminaries that roll so high over his head,
the wondrous and fearful motions of that infinite ocean, should be
established and continue so many ages for his service and convenience?
Can any thing be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and
wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject
to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of
the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less
to command the whole? And the privilege which he attributes to himself
of being the only creature in this vast fabric who has the understanding
to discover the beauty and the paris of it; the only one who can
return thanks to the architect, and keep account of the revenues and
disbursements of the world; who, I wonder, sealed him this patent? Let
us see his commission for this great employment Was it granted in favour
of the wise only? Few people will be concerned in it. Are fools and
wicked persons worthy so extraordinary a favour, and, being the worst
part of the world, to be preferred before the rest? Shall we believe
this man?--“For whose sake shall we, therefore, conclude that the world
was made? For theirs who have the use of reason: these are gods and men,
than whom certainly nothing can be better:” we can never sufficiently
decry the impudence of this conjunction. But, wretched creature,
what has he in himself worthy of such an advantage? Considering the
incorruptible existence of the celestial bodies; beauty; magnitude, and
continual revolution by so exact a rule;

Cum suspicimus mæni cælestia mundi
Templa super, stellisque micantibus arthera fiium,
El venit in mcntem lunæ solisque viarurn.
“When we the heavenly arch above behold.
And the vast sky adorned with stars of gold.
And mark the r’eglar course? that the sun
And moon in their alternate progress run.”

considering the dominion and influence those bodies have, not only over
our lives and fortunes;

Facta etenim et vitas hominum suspendit ab aatris;
“Men’s lives and actions on the stars depend.”

but even over our inclinations, our thoughts and wills, which they
govern, incite and agitate at the mercy of their influences, as our
reason teaches us;

“Contemplating the stars he finds that they
Rule by a secret and a silent sway;
And that the enamell’d spheres which roll above
Do ever by alternate causes move.
And, studying these, he can also foresee,
By certain signs, the turns of destiny;”

seeing that not only a man, not only kings, but that monarchies,
empires, and all this lower world follow the influence of the celestial
motions,

“How great a change a little motion brings!
So great this kingdom is that governs kings:”

if our virtue, our vices, our knowledge, and this very discourse we are
upon of the power of the stars, and the comparison we are making betwixt
them and us, proceed, as our reason supposes, from their favour;

“One mad in love may cross the raging main,
To level lofty Ilium with the plain;
Another’s fate inclines him more by far
To study laws and statutes for the bar.
Sons kill their father, fathers kill their sons,
And one arm’d brother ‘gainst another runs..
This war’s not their’s, but fate’s, that spurs them on
To shed the blood which, shed, they must bemoan;
And I ascribe it to the will of fate
That on this theme I now expatiate:”

if we derive this little portion of reason we have from the bounty of
heaven, how is it possible that reason should ever make us equal to it?
How subject its essence and condition to our knowledge? Whatever we see
in those bodies astonishes us: _Quæ molitio, qua ferramenta, qui vectes,
quæ machina, qui ministri tanti operis fuerunt?_ “What contrivance, what
tools, what materials, what engines, were employed about so stupendous
a work?” Why do we deprive them of soul, of life, and discourse? Have we
discovered in them any immoveable or insensible stupidity, we who
have no commerce with them but by obedience? Shall we say that we have
discovered in no other creature but man the use of a reasonable soul?
What! have we seen any thing like the sun? Does he cease to be, because
we have seen nothing like him? And do his motions cease, because there
are no other like them? If what we have not seen is not, our knowledge
is marvellously contracted: _Quæ sunt tantæ animi angustiæ!_ “How narrow
are our understandings!” Are they not dreams of human vanity, to make
the moon a celestial earth? there to fancy mountains and vales, as
Anaxagoras did? there to fix habitations and human abodes, and plant
colonies for our convenience, as Plato and Plutarch have done? And of
our earth to make a luminous and resplendent star? “Amongst the
other inconveniences of mortality this is one, that darkness of the
understanding which leads men astray, not so much from a necessity of
erring, but from a love of error. The corruptible body stupifies
the soul, and the earthly habitation dulls the faculties of the
imagination.”
Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most wretched and
frail of all creatures is man, and withal the proudest. He feels and
sees himself lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and
rivetted to the worst and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest
story of the house, the most remote from the heavenly arch, with animals
of the worst condition of the three; and yet in his imagination will be
placing himself above the circle of the moon, and bringing the heavens
under his feet. ‘Tis by the same vanity of imagination that he equals
himself to God, attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and
separates himself from the the crowd of other creatures, cuts out the
shares of the animals, his fellows and companions, and distributes to
them portions of faculties and force, as himself thinks fit How does
he know, by the strength of his understanding, the secret and internal
motions of animals?--from what comparison betwixt them and us does he
conclude the stupidity he attributes to them? When I play with my cat
who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We
mutually divert one another with our play. If I have my hour to begin
or to refusç, she also has hers. Plato, in his picture of the golden age
under Saturn, reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had,
his communication with beasts, of whom, inquiring and informing himself,
he knew the true qualities and differences of them all, by which he
acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his life
more happily than we could do. Need we a better proof to condemn human
impudence in the concern of beasts? This great author was of opinion
that nature, for the most part in the corporal form she gave them, had
only regard to the use of prognostics that were derived thence in his
time. The defect that hinders communication betwixt them and us, why may
it not be in our part as well as theirs? ‘Tis yet to determine where the
fault lies that we understand not one another,--for we understand them
no more than they do us; and by the same reason they may think us to be
beasts as we think them. ‘Tis no great wonder if we understand not them,
when we do not understand a Basque or a Troglodyte. And yet some have
boasted that they understood them, as Apollonius Tyanaus, Melampus,
Tiresias, Thales, and others. And seeing, as cusmographers report, that
there are nations that have a dog for their king, they must of necessity
be able to interpret his voice and motions. We must observe the parity
betwixt us, have some tolerable apprehension of their meaning, and so
have beasts of ours,--much about the same. They caress us, threaten us,
and beg of us, and we do the same to them.
As to the rest, we manifestly discover that they have a full and
absolute communication amongst themselves, and that they perfectly
understand one another, not only those of the same, but of divers kinds:

“The tamer herds, and wilder sort of brutes.
Though we of higher race conclude them mutes.
Yet utter dissonant and various notes,
From gentler lungs or more distended throats,
As fear, or grief, or anger, do them move,
Or as they do approach the joys of love.”

In one kind of barking of a dog the horse knows there is anger, of
another sort of bark he is not afraid. Even in the very beasts that
have no voice at all, we easily conclude, from the society of offices
we observe amongst them, some other sort of communication: their very
motions discover it:

“As infants who, for want of words, devise