Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 053
Total number of words is 4811
Total number of unique words is 1523
37.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words
55.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words
63.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
approbation we allow them giving them wherewith to draw us to the right
and left, and to whirl us about at their pleasure. Whatever springs from
these presuppositions is our master and our God; he will take the level
of his foundations so ample and so easy that by them he may mount us
up to the clouds, if he so please. In this practice and negotiation
of science we have taken the saying of Pythagoras, “That every expert
person ought to be believed in his own art” for current pay. The
logician refers the signification of words to the grammarians; the
rhetorician borrows the state of arguments from the logician; the poet
his measure from the musician: the geometrician his proportions from
the arithmetician, and the metaphysicians take physical conjectures for
their foundations; for every science has its principle presupposed, by
which human judgment is everywhere kept in check. If you come to rush
against the bar where the principal error lies, they have presently this
sentence in their mouths, “That there is no disputing with persons who
deny principles.” Now men can have no principles if not revealed to them
by the divinity; of all the rest the beginning, the middle, and the
end, is nothing but dream and vapour. To those that contend upon
presupposition we must, on the contrary, presuppose to them the same
axiom upon which the dispute is. For every human presupposition and
declaration has as much authority one as another, if reason do not make
the difference. Wherefore they are all to be put into the balance, and
first the generals and those that tyrannize over us. The persuasion of
certainty is a certain testimony of folly and extreme incertainty;
and there are not a more foolish sort of men, nor that are less
philosophers, than the Philodoxes of Plato; we must inquire whether fire
be hot? whether snow be white? if there be any such things as hard or
soft within our knowledge?
And as to those answers of which they make old stories, as he that
doubted if there was any such thing as heat, whom they bid throw himself
into the fire; and he that denied the coldness of ice, whom they bid
to put ice into his bosom;--they are pitiful things, unworthy of the
profession of philosophy. If they had let us alone in our natural
being, to receive the appearance of things without us, according as they
present themselves to us by our senses, and had permitted us to follow
our own natural appetites, governed by the condition of our birth, they
might then have reason to talk at that rate; but ‘tis from them we have
learned to make ourselves judges of the world; ‘tis from them that we
derive this fancy, “That human reason is controller-general of all that
is without and within the roof of heaven; that comprehends every thing,
that can do every thing; by the means of which every thing is known and
understood.” This answer would be good among the cannibals, who enjoy
the happiness of a long, quiet, and peaceable life, without Aristotle’s
precepts, and without the knowledge of the name of physics; this answer
would perhaps be of more value and greater force than all those they
borrow from their reason and invention; of this all animals, and all
where the power of the law of nature is yet pure and simple, would be
as capable as we, but as for them they have renounced it. They need not
tell us, “It is true, for you see and feel it to be so;” they must tell
me whether I really feel what I think I do; and if I do feel it, they
must then tell me why I feel it, and how, and what; let them tell me the
name, original, the parts and junctures of heat and cold, the qualities
of the agent and patient; or let them give up their profession, which is
not to admit or approve of any thing but by the way of reason; that is
their test in all sorts of essays; but, certainly, ‘tis a test full of
falsity, error, weakness, and defect.
Which way can we better prove it than by itself? If we are not to
believe her when speaking of herself, she can hardly be thought fit to
judge of foreign things; if she know any thing, it must at least be her
own being and abode; she is in the soul, and either a part or an effect
of it; for true and essential reason, from which we by a false colour
borrow the name, is lodged in the bosom of the Almighty; there is her
habitation and recess; ‘tis thence that she imparts her rays, when God
is pleased to impart any beam of it to mankind, as Balias issued from
her father’s head, to communicate herself to the world.
Now let us see what human reason tells us of herself and of the soul,
not of the soul in general, of which almost all philosophy makes the
celestial and first bodies participants; nor of that which Thales
attributed to things which themselves are reputed inanimate, lead
thereto by the consideration of the loadstone; but of that which
appertains to us, and that we ought the best to know:--
Ignoratur enim, quæ sit natura animai;
Nata sit; an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur;
Et simnl intereat nobiscum morte dirempta;
An tenebras Orci visat, vastasque lacunas,
An pecudes alias divinitns insinuet se.
“For none the nature of the soul doth know,
Whether that it be born with us, or no;
Or be infused into us at our birth,
And dies with us when we return to earth,
Or then descends to the black shades below,
Or into other animals does go.”
Crates and Dicæarchus were of opinion that there was no soul at all,
but that the body thus stirs by a natural motion; Plato, that it was a
substance moving of itself; Thales, a nature without repose; Aedepiades,
an exercising of the senses; Hesiod and Anaximander, a thing composed of
earth and water; Parmenides, of earth and fire; Empedocles, of blood:--
Sanguineam vomit ille animam;
“He vomits up his bloody soul.”
Posidonius, Cleanthes, and Galen, that it was heat or a hot complexion--
Igneus est ollis vigor, et colestis origo;
“Their vigour of fire and of heavenly race.”
Hippocrates, a spirit diffused all over the body; Varro, that it was an
air received at the mouth, heated in the lungs, moistened in the heart,
and diffused throughout the whole body; Zeno, the quintessence of the
four elements; Heraclides Ponticus, that it was the light; Zenocrates
and the Egyptians, a mobile number; the Chaldeans, a virtue without any
determinate form:--
Habitum quemdam vitalem corporis esse,
Harmoniam Græci quam dicunt.
“A certain vital habit in man’s frame,
Which harmony the Grecian sages name.”
Let us not forget Aristotle, who held the soul to be that which
naturally causes the body to move, which he calls entelechia, with
as cold an invention as any of the rest; for he neither speaks of the
essence, nor of the original, nor of the nature of the soul, but
only takes notice of the effect Lactantius, Seneca, and most of the
Dogmatists, have confessed that it was a thing they did not understand;
after all this enumeration of opinions, _Harum sententiarum quo vera
sit, Deus aliquis viderit:_ “Of these opinions which is the true, let
some god determine,” says Cicero. “I know by myself,” says St Bernard,
“how incomprehensible God is, seeing I cannot comprehend the parts of my
own being.”
Heraclitus, who was of opinion that every being was full of souls and
demons, did nevertheless maintain that no one could advance so far
towards the knowledge of the soul as ever to arrive at it; so profound
was the essence of it.
Neither is there less controversy and debate about seating of it.
Hippocrates and Hierophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain;
Democritus and Aristotle throughout the whole body;--
Ut bona sæpe valetudo cum dicitur esse
Corporis, et non est tamen hæc pars ulla ralentis;
“As when the body’s health they do it call,
When of a sound man, that’s no part at all.”
Epicurus in the stomach;
Hic exsultat enim pavor ac metus;
Hæc loca circum Lætitiæ mulcent.
“For this the seat of horror is and fear,
And joys in turn do likewise triumph here.”
The Stoics, about and within the heart; Erasistratus, adjoining the
membrane of the epicranium; Empedocles, in the blood; as also Moses,
which was the reason why he interdicted eating the blood of beasts,
because the soul is there seated; Galen thought that every part of the
body had its soul; Strato has placed it betwixt the eyebrows; _Quâ facie
quidem sit animus, aut ubi habitet, ne quorendum quidem est:_ “What
figure the soul is of, or what part it inhabits, is not to be inquired
into,” says Cicero. I very willingly deliver this author to you in his
own words; for should I alter eloquence itself? Besides, it were but a
poor prize to steal the matter of his inventions; they are neither
very frequent, nor of any great weight, and sufficiently known. But the
reason why Chrysippus argues it to be about the heart, as all the rest
of that sect do, is not to be omitted; “It is,” says he, “because when
we would affirm any things we lay our hand upon our breasts; and when
we would pronounce èyù, which signifies I, we let the lower jaw fall
towards the stomach.” This place ought not to be passed over without
a remark upon the vanity of so great a man; for besides that these
considerations are infinitely light in themselves, the last is only a
proof to the Greeks that they have their souls lodged in that part. No
human judgment is so sprightly and vigilant that it does not sometimes
sleep. Why do we fear to say? The Stoics, the fathers of human prudence,
think that the soul of a man, crushed under a ruin, long labours
and strives to get out, like a mouse caught in a trap, before it can
disengage itself from the burden. Some hold that the world was made to
give bodies, by way of punishment, to the spirits fallen, by their own
fault, from the purity wherein they had been created, the first creation
having been incorporeal; and that, according as they are more or less
depraved from their spirituality, so are they more or less jocundly or
dully incorporated; and that thence proceeds all the variety of so much
created matter. But the spirit that for his punishment was invested
with the body of the sun must certainly have a very rare and particular
measure of change.
The extremities of our perquisition do all fall into astonishment
and blindness; as Plutarch says of the testimony of histories, that,
according to charts and maps, the utmost bounds of known r countries are
taken up with marshes, impenetrable forests, deserts, and uninhabitable
places; this is the reason why the most gross and childish ravings were
most found in those authors who treat of the most elevated subjects, and
proceed the furthest in them, losing themselves in their own curiosity
and presumption. The beginning and end of knowledge are equally foolish;
observe to what a pitch Plato flies in his poetic clouds; do but take
notice there of the gibberish of the gods; but what did he dream of when
he defined a man to be “a two-legged animal without feathers: giving
those who had a mind to deride him a pleasant occasion; for, having
pulled a capon alive, they went about calling it the man of Plato.”
And what did the Epicureans think of, out of what simplicity did they
first imagine that their _atoms_ that they said were bodies having some
weight, and a natural motion downwards, had made the world; till
they were put in mind, by their adversaries, that, according to this
description, it was impossible they should unite and join to one
another, their fall being so direct and perpendicular, and making so
many parallel lines throughout? Wherefore there was a necessity that
they should since add a fortuitous and sideways motion, and that they
should moreover accoutre their atoms with hooked tails, by which they
might unite and cling to one another. And even then do not those that
attack them upon this second consideration put them hardly to it? “If
the atoms have by chance formed so many sorts of figures, why did it
never fall out that they made a house or a shoe? Why at the same rate
should we not believe that an infinite number of Greek letters,
strewed all over a certain place, might fall into the contexture of the
_Iliad?_”--“Whatever is capable of reason,” says Zeno, “is better than
that which is not capable; there is nothing better than the world;
the world is therefore capable of reason.” Cotta, by this way of
argumentation, makes the world a mathematician; ‘and tis also made a
musician and an organist by this other argumentation of Zeno: “The
whole is more than a part; we are capable of wisdom, and are part of the
world; therefore the world is wise.” There are infinite like examples,
not only of arguments that are false in themselves, but silly ones, that
do not hold in themselves, and that accuse their authors not so much
of ignorance as imprudence, in the reproaches the philosophers dash one
another in the teeth withal, upon their dissensions in their sects and
opinions.
Whoever should bundle up a lusty faggot of the fooleries of human wisdom
would produce wonders. I willingly muster up these few for a pattern,
by a certain meaning not less profitable to consider than the most sound
and moderate instructions. Let us judge by these what opinion we are to
have of man, of his sense and reason, when in these great persons that
have raised human knowledge so high, so many gross mistakes and manifest
errors are to be found.
For my part, I am apt to believe that they have treated of knowledge
casually, and like a toy, with both hands; and have contended about
reason as of a vain and frivolous instrument, setting on foot all sorts
of fancies and inventions, sometimes more sinewy, and sometimes weaker.
This same Plato, who defines man as if he were a cock, says elsewhere,
after Socrates, “That he does not, in truth, know what man is, and that
he is a member of the world the hardest to understand.” By this variety
and instability of opinions, they tacitly lead us, as it were by the
hand, to this resolution of their irresolution. They profess not always
to deliver their opinions barefaced and apparent to us; they have one
while disguised them in the fabulous shadows of poetry, and at another
in some other vizor; for our imperfection carries this also along with
it, that crude meat is not always proper for our stomachs; we must dry,
alter, and mix it; they do the same; they sometimes conceal their real
opinions and judgments, and falsify them to accommodate themselves to
the public use. They will not make an open profession of ignorance, and
of the imbecility of human reason, that they may not fright children;
but they sufficiently discover it to us under the appearance of a
troubled and inconstant science.
I advised a person in Italy, who had a great mind to speak Italian, that
provided he only had a desire to make himself understood, without being
ambitious in any other respect to excel, that he should only make use
of the first word that came to the tongue’s end, whether Latin, French,
Spanish, or Gascon, and that, by adding the Italian termination, he
could not fail of hitting upon some idiom of the country, either Tuscan,
Roman, Venetian, Piedmontese, or Neapolitan, and so fall in with some
one of those many forms. I say the same of Philosophy; she has so many
faces, so much variety, and has said so many things, that all our dreams
and ravings are there to be found. Human fancy can conceive nothing
good or bad that is not there: _Nihil tam absurde did potest, quod non
dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum._ “Nothing can be said so absurd, that
has not been said before by some of the philosophers.” And I am the more
willing to expose my whimsies to the public; forasmuch as, though they
are spun out of myself, and without any pattern, I know they will be
found related to some ancient humour, and some will not stick to say,
“See whence he took it!” My manners are natural, I have not called in
the assistance of any discipline to erect them; but, weak as they are,
when it came into my head to lay them open to the world’s view, and that
to expose them to the light in a little more decent garb I went to adorn
them with reasons and examples, it was a wonder to myself accidentally
to find them conformable to so many philosophical discourses and
examples. I never knew what regimen my life was of till it was near
worn out and spent; a new figure--an unpremeditated and accidental
philosopher.
But to return to the soul. Inasmuch as Plato has placed reason in the
brain, anger in the heart, and concupiscence in the liver; ‘tis likely
that it was rather an interpretation of the movements of
the soul, than that he intended a division and separation of it, as of
a body, into several members. And the most likely of their opinions
is that ‘tis always a soul, that by its faculty, reasons, remembers,
comprehends, judges, desires, and exercises all its other operations by
divers instruments of the body; as the pilot guides his ship according
to his experience, one while straining or slacking the cordage, one
while hoisting the mainyard, or removing the rudder, by one and the same
power carrying on several effects; and that it is lodged in the brain;
which appears in that the wounds and accidents that touch that part do
immediately offend the faculties of the soul; and ‘tis not incongruous
that it should thence diffuse itself through the other parts of the body
Medium non deserit unquam
Coeli Phoebus iter; radiis tamen omnia lustrât.
“Phoebus ne’er deviates from the zodiac’s way;
Yet all things doth illustrate with his ray.”
As the sun sheds from heaven its light and influence, and fills the
world with them:--
Cætera pars animas, per totum dissita corpus,
Paret, et ad numen mentis momenque movetur.
“The other part o’ th’ soul diffus’d all o’er
The body, does obey the reason’s lore.”
Some have said that there was a general soul, as it were a great body,
whence all the particular souls were extracted, and thither again
return, always restoring themselves to that universal matter:--
Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque maris, columque profundum;
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas:
Scilicet hue reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia; nec morti esse locum:
“For God goes forth, and spreads throughout the whole
Heaven, earth, and sea, the universal soul;
Each at its birth, from him all beings share,
Both man and brute, the breath of vital air;
To him return, and, loos’d from earthly chain,
Fly whence they sprung, and rest in God again,
Spurn at the grave, and, fearless of decay,
Dwell in high heaven, and star th’ ethereal way.”
Others, that they only rejoined and reunited themselves to it; others,
that they were produced from the divine substance; others, by the angels
of fire and air; others, that they were from all antiquity; and some
that they were created at the very point of time the bodies wanted
them; others make them to descend from the orb of the moon, and return
thither; the generality of the ancients believed that they were begotten
from father to son, after a like manner, and produced with all other
natural things; taking their argument from the likeness of children to
their fathers;
Instillata patris virtus tibi;
Fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;
“Thou hast thy father’s virtues with his blood:
For still the brave spring from the brave and good;”
and that we see descend from fathers to their children not only
bodily marks, but moreover a resemblance of humours, complexions, and
inclinations of the soul:--
Denique cur acris violentia triste leonum
Seminium sequitur? dolus vulpibus, et fuga, cervis
A patribus datur, et patrius pavor incitât artus?
Si non certa suo quia semine seminioque
Vis animi pariter crescit cum corpore toto.
“For why should rage from the fierce lion’s seed,
Or from the subtle fox’s craft, proceed;
Or why the tim’rous and flying hart
His fear and trembling to his race impart;
But that a certain force of mind does grow,
And still increases as the bodies do?”
That thereupon the divine justice is grounded, punishing in the children
the faults of their fathers; forasmuch as the contagion of paternal
vices is in some sort imprinted in the soul of children, and that the
ill government of their will extends to them; moreover, that if souls
had any other derivation than a natural consequence, and that they had
been some other thins out of the body, they would retain some memory
of their first being, the natural faculties that are proper to them of
discoursing, reasoning, and remembering, being considered:--
Si in corpus nascentibus insinuatur,
Cur super anteactam ætatem meminisse nequimus,
Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus?
“For at our birth if it infused be,
Why do we then retain no memory
Of our foregoing life, and why no more
Remember any thing we did before?”
for, to make the condition of our souls such as we would have it to be,
we must suppose them all-knowing, even in their natural simplicity and
purity; by these means they had been such, being free from the prison of
the body, as well before they entered into it, as we hope they shall be
after they are gone out of it; and from this knowledge it should follow
that they should remember, being got in the body, as Plato said, “That
what we learn is no other than a remembrance of what we knew before;” a
thing which every one by experience may maintain to be false. Forasmuch,
in the first place, as that we do not justly remember any thing but
what we have been taught, and that if the memory did purely perform its
office it would at least suggest to us something more than what we have
learned. Secondly, that which she knew being in her purity, was a
true knowledge, knowing things as they are by her divine intelligence;
whereas here we make her receive falsehood and vice when we instruct
her; wherein she cannot employ her reminiscence, that image and
conception having never been planted in her. To say that the corporal
prison does in such sort suffocate her natural faculties, that they
are there utterly extinct, is first contrary to this other belief of
acknowledging her power to be so great, and the operations of it that
men sensibly perceive in this life so admirable, as to have thereby
concluded that divinity and eternity past, and the immortality to
come:--
Nam si tantopere est anirai mutata potestas,
Omnia ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum,
Non, ut opinor, ea ab letho jam longior errat.
“For if the mind be changed to that degree
As of past things to lose all memory,
So great a change as that, I must confess,
Appears to me than death but little less.”
Furthermore, ‘tis here with us, and not elsewhere, that the force
and effects of the soul ought to be considered; all the rest of her
perfections are vain and useless to her; ‘tis by her present condition
that all her immortality is to be rewarded and paid, and of the life of
man only that she is to render an account It had been injustice to have
stripped her of her means and powers; to have disarmed her in order, in
the time of her captivity and imprisonment in the flesh, of her weakness
and infirmity in the time wherein she was forced and compelled, to pass
an infinite and perpetual sentence and condemnation, and to insist upon
the consideration of so short a time, peradventure but an hour or two,
or at the most but a century, which has no more proportion with infinity
than an instant; in this momentary interval to ordain and definitively
to determine of her whole being; it were an unreasonable disproportion,
too, to assign an eternal recompense in consequence of so short a life.
Plato, to defend himself from this inconvenience, will have future
payments limited to the term of a hundred years, relatively to human
duration; and of us ourselves there are enough who have given them
temporal limits. By this they judged that the generation of the soul
followed the common condition of human things, as also her life,
according to the opinion of Epicurus and Democritus, which has been the
most received; in consequence of these fine appearances that they saw
it bom, and that, according as the body grew more capable, they saw it
increase in vigour as the other did; that its feebleness in infancy was
very manifest, and in time its better strength and maturity, and after
that its declension and old age, and at last its decrepitude:--
Gigni pariter cum corpore, et una
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.
“Souls with the bodies to be born we may
Discern, with them t’ increase, with them decay.”
They perceived it to be capable of divers passions, and agitated with
divers painful motions, whence it fell into lassitude and uneasiness;
capable of alteration and change, of cheerfulness, of stupidity and
languor, and subject to diseases and injuries, as the stomach or the
foot;
Mentem sanari, corpus ut ægrum,
Ceraimus, et flecti medicinâ posse videmus;
“Sick minds, as well as bodies, we do see
By Med’cine’s virtue oft restored to be;”
dazzled and intoxicated with the fumes of wine, jostled from her seat by
the vapours of a burning fever, laid asleep by the application of some
medicaments, and roused by others,--
Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est,
Corporeis quoniam telis ictuque laborat;
“There must be of necessity, we find,
A nature that’s corporeal of the mind,
Because we evidently see it smarts
And wounded is with shafts the body darts;”
they saw it astonished and overthrown in all its faculties through the
mere bite of a mad dog, and in that condition to have no stability
of reason, no sufficiency, no virtue, no philosophical resolution, no
resistance that could exempt it from the subjection of such accidents;
the slaver of a contemptible cur shed upon the hand of Socrates, to
shake all his wisdom and all his great and regulated imaginations, and
so to annihilate them, ad that there remained no trace of his former
knowledge,--
Vis.... animal Conturbatur, et.... divisa seorsum
Disjectatur, eodem illo distracta veneno;
“The power of the soul’s disturbed; and when
That once is but sequestered from her, then
By the same poison ‘tis dispersed abroad;”
and this poison to find no more resistance in that great soul than in an
infant of four years old; a poison sufficient to make all philosophy, if
it were incarnate, become furious and mad; insomuch that Cato, who
ever disdained death and fortune, could not endure the sight of a
looking-glass, or of water, overwhelmed with horror and affright at
the thought of falling, by the contagion of a mad dog, into the disease
called by physicians hydrophobia:--
Vis morbi distracta per artus
Turbat agens animam, spumantes æquore salso
Ventorum ut validis fervescunt viribus undæ.
“Throughout the limbs diffused, the fierce disease
Disturbs the soul, as in the briny seas,
The foaming waves to swell and boil we see,
Stirred by the wind’s impetuosity.”
Now, as to this particular, philosophy has sufficiently armed man to
encounter all other accidents either with patience, or, if the search
of that costs too dear, by an infallible defeat, in totally depriving
himself of all sentiment; but these are expedients that are only of use
to a soul being itself, and in its full power, capable of reason and
deliberation; but not at all proper for this inconvenience, where, in
a philosopher, the soul becomes the soul of a madman, troubled,
and left, and to whirl us about at their pleasure. Whatever springs from
these presuppositions is our master and our God; he will take the level
of his foundations so ample and so easy that by them he may mount us
up to the clouds, if he so please. In this practice and negotiation
of science we have taken the saying of Pythagoras, “That every expert
person ought to be believed in his own art” for current pay. The
logician refers the signification of words to the grammarians; the
rhetorician borrows the state of arguments from the logician; the poet
his measure from the musician: the geometrician his proportions from
the arithmetician, and the metaphysicians take physical conjectures for
their foundations; for every science has its principle presupposed, by
which human judgment is everywhere kept in check. If you come to rush
against the bar where the principal error lies, they have presently this
sentence in their mouths, “That there is no disputing with persons who
deny principles.” Now men can have no principles if not revealed to them
by the divinity; of all the rest the beginning, the middle, and the
end, is nothing but dream and vapour. To those that contend upon
presupposition we must, on the contrary, presuppose to them the same
axiom upon which the dispute is. For every human presupposition and
declaration has as much authority one as another, if reason do not make
the difference. Wherefore they are all to be put into the balance, and
first the generals and those that tyrannize over us. The persuasion of
certainty is a certain testimony of folly and extreme incertainty;
and there are not a more foolish sort of men, nor that are less
philosophers, than the Philodoxes of Plato; we must inquire whether fire
be hot? whether snow be white? if there be any such things as hard or
soft within our knowledge?
And as to those answers of which they make old stories, as he that
doubted if there was any such thing as heat, whom they bid throw himself
into the fire; and he that denied the coldness of ice, whom they bid
to put ice into his bosom;--they are pitiful things, unworthy of the
profession of philosophy. If they had let us alone in our natural
being, to receive the appearance of things without us, according as they
present themselves to us by our senses, and had permitted us to follow
our own natural appetites, governed by the condition of our birth, they
might then have reason to talk at that rate; but ‘tis from them we have
learned to make ourselves judges of the world; ‘tis from them that we
derive this fancy, “That human reason is controller-general of all that
is without and within the roof of heaven; that comprehends every thing,
that can do every thing; by the means of which every thing is known and
understood.” This answer would be good among the cannibals, who enjoy
the happiness of a long, quiet, and peaceable life, without Aristotle’s
precepts, and without the knowledge of the name of physics; this answer
would perhaps be of more value and greater force than all those they
borrow from their reason and invention; of this all animals, and all
where the power of the law of nature is yet pure and simple, would be
as capable as we, but as for them they have renounced it. They need not
tell us, “It is true, for you see and feel it to be so;” they must tell
me whether I really feel what I think I do; and if I do feel it, they
must then tell me why I feel it, and how, and what; let them tell me the
name, original, the parts and junctures of heat and cold, the qualities
of the agent and patient; or let them give up their profession, which is
not to admit or approve of any thing but by the way of reason; that is
their test in all sorts of essays; but, certainly, ‘tis a test full of
falsity, error, weakness, and defect.
Which way can we better prove it than by itself? If we are not to
believe her when speaking of herself, she can hardly be thought fit to
judge of foreign things; if she know any thing, it must at least be her
own being and abode; she is in the soul, and either a part or an effect
of it; for true and essential reason, from which we by a false colour
borrow the name, is lodged in the bosom of the Almighty; there is her
habitation and recess; ‘tis thence that she imparts her rays, when God
is pleased to impart any beam of it to mankind, as Balias issued from
her father’s head, to communicate herself to the world.
Now let us see what human reason tells us of herself and of the soul,
not of the soul in general, of which almost all philosophy makes the
celestial and first bodies participants; nor of that which Thales
attributed to things which themselves are reputed inanimate, lead
thereto by the consideration of the loadstone; but of that which
appertains to us, and that we ought the best to know:--
Ignoratur enim, quæ sit natura animai;
Nata sit; an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur;
Et simnl intereat nobiscum morte dirempta;
An tenebras Orci visat, vastasque lacunas,
An pecudes alias divinitns insinuet se.
“For none the nature of the soul doth know,
Whether that it be born with us, or no;
Or be infused into us at our birth,
And dies with us when we return to earth,
Or then descends to the black shades below,
Or into other animals does go.”
Crates and Dicæarchus were of opinion that there was no soul at all,
but that the body thus stirs by a natural motion; Plato, that it was a
substance moving of itself; Thales, a nature without repose; Aedepiades,
an exercising of the senses; Hesiod and Anaximander, a thing composed of
earth and water; Parmenides, of earth and fire; Empedocles, of blood:--
Sanguineam vomit ille animam;
“He vomits up his bloody soul.”
Posidonius, Cleanthes, and Galen, that it was heat or a hot complexion--
Igneus est ollis vigor, et colestis origo;
“Their vigour of fire and of heavenly race.”
Hippocrates, a spirit diffused all over the body; Varro, that it was an
air received at the mouth, heated in the lungs, moistened in the heart,
and diffused throughout the whole body; Zeno, the quintessence of the
four elements; Heraclides Ponticus, that it was the light; Zenocrates
and the Egyptians, a mobile number; the Chaldeans, a virtue without any
determinate form:--
Habitum quemdam vitalem corporis esse,
Harmoniam Græci quam dicunt.
“A certain vital habit in man’s frame,
Which harmony the Grecian sages name.”
Let us not forget Aristotle, who held the soul to be that which
naturally causes the body to move, which he calls entelechia, with
as cold an invention as any of the rest; for he neither speaks of the
essence, nor of the original, nor of the nature of the soul, but
only takes notice of the effect Lactantius, Seneca, and most of the
Dogmatists, have confessed that it was a thing they did not understand;
after all this enumeration of opinions, _Harum sententiarum quo vera
sit, Deus aliquis viderit:_ “Of these opinions which is the true, let
some god determine,” says Cicero. “I know by myself,” says St Bernard,
“how incomprehensible God is, seeing I cannot comprehend the parts of my
own being.”
Heraclitus, who was of opinion that every being was full of souls and
demons, did nevertheless maintain that no one could advance so far
towards the knowledge of the soul as ever to arrive at it; so profound
was the essence of it.
Neither is there less controversy and debate about seating of it.
Hippocrates and Hierophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain;
Democritus and Aristotle throughout the whole body;--
Ut bona sæpe valetudo cum dicitur esse
Corporis, et non est tamen hæc pars ulla ralentis;
“As when the body’s health they do it call,
When of a sound man, that’s no part at all.”
Epicurus in the stomach;
Hic exsultat enim pavor ac metus;
Hæc loca circum Lætitiæ mulcent.
“For this the seat of horror is and fear,
And joys in turn do likewise triumph here.”
The Stoics, about and within the heart; Erasistratus, adjoining the
membrane of the epicranium; Empedocles, in the blood; as also Moses,
which was the reason why he interdicted eating the blood of beasts,
because the soul is there seated; Galen thought that every part of the
body had its soul; Strato has placed it betwixt the eyebrows; _Quâ facie
quidem sit animus, aut ubi habitet, ne quorendum quidem est:_ “What
figure the soul is of, or what part it inhabits, is not to be inquired
into,” says Cicero. I very willingly deliver this author to you in his
own words; for should I alter eloquence itself? Besides, it were but a
poor prize to steal the matter of his inventions; they are neither
very frequent, nor of any great weight, and sufficiently known. But the
reason why Chrysippus argues it to be about the heart, as all the rest
of that sect do, is not to be omitted; “It is,” says he, “because when
we would affirm any things we lay our hand upon our breasts; and when
we would pronounce èyù, which signifies I, we let the lower jaw fall
towards the stomach.” This place ought not to be passed over without
a remark upon the vanity of so great a man; for besides that these
considerations are infinitely light in themselves, the last is only a
proof to the Greeks that they have their souls lodged in that part. No
human judgment is so sprightly and vigilant that it does not sometimes
sleep. Why do we fear to say? The Stoics, the fathers of human prudence,
think that the soul of a man, crushed under a ruin, long labours
and strives to get out, like a mouse caught in a trap, before it can
disengage itself from the burden. Some hold that the world was made to
give bodies, by way of punishment, to the spirits fallen, by their own
fault, from the purity wherein they had been created, the first creation
having been incorporeal; and that, according as they are more or less
depraved from their spirituality, so are they more or less jocundly or
dully incorporated; and that thence proceeds all the variety of so much
created matter. But the spirit that for his punishment was invested
with the body of the sun must certainly have a very rare and particular
measure of change.
The extremities of our perquisition do all fall into astonishment
and blindness; as Plutarch says of the testimony of histories, that,
according to charts and maps, the utmost bounds of known r countries are
taken up with marshes, impenetrable forests, deserts, and uninhabitable
places; this is the reason why the most gross and childish ravings were
most found in those authors who treat of the most elevated subjects, and
proceed the furthest in them, losing themselves in their own curiosity
and presumption. The beginning and end of knowledge are equally foolish;
observe to what a pitch Plato flies in his poetic clouds; do but take
notice there of the gibberish of the gods; but what did he dream of when
he defined a man to be “a two-legged animal without feathers: giving
those who had a mind to deride him a pleasant occasion; for, having
pulled a capon alive, they went about calling it the man of Plato.”
And what did the Epicureans think of, out of what simplicity did they
first imagine that their _atoms_ that they said were bodies having some
weight, and a natural motion downwards, had made the world; till
they were put in mind, by their adversaries, that, according to this
description, it was impossible they should unite and join to one
another, their fall being so direct and perpendicular, and making so
many parallel lines throughout? Wherefore there was a necessity that
they should since add a fortuitous and sideways motion, and that they
should moreover accoutre their atoms with hooked tails, by which they
might unite and cling to one another. And even then do not those that
attack them upon this second consideration put them hardly to it? “If
the atoms have by chance formed so many sorts of figures, why did it
never fall out that they made a house or a shoe? Why at the same rate
should we not believe that an infinite number of Greek letters,
strewed all over a certain place, might fall into the contexture of the
_Iliad?_”--“Whatever is capable of reason,” says Zeno, “is better than
that which is not capable; there is nothing better than the world;
the world is therefore capable of reason.” Cotta, by this way of
argumentation, makes the world a mathematician; ‘and tis also made a
musician and an organist by this other argumentation of Zeno: “The
whole is more than a part; we are capable of wisdom, and are part of the
world; therefore the world is wise.” There are infinite like examples,
not only of arguments that are false in themselves, but silly ones, that
do not hold in themselves, and that accuse their authors not so much
of ignorance as imprudence, in the reproaches the philosophers dash one
another in the teeth withal, upon their dissensions in their sects and
opinions.
Whoever should bundle up a lusty faggot of the fooleries of human wisdom
would produce wonders. I willingly muster up these few for a pattern,
by a certain meaning not less profitable to consider than the most sound
and moderate instructions. Let us judge by these what opinion we are to
have of man, of his sense and reason, when in these great persons that
have raised human knowledge so high, so many gross mistakes and manifest
errors are to be found.
For my part, I am apt to believe that they have treated of knowledge
casually, and like a toy, with both hands; and have contended about
reason as of a vain and frivolous instrument, setting on foot all sorts
of fancies and inventions, sometimes more sinewy, and sometimes weaker.
This same Plato, who defines man as if he were a cock, says elsewhere,
after Socrates, “That he does not, in truth, know what man is, and that
he is a member of the world the hardest to understand.” By this variety
and instability of opinions, they tacitly lead us, as it were by the
hand, to this resolution of their irresolution. They profess not always
to deliver their opinions barefaced and apparent to us; they have one
while disguised them in the fabulous shadows of poetry, and at another
in some other vizor; for our imperfection carries this also along with
it, that crude meat is not always proper for our stomachs; we must dry,
alter, and mix it; they do the same; they sometimes conceal their real
opinions and judgments, and falsify them to accommodate themselves to
the public use. They will not make an open profession of ignorance, and
of the imbecility of human reason, that they may not fright children;
but they sufficiently discover it to us under the appearance of a
troubled and inconstant science.
I advised a person in Italy, who had a great mind to speak Italian, that
provided he only had a desire to make himself understood, without being
ambitious in any other respect to excel, that he should only make use
of the first word that came to the tongue’s end, whether Latin, French,
Spanish, or Gascon, and that, by adding the Italian termination, he
could not fail of hitting upon some idiom of the country, either Tuscan,
Roman, Venetian, Piedmontese, or Neapolitan, and so fall in with some
one of those many forms. I say the same of Philosophy; she has so many
faces, so much variety, and has said so many things, that all our dreams
and ravings are there to be found. Human fancy can conceive nothing
good or bad that is not there: _Nihil tam absurde did potest, quod non
dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum._ “Nothing can be said so absurd, that
has not been said before by some of the philosophers.” And I am the more
willing to expose my whimsies to the public; forasmuch as, though they
are spun out of myself, and without any pattern, I know they will be
found related to some ancient humour, and some will not stick to say,
“See whence he took it!” My manners are natural, I have not called in
the assistance of any discipline to erect them; but, weak as they are,
when it came into my head to lay them open to the world’s view, and that
to expose them to the light in a little more decent garb I went to adorn
them with reasons and examples, it was a wonder to myself accidentally
to find them conformable to so many philosophical discourses and
examples. I never knew what regimen my life was of till it was near
worn out and spent; a new figure--an unpremeditated and accidental
philosopher.
But to return to the soul. Inasmuch as Plato has placed reason in the
brain, anger in the heart, and concupiscence in the liver; ‘tis likely
that it was rather an interpretation of the movements of
the soul, than that he intended a division and separation of it, as of
a body, into several members. And the most likely of their opinions
is that ‘tis always a soul, that by its faculty, reasons, remembers,
comprehends, judges, desires, and exercises all its other operations by
divers instruments of the body; as the pilot guides his ship according
to his experience, one while straining or slacking the cordage, one
while hoisting the mainyard, or removing the rudder, by one and the same
power carrying on several effects; and that it is lodged in the brain;
which appears in that the wounds and accidents that touch that part do
immediately offend the faculties of the soul; and ‘tis not incongruous
that it should thence diffuse itself through the other parts of the body
Medium non deserit unquam
Coeli Phoebus iter; radiis tamen omnia lustrât.
“Phoebus ne’er deviates from the zodiac’s way;
Yet all things doth illustrate with his ray.”
As the sun sheds from heaven its light and influence, and fills the
world with them:--
Cætera pars animas, per totum dissita corpus,
Paret, et ad numen mentis momenque movetur.
“The other part o’ th’ soul diffus’d all o’er
The body, does obey the reason’s lore.”
Some have said that there was a general soul, as it were a great body,
whence all the particular souls were extracted, and thither again
return, always restoring themselves to that universal matter:--
Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque maris, columque profundum;
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas:
Scilicet hue reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia; nec morti esse locum:
“For God goes forth, and spreads throughout the whole
Heaven, earth, and sea, the universal soul;
Each at its birth, from him all beings share,
Both man and brute, the breath of vital air;
To him return, and, loos’d from earthly chain,
Fly whence they sprung, and rest in God again,
Spurn at the grave, and, fearless of decay,
Dwell in high heaven, and star th’ ethereal way.”
Others, that they only rejoined and reunited themselves to it; others,
that they were produced from the divine substance; others, by the angels
of fire and air; others, that they were from all antiquity; and some
that they were created at the very point of time the bodies wanted
them; others make them to descend from the orb of the moon, and return
thither; the generality of the ancients believed that they were begotten
from father to son, after a like manner, and produced with all other
natural things; taking their argument from the likeness of children to
their fathers;
Instillata patris virtus tibi;
Fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;
“Thou hast thy father’s virtues with his blood:
For still the brave spring from the brave and good;”
and that we see descend from fathers to their children not only
bodily marks, but moreover a resemblance of humours, complexions, and
inclinations of the soul:--
Denique cur acris violentia triste leonum
Seminium sequitur? dolus vulpibus, et fuga, cervis
A patribus datur, et patrius pavor incitât artus?
Si non certa suo quia semine seminioque
Vis animi pariter crescit cum corpore toto.
“For why should rage from the fierce lion’s seed,
Or from the subtle fox’s craft, proceed;
Or why the tim’rous and flying hart
His fear and trembling to his race impart;
But that a certain force of mind does grow,
And still increases as the bodies do?”
That thereupon the divine justice is grounded, punishing in the children
the faults of their fathers; forasmuch as the contagion of paternal
vices is in some sort imprinted in the soul of children, and that the
ill government of their will extends to them; moreover, that if souls
had any other derivation than a natural consequence, and that they had
been some other thins out of the body, they would retain some memory
of their first being, the natural faculties that are proper to them of
discoursing, reasoning, and remembering, being considered:--
Si in corpus nascentibus insinuatur,
Cur super anteactam ætatem meminisse nequimus,
Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus?
“For at our birth if it infused be,
Why do we then retain no memory
Of our foregoing life, and why no more
Remember any thing we did before?”
for, to make the condition of our souls such as we would have it to be,
we must suppose them all-knowing, even in their natural simplicity and
purity; by these means they had been such, being free from the prison of
the body, as well before they entered into it, as we hope they shall be
after they are gone out of it; and from this knowledge it should follow
that they should remember, being got in the body, as Plato said, “That
what we learn is no other than a remembrance of what we knew before;” a
thing which every one by experience may maintain to be false. Forasmuch,
in the first place, as that we do not justly remember any thing but
what we have been taught, and that if the memory did purely perform its
office it would at least suggest to us something more than what we have
learned. Secondly, that which she knew being in her purity, was a
true knowledge, knowing things as they are by her divine intelligence;
whereas here we make her receive falsehood and vice when we instruct
her; wherein she cannot employ her reminiscence, that image and
conception having never been planted in her. To say that the corporal
prison does in such sort suffocate her natural faculties, that they
are there utterly extinct, is first contrary to this other belief of
acknowledging her power to be so great, and the operations of it that
men sensibly perceive in this life so admirable, as to have thereby
concluded that divinity and eternity past, and the immortality to
come:--
Nam si tantopere est anirai mutata potestas,
Omnia ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum,
Non, ut opinor, ea ab letho jam longior errat.
“For if the mind be changed to that degree
As of past things to lose all memory,
So great a change as that, I must confess,
Appears to me than death but little less.”
Furthermore, ‘tis here with us, and not elsewhere, that the force
and effects of the soul ought to be considered; all the rest of her
perfections are vain and useless to her; ‘tis by her present condition
that all her immortality is to be rewarded and paid, and of the life of
man only that she is to render an account It had been injustice to have
stripped her of her means and powers; to have disarmed her in order, in
the time of her captivity and imprisonment in the flesh, of her weakness
and infirmity in the time wherein she was forced and compelled, to pass
an infinite and perpetual sentence and condemnation, and to insist upon
the consideration of so short a time, peradventure but an hour or two,
or at the most but a century, which has no more proportion with infinity
than an instant; in this momentary interval to ordain and definitively
to determine of her whole being; it were an unreasonable disproportion,
too, to assign an eternal recompense in consequence of so short a life.
Plato, to defend himself from this inconvenience, will have future
payments limited to the term of a hundred years, relatively to human
duration; and of us ourselves there are enough who have given them
temporal limits. By this they judged that the generation of the soul
followed the common condition of human things, as also her life,
according to the opinion of Epicurus and Democritus, which has been the
most received; in consequence of these fine appearances that they saw
it bom, and that, according as the body grew more capable, they saw it
increase in vigour as the other did; that its feebleness in infancy was
very manifest, and in time its better strength and maturity, and after
that its declension and old age, and at last its decrepitude:--
Gigni pariter cum corpore, et una
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.
“Souls with the bodies to be born we may
Discern, with them t’ increase, with them decay.”
They perceived it to be capable of divers passions, and agitated with
divers painful motions, whence it fell into lassitude and uneasiness;
capable of alteration and change, of cheerfulness, of stupidity and
languor, and subject to diseases and injuries, as the stomach or the
foot;
Mentem sanari, corpus ut ægrum,
Ceraimus, et flecti medicinâ posse videmus;
“Sick minds, as well as bodies, we do see
By Med’cine’s virtue oft restored to be;”
dazzled and intoxicated with the fumes of wine, jostled from her seat by
the vapours of a burning fever, laid asleep by the application of some
medicaments, and roused by others,--
Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est,
Corporeis quoniam telis ictuque laborat;
“There must be of necessity, we find,
A nature that’s corporeal of the mind,
Because we evidently see it smarts
And wounded is with shafts the body darts;”
they saw it astonished and overthrown in all its faculties through the
mere bite of a mad dog, and in that condition to have no stability
of reason, no sufficiency, no virtue, no philosophical resolution, no
resistance that could exempt it from the subjection of such accidents;
the slaver of a contemptible cur shed upon the hand of Socrates, to
shake all his wisdom and all his great and regulated imaginations, and
so to annihilate them, ad that there remained no trace of his former
knowledge,--
Vis.... animal Conturbatur, et.... divisa seorsum
Disjectatur, eodem illo distracta veneno;
“The power of the soul’s disturbed; and when
That once is but sequestered from her, then
By the same poison ‘tis dispersed abroad;”
and this poison to find no more resistance in that great soul than in an
infant of four years old; a poison sufficient to make all philosophy, if
it were incarnate, become furious and mad; insomuch that Cato, who
ever disdained death and fortune, could not endure the sight of a
looking-glass, or of water, overwhelmed with horror and affright at
the thought of falling, by the contagion of a mad dog, into the disease
called by physicians hydrophobia:--
Vis morbi distracta per artus
Turbat agens animam, spumantes æquore salso
Ventorum ut validis fervescunt viribus undæ.
“Throughout the limbs diffused, the fierce disease
Disturbs the soul, as in the briny seas,
The foaming waves to swell and boil we see,
Stirred by the wind’s impetuosity.”
Now, as to this particular, philosophy has sufficiently armed man to
encounter all other accidents either with patience, or, if the search
of that costs too dear, by an infallible defeat, in totally depriving
himself of all sentiment; but these are expedients that are only of use
to a soul being itself, and in its full power, capable of reason and
deliberation; but not at all proper for this inconvenience, where, in
a philosopher, the soul becomes the soul of a madman, troubled,
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- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 019Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4860Total number of unique words is 152640.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words57.1 of words are in the 5000 most common words65.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 020Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4766Total number of unique words is 145044.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 021Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4804Total number of unique words is 147543.2 of words are in the 2000 most common words60.0 of words are in the 5000 most common words68.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 022Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4967Total number of unique words is 153045.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 023Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5004Total number of unique words is 152948.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words68.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words76.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 024Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4791Total number of unique words is 161742.4 of words are in the 2000 most common words60.0 of words are in the 5000 most common words68.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 025Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4729Total number of unique words is 145543.1 of words are in the 2000 most common words62.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words69.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 026Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4895Total number of unique words is 151546.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words66.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words75.2 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 027Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4959Total number of unique words is 155746.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.0 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 028Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4818Total number of unique words is 158641.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words58.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 029Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4939Total number of unique words is 155044.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words61.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words70.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 030Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4888Total number of unique words is 155443.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words62.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words71.2 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 031Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4799Total number of unique words is 155843.1 of words are in the 2000 most common words58.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 032Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4784Total number of unique words is 166741.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words57.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.2 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 033Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4887Total number of unique words is 153143.0 of words are in the 2000 most common words62.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 034Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4763Total number of unique words is 149343.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words62.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words69.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 035Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4777Total number of unique words is 164541.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words59.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words68.2 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 036Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4812Total number of unique words is 156642.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words59.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words67.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 037Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4976Total number of unique words is 146249.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words69.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words77.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 038Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4949Total number of unique words is 144146.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words66.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.5 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 039Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5086Total number of unique words is 141551.0 of words are in the 2000 most common words69.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words77.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 040Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5052Total number of unique words is 141248.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words67.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 041Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4988Total number of unique words is 142545.4 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.1 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 042Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4890Total number of unique words is 142745.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 043Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4805Total number of unique words is 153242.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words61.1 of words are in the 5000 most common words70.0 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 044Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4969Total number of unique words is 141643.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words62.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 045Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4977Total number of unique words is 147845.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.1 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 046Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4918Total number of unique words is 166839.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words57.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words65.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 047Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4959Total number of unique words is 160942.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words61.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words71.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 048Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4840Total number of unique words is 163539.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words55.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words63.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 049Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4930Total number of unique words is 143640.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words58.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 050Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4742Total number of unique words is 153038.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words56.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words65.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 051Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4932Total number of unique words is 151539.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words55.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words63.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 052Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4878Total number of unique words is 157839.0 of words are in the 2000 most common words56.6 of words are in the 5000 most common words63.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 053Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4811Total number of unique words is 152337.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words55.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words63.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 054Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4864Total number of unique words is 153440.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words58.6 of words are in the 5000 most common words67.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 055Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5000Total number of unique words is 141944.1 of words are in the 2000 most common words63.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words71.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 056Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4864Total number of unique words is 159241.4 of words are in the 2000 most common words58.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words67.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 057Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4881Total number of unique words is 151840.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words58.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.0 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 058Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4940Total number of unique words is 147243.2 of words are in the 2000 most common words59.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 059Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4669Total number of unique words is 155741.0 of words are in the 2000 most common words58.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.2 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 060Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4782Total number of unique words is 150542.4 of words are in the 2000 most common words59.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 061Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4884Total number of unique words is 146542.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words60.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words69.0 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 062Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4856Total number of unique words is 155544.1 of words are in the 2000 most common words61.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words69.8 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 063Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5006Total number of unique words is 146246.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 064Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4849Total number of unique words is 149143.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words63.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 065Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4893Total number of unique words is 151146.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 066Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4875Total number of unique words is 153343.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words61.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words69.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 067Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4837Total number of unique words is 156644.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words63.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 068Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4970Total number of unique words is 152046.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 069Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4964Total number of unique words is 144646.1 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.8 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 070Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4908Total number of unique words is 146945.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words71.5 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 071Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4980Total number of unique words is 141251.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words68.1 of words are in the 5000 most common words76.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 072Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4907Total number of unique words is 144945.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.0 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 073Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4977Total number of unique words is 140946.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 074Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5152Total number of unique words is 139948.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words67.1 of words are in the 5000 most common words76.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 075Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4857Total number of unique words is 143845.4 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 076Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4965Total number of unique words is 145445.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.0 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 077Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5078Total number of unique words is 142345.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.6 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 078Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4990Total number of unique words is 145845.1 of words are in the 2000 most common words66.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 079Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4812Total number of unique words is 156446.0 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 080Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4787Total number of unique words is 162140.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words57.0 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 081Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4763Total number of unique words is 161542.0 of words are in the 2000 most common words57.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words66.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 082Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4779Total number of unique words is 154844.2 of words are in the 2000 most common words60.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words67.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 083Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4866Total number of unique words is 155542.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words63.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 084Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4776Total number of unique words is 155742.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words61.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words70.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 085Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4785Total number of unique words is 157145.4 of words are in the 2000 most common words63.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words71.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 086Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4747Total number of unique words is 156741.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words62.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words70.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 087Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5022Total number of unique words is 145547.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words66.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words75.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 088Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4935Total number of unique words is 142746.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 089Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4966Total number of unique words is 139148.2 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 090Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4888Total number of unique words is 149743.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words61.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words69.8 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 091Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4903Total number of unique words is 145544.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words71.8 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 092Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5068Total number of unique words is 150346.8 of words are in the 2000 most common words66.3 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.2 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 093Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4993Total number of unique words is 145847.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.8 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 094Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4866Total number of unique words is 147544.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words63.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words71.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 095Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4816Total number of unique words is 144045.0 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 096Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4894Total number of unique words is 154343.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words61.4 of words are in the 5000 most common words70.5 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 097Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4901Total number of unique words is 146346.2 of words are in the 2000 most common words63.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words71.8 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 098Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4772Total number of unique words is 161040.9 of words are in the 2000 most common words58.0 of words are in the 5000 most common words65.9 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 099Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4909Total number of unique words is 145147.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.9 of words are in the 5000 most common words73.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 100Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4899Total number of unique words is 148047.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words67.5 of words are in the 5000 most common words76.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 101Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4939Total number of unique words is 145244.6 of words are in the 2000 most common words64.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.8 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 102Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5068Total number of unique words is 144246.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words72.7 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 103Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4987Total number of unique words is 147947.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words65.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 104Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 5081Total number of unique words is 148248.7 of words are in the 2000 most common words66.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words74.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 105Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4841Total number of unique words is 152741.4 of words are in the 2000 most common words60.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words68.4 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 106Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4628Total number of unique words is 141048.0 of words are in the 2000 most common words68.8 of words are in the 5000 most common words78.1 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 107Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 4543Total number of unique words is 144747.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words68.1 of words are in the 5000 most common words77.3 of words are in the 8000 most common words
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 108Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.Total number of words is 2607Total number of unique words is 90156.5 of words are in the 2000 most common words75.0 of words are in the 5000 most common words82.5 of words are in the 8000 most common words