Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 056

single country, but a division of the world, nearly equal in greatness
to that we knew before. The geographers of our time stick not to assure
us that now all is found; all is seen:--

Nam quod adest prosto, placet, et pollere videtur;
“What’s present pleases, and appears the best;”

but it remains to be seen whether, as Ptolemy was therein formerly
deceived upon the foundation of his reason, it were not very foolish to
trust now in what these people say? And whether it is not more likely
that this great body, which we call the world, is not quite another
thing than what we imagine.
Plato says that it changes countenance in all respects; that the
heavens, the stars, and the sun, have all of them sometimes motions
retrograde to what we see, changing east into west The Egyptian priests
told Herodotus that from the time of their first king, which was eleven
thousand and odd years since (and they showed him the effigies of all
their kings in statues taken from the life), the sun had four times
altered his course; that the sea and the earth did alternately change
into one another; that the beginning of the world is undetermined;
Aristotle and Cicero both say the same; and some amongst us are of
opinion that it has been from all eternity, is mortal, and renewed again
by several vicissitudes; calling Solomon and Isaiah to witness; to evade
those oppositions, that God has once been a creator without a creature;
that he has had nothing to do, that he got rid of that idleness by
putting his hand to this work; and that consequently he is subject to
change. In the most famous of the Greek schools the world is taken for a
god, made by another god greater than he, and composed of a body, and a
soul fixed in his centre, and dilating himself by musical numbers to
his circumference; divine, infinitely happy, and infinitely great,
infinitely wise and eternal; in him are other gods, the sea, the earth,
the stars, who entertain one another with an harmonious and perpetual
agitation and divine dance, sometimes meeting, sometimes retiring from
one another; concealing and discovering themselves; changing their
order, one while before, and another behind. Heraclitus was positive
that the world was composed of fire; and, by the order of destiny,
was one day to be enflamed and consumed in fire, and then to be again
renewed. And Apuleius says of men: _Sigillatim mortales, cunctim
perpetui._ “That they are mortal in particular, and immortal in
general.” Alexander writ to his mother the narration of an Egyptian
priest, drawn from their monuments, testifying the antiquity of that
nation to be infinite, and comprising the birth and progress of other
countries. Cicero and Diodorus say that in their time the Chaldees kept
a register of four hundred thousand and odd years, Aristotle, Pliny,
and others, that Zoroaster flourished six thousand years before Plato’s
time. Plato says that they of the city of Sais have records in writing
of eight thousand years; and that the city of Athens was built a
thousand years before the said city of Sais; Epicurus, that at the same
time things are here in the posture we see, they are alike and in the
same manner in several other worlds; which he would have delivered with
greater assurance, had he seen the similitude and concordance of the new
discovered world of the West Indies with ours, present and past, in so
many strange examples.
In earnest, considering what is come to our knowledge from the course
of this terrestrial polity, I have often wondered to see in so vast a
distance of places and times such a concurrence of so great a number of
popular and wild opinions, and of savage manners and beliefs, which by
no means seem to proceed from our natural meditation. The human mind is
a great worker of miracles! But this relation has, moreover, I know
not what of extraordinary in it; ‘tis found to be in names, also, and a
thousand other things; for they found nations there (that, for aught we
know, never heard of us) where circumcision was in use; where there were
states and great civil governments maintained by women only, without
men; where our fasts and Lent were represented, to which was added
abstinence from women; where our crosses were several ways in repute;
here they were made use of to honour and adorn their sepultures, there
they were erected, and particularly that of St Andrew, to protect
themselves from nocturnal visions, and to lay upon the cradles of
infants against enchantments; elsewhere there was found one of wood,
of very great height, which was adored for the god of rain, and this
a great way in the interior; there was seen an express image of our
penance priests, the use of mitres, the celibacy of priests, the art
of divination by the entrails of sacrificed beasts, abstinence from all
sorts of flesh and fish in their diet, the manner of priests officiating
in a particular and not a vulgar language; and this fancy, that the
first god was driven away by a second, his younger brother; that they
were created with all sorts of necessaries and conveniences, which have
since been in a degree taken from them for their sins, their territory
changed, and their natural condition made worse; that they were of
old overwhelmed by the inundation of water from heaven; that but few
families escaped, who retired into caves on high mountains, the mouths
of which they stopped so that the waters could not get in, having shut
up, together with themselves, several sorts of animals; that when they
perceived the rain to cease they sent out dogs, which returning clean
and wet, they judged that the water was not much abated; afterwards
sending out others, and seeing them return dirty, they issued out to
repeople the world, which they found only full of serpents. In one place
we met with the belief of a day of judgment; insomuch that they were
marvellously displeased at the Spaniards for discomposing the bones of
the dead, in rifling the sepultures for riches, saying that those bones
so disordered could not easily rejoin; the traffic by exchange, and no
other way; fairs and markets for that end; dwarfs and deformed people
for the ornament of the tables of princes; the use of falconry,
according to the nature of their hawks; tyrannical subsidies; nicety in
gardens; dancing, tumbling tricks, music of instruments, coats of arms,
tennis-courts, dice and lotteries, wherein they are sometimes so eager
and hot as to stake themselves and their liberty; physic, no otherwise
than by charms; the way of writing in cypher; the belief of only one
first man, the father of all nations; the adoration of one God, who
formerly lived a man in perfect virginity, fasting, and penitence,
preaching the laws of nature, and the ceremonies of religion, and that
vanished from the world without a natural death; the theory of giants;
the custom of making themselves drunk with their beverages, and drinking
to the utmost; religious ornaments painted with bones and dead men’s
skulls; surplices, holy water sprinkled; wives and servants, who present
themselves with emulation, burnt and interred with the dead husband or
master; a law by which the eldest succeeds to all the estate, no
part being left for the younger but obedience; the custom that, upon
promotion to a certain office of great authority, the promoted is to
take upon him a new name, and to leave that which he had before; another
to strew lime upon the knee of the new-born child, with these words:
“From dust thou earnest, and to dust thou must return;” as also the art
of augury. The vain shadows of our religion, which are observable in
some of these examples, are testimonies of its dignity and divinity. It
is not only in some sort insinuated into all the infidel nations on this
side of the world, by a certain imitation, but in these barbarians
also, as by a common and supernatural inspiration; for we find there the
belief of purgatory, but of a new form; that which we give to the fire
they give to the cold, and imagine that souls are purged and punished by
the rigour of an excessive coldness. And this example puts me in mind
of another pleasant diversity; for as there were there some people who
delighted to unmuffle the ends of their instruments, and clipped off
the prepuce after the Mahometan and Jewish manner; there were others who
made so great conscience of laying it bare, that they carefully pursed
it up with little strings to keep that end from peeping into the air;
and of this other diversity, that whereas we, to honour kings and
festivals, put on the best clothes we have; in some regions, to express
their disparity and submission to their king, his subjects present
themselves before him in their vilest habits, and entering his palace,
throw some old tattered garment over their better apparel, to the end
that all the lustre and ornament may solely be in him. But to proceed:--
If nature enclose within the bounds of her ordinary progress the
beliefs, judgments, and opinions of men, as well as all other things;
if they have their revolution, their season, their birth and death, like
cabbage plants; if the heavens agitate and rule them at their pleasure,
what magisterial and permanent authority do we attribute to them? If
we experimentally see that the form of our beings depends upon the air,
upon the climate, and upon the soil, where we are bom, and not only the
colour, the stature, the complexion, and the countenances, but moreover
the very faculties of the soul itself: Et plaga codi non solum ad robor
corporum, sed etiam anirum facit: “The climate is of great efficacy,
not only to the strength of bodies, but to that of souls also,” says
Vegetius; and that the goddess who founded the city of Athens chose
to situate it in a temperature of air fit to make men prudent, as
the Egyptian priests told Solon: _Athenis tenue colum; ex quo etiam
acutiores putantur Attici; crassum Thebis; itaque pingues Thebani,
et valentes:_ “The air of Athens is subtle and thin; whence also the
Athenians are reputed to be more acute; and at Thebes more gross and
thick; wherefore the Thebans are looked upon as more heavy-witted and
more strong.” In such sort that, as fruits and animals grow different,
men are also more or less warlike, just, temperate, and docile; here
given to wine, elsewhere to theft or uncleanness; here inclined to
superstition, elsewhere to unbelief; in one place to liberty, in another
to servitude; capable of one science or of one art, dull or ingenious,
obedient or mutinous, good or bad, according as the place where they
are seated inclines them; and assume a new complexion, if removed, like
trees, which was the reason why Cyrus would not grant the Persians
leave to quit their rough and craggy country to remove to another
more pleasant and even, saying, that fertile and tender soils made
men effeminate and soft. If we see one while one art and one belief
flourish, and another while another, through some celestial influence;
such an age to produce such natures, and to incline mankind to such and
such a propension, the spirits of men one while gay and another gray,
like our fields, what becomes of all those fine prerogatives we so
soothe ourselves withal? Seeing that a wise man may be mistaken, and a
hundred men and a hundred nations, nay, that even human nature
itself, as we believe, is many ages wide in one thing or another, what
assurances have we that she should cease to be mistaken, or that in this
very age of ours she is not so?
Methinks that amongst other testimonies of our imbecility, this ought
not to be forgotten, that man cannot, by his own wish and desire, find
out what he wants; that not in fruition only, but in imagination and
wish, we cannot agree about what we would have to satisfy and content
us. Let us leave it to our own thought to cut out and make up at
pleasure; it cannot so much as covet what is proper for it, and satisfy
itself:--

Quid enim ratione timemus,
Aut cupimus? Quid tain dextro pede concipis, ut te
Conatus non poniteat, votique peracti?
“For what, with reason, do we speak or shun,
What plan, how happily soe’r begun,
That, when achieved, we do not wish undone?”

And therefore it was that Socrates only begged of the gods that they
would give him what they knew to be best for him; and the private
and public prayer of the Lacedemonians was simply for good and useful
things, referring the choice and election of them to the discretion of
the Supreme Power:--

Conjugium petimus, partumqué uxoris; at illis
Notum, qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor:
“We ask for Wives and children; they above
Know only, when we have them, what they’ll prove;”

and Christians pray to God, “Thy will be done,” that they may not fall
into the inconvenience the poet feigns of King Midas. He prayed to
the gods that all he touched might be turned into gold; his prayer was
heard; his wine was gold, his bread was gold, the feathers of his
bed, his shirt, his clothes, were all gold, so that he found himself
overwhelmed with the fruition of his desire, and endowed with an
intolerable benefit, and was fain to unpray his prayers.

Attonitus novitate mali, divesque, miserque,
Effugere optât opes, et, quæ modo voverat, odit.
“Astonished at the strangeness of the ill,
To be so rich, yet miserable still;
He wishes now he could his wealth evade,
And hates the thing for which before he prayed.”

To instance in myself: being young, I desired of fortune, above all
things, the order of St. Michael, which was then the utmost distinction
of honour amongst the French nobles, and very rare. She pleasantly
gratified my longing; instead of raising me, and lifting me up from my
own place to attain to it, she was much kinder to me; for she brought it
so low, and made it so cheap, that it stooped down to my shoulders, and
lower. Cleobis and Bito, Trophonius and Agamedes, having requested, the
first of their goddess, the last of their god, a recompense worthy of
their piety, had death for a reward; so differing from ours are heavenly
opinions concerning what is fit for us. God might grant us riches,
honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that
is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or
an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, _Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus
ipsa me consolata sunt._ “Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me,” he
does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly
discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it
in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand

Si consilium vis:
Permittee ipsis expendere numinibus, quid
Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris...
Carior est illis homo quam sibi;
“If thou’lt be rul’d, to th’ gods thy fortunes trust,
Their thoughts are wise, their dispensations just.
What best may profit or delight they know,
And real good, for fancied bliss, bestow;
With eyes of pity, they our frailties scan,
More dear to them, than to himself, is man;”

for to require of him honours and commands, is to require ‘that he may
throw you into a battle, set you upon a cast at dice, or something of
the like nature, whereof the issue is to you unknown, and the fruit
doubtful.
There is no dispute so sharp and violent amongst the philosophers,
as about the question of the sovereign good of man; whence, by the
calculation of Varro, rose two hundred and eighty-eight sects. _Qui
autem de summo bono dissentit, de totâ philosophies ratione disputât._
“For whoever enters into controversy concerning the supreme good,
disputes upon the whole matter of philosophy.”

Très mihi convivæ prope dissentire videntur,
Poscentes vario mul turn divers a palato;
Quid dem? Quid non dem? Renuis tu quod jubet alter;
Quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque duobus;
“I have three guests invited to a feast,
And all appear to have a different taste;
What shall I give them? What shall I refuse?
What one dislikes the other two shall choose;
And e’en the very dish you like the best
Is acid or insipid to the rest:”

nature should say the same to their contests and debates. Some say that
our well-being lies in virtue, others in pleasure, others in submitting
to nature; one in knowledge, another in being exempt from pain, another
in not suffering ourselves to be carried away by appearances; and this
fancy seems to have some relation to that of the ancient Pythagoras,

Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici,
Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum:
“Not to admire’s the only art I know
Can make us happy, and can keep us so;”

which is the drift of the Pyrrhonian sect; Aristotle attributes the
admiring nothing to magnanimity; and Arcesilaus said, that constancy and
a right inflexible state of judgment were the true good, and consent
and application the sin and evil; and there, it is true, in being thus
positive, and establishing a certain axiom, he quitted Pyrrhonism; for
the’ Pyrrhonians, when they say that ataraxy, which is the immobility
of judgment, is the sovereign good, do not design to speak it
affirmatively; but that the same motion of soul which makes them avoid
precipices, and take shelter from the cold, presents them such a fancy,
and makes them refuse another.
How much do I wish that, whilst I live, either some other or Justus
Lipsius, the most learned man now living, of a most polite and judicious
understanding, truly resembling my Turnebus, had both the will and
health, and leisure sufficient, carefully and conscientiously to collect
into a register, according to their divisions and classes, as many as
are to be found, of the opinions of the ancient philosophers, about the
subject of our being and manners, their controversies, the succession
and reputation of sects; with the application of the lives of the
authors and their disciples to their own precepts, in memorable
accidents, and upon exemplary occasions. What a beautiful and useful
work that would be!
As to what remains, if it be from ourselves that we are to extract the
rules of our manners, upon what a confusion do we throw ourselves! For
that which our reason advises us to, as the most likely, is generally
for every one to obey the laws of his country, as was the advice of
Socrates, inspired, as he says, by a divine counsel; and by that,
what would it say, but that our duty has no other rule but what is
accidental? Truth ought to have a like and universal visage; if man
could know equity and justice that had a body and a true being, he would
not fetter it to the conditions of this country or that; it would not be
from the whimsies of the Persians or Indians that virtue would receive
its form. There is nothing more subject to perpetual agitation than
the laws; since I was born, I have known those of the English, our
neighbours, three or four times changed, not only in matters of civil
regimen, which is the only thing wherein constancy may be dispensed
with, but in the most important subject that can be, namely, religion,
at which I am the more troubled and ashamed, because it is a nation with
whom those of my province have formerly had so great familiarity and
acquaintance, that there yet remains in my house some footsteps of our
ancient kindred; and here with us at home, I have known a thing that
was capital to become lawful; and we that hold of others are likewise,
according to the chance of war, in a possibility of being one day found
guilty of high-treason, both divine and human, should the justice of
our arms fall into the power of injustice, and, after a few years’
possession, take a quite contrary being. How could that ancient god more
clearly accuse the ignorance of human knowledge concerning the divine
Being, and give men to understand that their religion was but a thing of
their own contrivance, useful as a bond to their society, than declaring
as he did to those who came to his tripod for instruction, that every
one’s true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he
chanced to be? O God, what infinite obligation have we to the bounty
of our sovereign Creator, for having disabused our belief from these
wandering and arbitrary devotions, and for having seated it upon the
eternal foundation of his holy word? But what then will philosophers say
to us in this necessity? “That we follow the laws of our country;” that
is to say, this floating sea of the opinions of a republic, or a prince,
that will paint out justice for me in as many colours, and form it
as many ways as there are changes of passions in themselves; I cannot
suffer my judgment to be so flexible. What kind of virtue is that which
I see one day in repute, and that to-morrow shall be in none, and which
the crossing of a river makes a crime? What sort of truth can that
be, which these mountains limit to us, and make a lie to all the world
beyond them?
But they are pleasant, when, to give some certainty to the laws, they
say, that there are some firm, perpetual, and immovable, which they call
natural, that are imprinted in human kind by the condition of their own
proper being; and of these some reckon three, some four, some more, some
less; a sign that it is a mark as doubtful as the rest Now they are so
unfortunate, (for what can I call it else but misfortune that, of so
infinite a number of laws, there should not be found one at least
that fortune and the temerity of chance has suffered to be universally
received by the consent of all nations?) they are, I say, so miserable,
that of these three or four select laws, there is not so much as one
that is not contradicted and disowned, not only by one nation, but by
many. Now, the only likely sign, by which they can argue or infer some
natural laws, is the universality of approbation; for we should, without
doubt, follow with a common consent that which nature had truly ordained
us; and not only every nation, but every private man, would resent the
force and violence that any one should do him who would tempt him to
any thing contrary to this law. But let them produce me one of this
condition. Proctagoras and Aristo gave no other essence to the justice
of laws than the authority and opinion of the legislator; and that,
these laid aside, the honest and the good lost their qualities, and
remained empty names of indifferent things; Thrasymachus, in Plato,
is of opinion that there is no other right but the convenience of the
superior. There is not any thing wherein the world is so various as in
laws and customs; such a thing is abominable here which is elsewhere in
esteem, as in Lacedemon dexterity in stealing; marriages between near
relations, are capitally interdicted amongst us; they are elsewhere in
honour:--

Gentes esse ferantur,
In quibus et nato genitrix, et nata parenti
Jungitur, et pietas geminato crescit amore;
“There are some nations in the world, ‘tis said,
Where fathers daughters, sons their mothers wed;
And their affections thereby higher rise,
More firm and constant by these double ties;”

the murder of infants, the murder of fathers, the community of wives,
traffic of robberies, license in all sorts of voluptuousness; in short,
there is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some
nation or other.
It is credible that there are natural laws for us, as we see them
in other creatures; but they are lost in us, this fine human reason
everywhere so insinuating itself to govern and command, as to shuffle
and confound the face of things, according to its own vanity and
inconstancy: _Nihil itaque amplius nostrum est; quod nostrum dico,
artis est:_ “Therefore nothing is any more truly ours; what we call ours
belongs to art.” Subjects have divers lustres and divers considerations,
and thence the diversity of opinions principally proceeds; one nation
considers a subject in one aspect, and stops there: another takes it in
a different point of view.
There is nothing of greater horror to be imagined than for a man to eat
his father; and yet the people, whose ancient custom it was so to do,
looked upon it as a testimony of piety and affection, seeking thereby to
give their progenitors the most worthy and honourable sepulture; storing
up in themselves, and as it were in their own marrow, the bodies
and relics of their fathers; and in some sort regenerating them by
transmutation into their living flesh, by means of nourishment and
digestion. It is easy to consider what a cruelty and abomination it
must have appeared to men possessed and imbued with this snperstition
to throw their fathers’ remains to the corruption of the earth, and the
nourishment of beasts and worms.
Lycurgus considered in theft the vivacity, diligence, boldness, and
dexterity of purloining any thing from our neighbours, and the benefit
that redounded to the public that every one should look more narrowly
to the conservation of what was his own; and believed that, from this
double institution of assaulting and defending, advantage was to be made
for military discipline (which was the principal science and virtue to
which he would inure that nation), of greater consideration than the
disorder and injustice of taking another man’s goods.
Dionysius, the tyrant, offered Plato a robe of the Persian fashion,
long, damasked, and perfumed; Plato refused it, saying, “That being
born a man, he would not willingly dress himself in women’s clothes;”
but Aristippus accepted it with this answer, “That no accoutrement could
corrupt a chaste courage.” His friends reproaching him with meanness of
spirit, for laying it no more to heart that Dionysius had spit in his
face, “Fishermen,” said he, “suffer themselves to be drenched with the
waves of the sea from head to foot to catch a gudgeon.” Diogenes was
washing cabbages, and seeing him pass by, “If thou couldst live on
cabbage,” said he, “thou wouldst not fawn upon a tyrant;” to whom
Aristippus replied, “And if thou knewest how to live amongst men, thou
wouldst not be washing cabbages.” Thus reason finds appearances for
divers effects; ‘tis a pot with two ears that a man may take by the
right or left:--

Bellum, o terra hospita, portas:
Bello armantur eqni; bellum hæc armenta minantur.
Sed tamen idem olim curru succedere sueti
Quadrupedes, et frena jugo concordia ferre;
Spes est pacis.
“War, war is threatened from this foreign ground
(My father cried), where warlike steeds are found.
Yet, since reclaimed, to chariots they submit,
And bend to stubborn yokes, and champ the bit,
Peace may succeed to war.”

Solon, being lectured by his friends not to shed powerless and
unprofitable tears for the death of his son, “It is for that reason that
I the more justly shed them,” said he, “because they are powerless
and unprofitable.” Socrates’s wife exasperated her grief by this
circumstance: “Oh, how unjustly do these wicked judges put him to
death!” “Why,” replied he, “hadst thou rather they should execute me
justly?” We have our ears bored; the Greeks looked upon that as a mark
of slavery. We retire in private to enjoy our wives; the Indians do it
in public. The Scythians immolated strangers in their temples; elsewhere
temples were a refuge:--

Inde furor vulgi, quod numina vicinorum
Odit quisque locus, cum solos credat habendos
Esse deos, quos ipse colit.
“Thus ‘tis the popular fury that creates
That all their neighbours’ gods each nation hates;
Each thinks its own the genuine; in a word,
The only deities to be adored.”

I have heard of a judge who, coming upon a sharp conflict betwixt
Bartolus and Aldus, and some point controverted with many contrarieties,
writ in the margin of his book, “a question for a friend;” that is to
say, that truth was there so controverted and disputed that in a like
cause he might favour which of the parties he thought fit ‘Twas only for