Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 058

music will not rouse and cheer; nor so stubborn a soul that will
not feel itself struck with some reverence in considering the gloomy
vastness of our churches, the variety of ornaments, and order of our
ceremonies; and in hearing the solemn music of our organs, and the grace
and devout harmony of our voices. Even those that come in with contempt
feel a certain shivering in their hearts, and something of dread that
makes them begin to doubt their opinions. For my part I do not think
myself strong enough to hear an ode of Horace or Catullus sung by a
beautiful young mouth without emotion; and Zeno had reason to say “that
the voice was the flower of beauty.” One would once make me believe that
a certain person, whom all we Frenchmen know, had imposed upon me in
repeating some verses that he had made; that they were not the same upon
paper that they were in the air; and that my eyes would make a contrary
judgment to my ears; so great a power has pronunciation to give fashion
and value to works that are left to the efficacy and modulation of the
voice. And therefore Philoxenus was not so much to blame, hearing
one giving an ill accent to some composition of his, in spurning and
breaking certain earthen vessels of his, saying, “I break what is thine,
because thou corruptest what is mine.” To what end did those men who
have, with a firm resolution, destroyed themselves, turn away their
faces that they might not see the blow that was by themselves appointed?
And that those who, for their health, desire and command incisions to
be made, and cauteries to be applied to them, cannot endure the sight of
the preparations, instruments, and operations of the surgeon, being that
the sight is not in any way to participate in the pain? Are not these
proper examples to verify the authority the senses have over the
imagination? ‘Tis to much purpose that we know these tresses were
borrowed from a page or a lackey; that this rouge came from Spain, and
this pearl-powder from the Ocean Sea. Our sight will, nevertheless,
compel us to confess their subject more agreeable and more lovely
against all reason; for in this there is nothing of its own:--

Auferinrar cultu; gemmis, auroque teguntur
Crimina; pars minima est ipsa puella sni.
Sæpe, ubi sit quod ames, inter tarn multa requiras:
Decipit hac oculos ægide dives Amor.
“By dress we’re won; gold, gems, and rich brocades
Make up the pageant that your heart invades;
In all that glittering figure which you see,
The far least part of her own self is she;
In vain for her you love amidst such cost
You search, the mistress in such dress is lost.”

What a strange power do the poets attribute to the senses, that make
Narcissus so desperately in love with his own shadow,

Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse;
Se cupit imprudens, et, qui probat, ipse probatur;
Dumque petit, petitur; pariterque accendit, et ardet:
“Admireth all; for which to be admired;
And inconsiderately himself desir’d.
The praises which he gives his beauty claim’d,
Who seeks is sought, th’ inflamer is inflam’d:”

and Pygmalion’s judgment so troubled by the impression of the sight
of his ivory statue that he loves and adores it as if it were a living
woman!

Oscnla dat, reddique putat: sequi turque, tenetque,
Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris;
Et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus.
“He kisses, and believes he’s kissed again;
Seizes, and ‘twixt his arms his love doth strain,
And thinks the polish’d ivory thus held
Doth to his fingers amorous pressure yield,
And has a timorous fear, lest black and blue
Should in the parts with ardour press’d ensue.”

Put a philosopher into a cage of small thin set bars of iron, hang him
on the top of the high tower of Notre Dame at Paris; he will see, by
manifest reason, that he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find
(unless he has been used to the plumber’s trade) that he cannot help but
the sight of the excessive height will fright and astound him; for we
have enough to do to assure ourselves in the galleries of our steeples,
if they are made with open work, although they are of stone; and some
there are that cannot endure so much as to think of it. Let there be a
beam thrown over betwixt these two towers, of breadth sufficient to
walk upon, there is no philosophical wisdom so firm that can give us the
courage to walk over it as we should do upon the ground. I have often
tried this upon our mountains in these parts; and though I am one who am
not the most subject to be afraid, I was not able to endure to look into
that infinite depth without horror and trembling, though I stood above
my length from the edge of the precipice, and could not have fallen
unless I would. Where I also observed that, what height soever the
precipice was, provided there were some tree, or some jutting out of a
rock, a little to support and divide the sight, it a little eases our
fears, and gives greater assurance; as if they were things by which in
falling we might have some relief; but that direct precipices we are
not to look upon without being giddy; _Ut despici vine vertigine
timid ocvlorum animique non possit:_ “‘To that one cannot look without
dizziness;” which is a manifest imposture of the sight. And therefore
it was that that fine philosopher put out his own eyes, to free the soul
from being diverted by them, and that he might philosophize at greater
liberty; but, by the same rule, he should have dammed up his ears,
that Theophrastus says are the most dangerous instruments about us for
receiving violent impressions to alter and disturb us; and, finally,
should have deprived himself of all his other senses, that is to say, of
his life and being; for they have all the power to command our soul and
reason: _Fit etiam sope specie quâdam, sope vocum gravitate et cantibus,
ut pettantur animi vehementius; sope etiam cura et timoré,_ “For it
often falls out that the minds are more vehemently struck by some sight,
by the quality and sound of the voice, or by singing; and ofttimes also
by grief and fear.” Physicians hold that there are certain complexions
that are agitated by the same sounds and instruments even to fury. I
have seen some who could not hear a bone gnawed under the table without
impatience; and there is scarce any man who is not disturbed at the
sharp and shrill noise that the file makes in grating upon the iron;
as also to hear chewing near them, or to hear any one speak who has an
impediment in the throat or nose, will move some people even to anger
and hatred. Of what use was that piping prompter of Gracchus, who
softened, raised, and moved his master’s voice whilst he declaimed at
Rome, if the movements and quality of the sound had not the power to
move and alter the judgments of the auditory? In earnest, there is
wonderful reason to keep such a clutter about the firmness of this fine
piece, that suffers itself to be turned and twined by the motion and
accidents of so light a wind.
The same cheat that the senses put upon our understanding they have in
turn put upon them; the soul also some times has its revenge; they lie
and contend which should most deceive one another. What we see and hear
when we are transported with passion, we neither see nor hear as it
is:--

Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas.
“Thebes seems two cities, and the sun two suns.”

The object that we love appears to us more beautiful than it really is;

Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus
Esse in deliciis, summoque in honore vigere;
“Hence ‘tis that ugly things in fancied dress
Seem gay, look fair to lovers’ eyes, and please;”

and that we hate more ugly; to a discontented and afflicted man the
light of the day seems dark and overcast. Our senses are not only
depraved, but very often stupefied by the passions of the soul; how many
things do we see that we do not take notice of, if the mind be occupied
with other thoughts?

In rebus quoque apertis noscere possis,
Si non advertas animum, proinde esse quasi omni
Tempore semotæ fuerint, longeque remotæ:
“Nay, even in plainest things, unless the mind
Take heed, unless she sets herself to find,
The thing no more is seen, no more belov’d,
Than if the most obscure and most remov’d:”

it would appear that the soul retires within, and amuses the powers of
the senses. And so both the inside and the outside of man is full of
infirmity and falsehood.
They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the
right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and
exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake;
but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the
difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian
brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps,
here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, ‘tis still dark, and
Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so
clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear
enough and free from clouds; moreover, sleep, when it is profound,
sometimes rocks even dreams themselves asleep; but our waking is never
so sprightly that it rightly purges and dissipates those whimsies, which
are waking dreams, and worse than dreams. Our reason and soul receiving
those fancies and opinions that come in dreams, and authorizing the
actions of our dreams with the like approbation that they do those of
the day, wherefore do we not doubt whether our thought, our action, is
not another sort of dreaming, and our waking a certain kind of sleep?
If the senses be our first judges, it is not ours that we are alone to
consult; for, in this faculty, beasts have as great, or greater, than
we; it is certain that some of them have the sense of hearing more quick
than man; others that of seeing, others that of feeling, others that
of touch and taste. Democritus said, that the gods and brutes had the
sensitive faculties more perfect than man. But betwixt the effects of
their senses and ours the difference is extreme. Our spittle cleanses
and dries up our wounds; it kills the serpent:--

Tantaque in his rebas distantia differitasque est,
Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum.
Sæpe etenim serpens, hominis contacta salivà,
Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa:
“And in those things the difference is so great
That what’s one’s poison is another’s meat;
For serpents often have been seen, ‘tis said,
When touch’d with human spittle, to go mad,
And bite themselves to death:”

what quality shall we attribute to our spittle? as it affects ourselves,
or as it affects the serpent? By which of the two senses shall we prove
the true essence that we seek for?
Pliny says there are certain sea-hares in the Indies that are poison to
us, and we to them; insomuch that, with the least touch, we kill
them. Which shall be truly poison, the man or the fish? Which shall we
believe, the fish of the man, or the man of the fish? One quality of the
air infects a man, that does the ox no harm; some other infects the ox,
but hurts not the man. Which of the two shall, in truth and nature, be
the pestilent quality? To them who have the jaundice, all things seem
yellow and paler than to us:--

Lurida præterea fiunt, quæcunque tuentur Arquati.
“Besides, whatever jaundic’d eyes do view
Looks pale as well as those, and yellow too.”

They who are troubled with the disease that the physicians call
hyposphagma--which is a suffusion of blood under the skin--see all
things red and bloody. What do we know but that these humours, which
thus alter the operations of sight, predominate in beasts, and are usual
with them? for we see some whose eyes are yellow, like us who have the
jaundice; and others of a bloody colour; ‘tis likely that the colours
of objects seem other to them than to us. Which of the two shall make
a right judgment? for it is not said that the essence of things has a
relation to man only; hardness, whiteness, depth, and sharpness, have
reference to the service and knowledge of animals as well as to us, and
nature has equally designed them for their use. When we press down
the eye, the body that we look upon we perceive to be longer and more
extended;--many beasts have their eyes so pressed down; this length,
therefore, is perhaps the true form of that body, and not that which our
eyes give it in the usual state. If we close the lower part of the eye
things appear double to us:--

Bina lucemarum fiorentia lumina flammis...
Et duplices hominum faciès, et corpora bina.
“One lamp seems double, and the men appear
Each on two bodies double heads to bear.”

If our ears be hindered, or the passage stopped with any thing, we
receive the sound quite otherwise than we usually do; animals, likewise,
who have either the ears hairy, or but a very little hole instead of an
ear, do not, consequently, hear as we do, but receive another kind of
sound. We see at festivals and theatres that, opposing a painted glass
of a certain colour to the light of the flambeaux, all things in the
place appear to us green, yellow, or violet:--

Et vulgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela,
Et ferrugina, cum, magnis intenta theatris,
Per malos vulgata trabesque, trementia pendent;
Namque ibi consessum caveai subter, et omnem
Scenai speciem, patrum, matrumque, deorumque
Inficiunt, coguntque suo volitare colore:
“Thus when pale curtains, or the deeper red,
O’er all the spacious theatre are spread,
Which mighty masts and sturdy pillars bear,
And the loose curtains wanton in the air;
Whole streams of colours from the summit flow,
The rays divide them in their passage through,
And stain the scenes, and men, and gods below:”

‘tis likely that the eyes of animals, which we see to be of divers
colours, produce the appearance of bodies the same with their eyes.
We should, therefore, to make a right judgment of the oppositions of
the senses, be first agreed with beasts, and secondly amongst ourselves;
which we by no means are, but enter into dispute every time that one
hears, sees, or tastes something otherwise than another does, and
contests, as much as upon any other thing, about the diversity of the
images that the senses represent to us. A child, by the ordinary rule of
nature, hears, sees, and talks otherwise than a man of thirty years old;
and he than one of threescore. The senses are, in some, more obscure and
dusky, and more open and quick in others. We receive things variously,
according as we are, and according as they appear to us. Those rings
which are cut out in the form of feathers, which are called _endless
feathers_, no eye can discern their size, or can keep itself from the
deception that on one side they enlarge, and on the other contract, and
come So a point, even when the ring is being turned round the finger;
yet, when you feel them, they seem all of an equal size. Now, our
perception being so uncertain and so controverted, it is no more a
wonder if we are told that we may declare that snow appears white to us;
but that to affirm that it is in its own essence really so is more
than we are able to justify; and, this foundation being shaken, all
the knowledge in the world must of necessity fall to ruin. What! do
our senses themselves hinder one another? A picture seems raised and
embossed to the sight; in the handling it seems flat to the touch.
Shall we say that musk, which delights the smell, and is offensive to
the taste, is agreeable or no? There are herbs and unguents proper for
one part o£ the body, that are hurtful to another; honey is pleasant to
the taste, but offensive to the sight. They who, to assist their lust,
used in ancient times to make use of magnifying-glasses to represent the
members they were to employ bigger, by that ocular tumidity to please
themselves the more; to which of their senses did they give the
prize,--whether to the sight, that represented the members as large and
great as they would desire, or to the feeling, which represented them
little and contemptible? Are they our senses that supply the subject
with these different conditions, and have the subjects themselves,
nevertheless, but one? As we see in the bread we eat, it is nothing but
bread, but, by being eaten, it becomes bones, blood, flesh, hair; and
nails:--

Ut cibus in membra atque artus cum diditur omnes,
Disperit,, atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se;
“As meats, diffus’d through all the members, lose
Their former state, and different things compose;”

the humidity sucked up by the root of a tree becomes trunk, leaf, and
fruit; and the air, being but one, is modulated, in a trumpet, to a
thousand sorts of sounds; are they our senses, I would fain know, that,
in like manner, form these subjects into so many divers qualities, or
have they them really such in themselves? And upon this doubt what can
we determine of their true essence? Moreover, since the accidents of
disease, of raving, or sleep, make things appear otherwise to us than
they do to the healthful, the wise, and those that are awake, is it
not likely that our right posture of health and understanding, and our
natural humours, have, also, wherewith to give a being to things
that have a relation to their own condition, and accommodate them to
themselves, as well as when they are disordered;--that health is as
capable of giving them an aspect as sickness? Why has not the temperate
a certain form of objects relative to it, as well as the intemperate?
and why may it not as well stamp it with its own character as the other?
He whose mouth is out of taste, says the wine is flat; the healthful man
commends its flavour, and the thirsty its briskness. Now, our condition
always accommodating things to itself, and transforming them according
to its own posture, we cannot know what things truly are in themselves,
seeing that nothing comes to us but what is falsified and altered by the
senses. Where the compass, the square, and the rule, are crooked, all
propositions drawn thence, and all buildings erected by those guides,
must, of necessity, be also defective; the uncertainty of our senses
renders every thing uncertain that they produce:--

Denique ut in fabricâ, si prava est régula prima,
Normaque si fallax rectis regionibus exit,
Et libella aliquâ si ex parte claudicat hilum;
Omnia mendose fieri, atque obstipa necessum est,
Prava, cubantia, prona, supina, atque absona tecta;
Jam ruere ut quædam videantux’velle, ruantque
Prodita judiciis fallacibus omnia primis;
Sic igitur ratio tibi reram prava necesse est,
Falsaque sit, falsis quæcunque ab sensibus orta est.
“But lastly, as in building, if the line
Be not exact and straight, the rule decline,
Or level false, how vain is the design!
Uneven, an ill-shap’d and tottering wall
Must rise; this part must sink, that part must fall,
Because the rules were false that fashion’d all;
Thus reason’s rules are false if all commence
And rise from failing and from erring sense.”

As to what remains, who can be fit to judge of and to determine those
differences? As we say in controversies of religion that we must have
a judge neither inclining to the one side nor the other, free from all
choice and affection, which cannot be amongst Christians, just so it
falls out in this; for if he be old he cannot judge of the sense of
old age, being himself a party in the case; if young, there is the same
exception; if healthful, sick, asleep, or awake, he is still the
same incompetent judge. We must have some one exempt from all these
propositions, as of things indifferent to him; and by this rule we must
have a judge that never was.
To judge of the appearances that we receive of subjects, we ought t
have a deciding instrument; to verify this instrument we must have
demonstration; to verify this demonstration an instrument; and here
we are round again upon the wheel, and no further advanced. Seeing
the senses cannot determine our dispute, being full of uncertainty
themselves, it must then be reason that must do it; but no reason can be
erected upon any other foundation than that of another reason; and so we
run back to all infinity. Our fancy does not apply itself to things that
are strange, but is conceived by the mediation of the senses; and the
senses do not comprehend a foreign subject, but only their own passions;
by which means fancy and appearance are no part of the subject, but only
of the passion and sufferance of sense; which passion and subject are
different things; wherefore whoever judges by appearances judges by
another thing than the subject. And to say that the passions of
the senses convey to the soul the quality of foreign subjects by
resemblance, how can the soul and understanding be assured of this
resemblance, having of itself no commerce with foreign subjects? As they
who never knew Socrates cannot, when they see his picture, say it is
like him. Now, whoever would, notwithstanding, judge by appearances, if
it be by all, it is impossible, because they hinder one another by their
contrarieties and discrepancies, as we by experience see: shall some
select appearances govern the rest? you must verify this select by
another select, the second by a third, and thus there will never be
any end to it. Finally, there is no constant existence, neither of the
objects’ being nor our own; both we, and our judgments, and all mortal
things, are evermore incessantly running and rolling; and consequently
nothing certain can be established from the one to the other, both the
judging and the judged being in a continual motion and mutation.
We have no communication with being, by reason that all human nature is
always in the middle, betwixt being bom and dying, giving but an obscure
appearance and shadow, a weak and uncertain opinion of itself; and if,
perhaps, you fix your thought to apprehend your being, it would be but
like grasping water; for the more you clutch your hand to squeeze and
hold what is in its own nature flowing, so much more you lose of what
you would grasp and hold. So, seeing that all things are subject to
pass from one change to another, reason, that there looks for a real
substance, finds itself deceived, not being able to apprehend any thing
that is subsistent and permanent, because that every thing is either
entering into being, and is not yet arrived at it, or begins to die
before it is bom. Plato said, that bodies had never any existence, but
only birth; conceiving that Homer had made the Ocean and Thetis father
and mother of the gods, to show us that all things are in a perpetual
fluctuation, motion, and variation; the opinion of all the philosophers,
as he says, before his time, Parmenides only excepted, who would not
allow things to have motion, on the power whereof he sets a mighty
value. Pythagoras was of opinion that all matter was flowing and
unstable; the Stoics, that there is no time present, and that what we
call so is nothing but the juncture and meeting of the future and the
past; Heraclitus, that never any man entered twice into the same river;
Epichar-mus, that he who borrowed money but an hour ago does not owe
it now; and that he who was invited over-night to come the next day to
dinner comes nevertheless uninvited, considering that they are no more
the same men, but are become others; and that there could not a mortal
substance be found twice in the same condition; for, by the suddenness
and quickness of the change, it one while disperses, and another
reunites; it comes and goes after such a manner that what begins to be
born never arrives to the perfection of being, forasmuch as that birth
is never finished and never stays, as being at an end, but from the seed
is evermore changing and shifting one to another; as human seed is first
in the mother’s womb made a formless embryo, after delivered thence a
sucking infant, afterwards it becomes a boy, then a youth, then a man,
and at last a decrepit old man; so that age and subsequent generation is
always destroying and spoiling that which went before:--

Mutât enira mundi naturam totius ætas,
Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet;
Nec manet ulla sui similis res; omnia migrant,
Omnia commutât natura, et vertere cogit.
“For time the nature of the world translates,
And from preceding gives all things new states;
Nought like itself remains, but all do range,
And nature forces every thing to change.”

“And yet we foolishly fear one kind of death, whereas we have already
passed, and do daily pass, so many others; for not only, as Heraclitus
said, the death of fire is generation of air, and the death of air
generation of water; but, moreover, we may more manifestly discern it in
ourselves; manhood dies, and passes away when age comes on; and youth is
terminated in the flower of age of a full-grown man, infancy in youth,
and the first age dies in infancy; yesterday died in to-day, and to-day
will die in to-morrow; and there is nothing that remains in the same
state, or that is always the same thing. And that it is so let this be
the proof; if we are always one and the same, how comes it to pass that
we are now pleased with one thing, and by and by with another? How
comes it to pass that we love or hate contrary things, that we praise
or condemn them? How comes it to pass that we have different affections,
and no more retain the same sentiment in the same thought? For it is not
likely that without mutation we should assume other passions; and, that
which suffers mutation does not remain the same, and if it be not the
same it is not at all; but the same that the being is does, like it,
unknowingly change and alter; becoming evermore another from another
thing; and consequently the natural senses abuse and deceive themselves,
taking that which seems for that which is, for want of well knowing
what that which is, is. But what is it then that truly is? That which is
eternal; that is to say, that never had beginning, nor never shall have
ending, and to which time can bring no mutation. For time is a mobile
thine, and that appears as in a shadow, with a matter evermore flowing
and running, without ever remaining stable and permanent; and to which
belong those words, _before and after, has been, or shall be:_ which at
the first sight, evidently show that it is not a thing that is; for it
were a great folly, and a manifest falsity, to say that that is which is
not ÿet being, or that has already ceased to be. And as to these words,
_present, instant, and now_, by which it seems that we principally
support and found the intelligence of time, reason, discovering, does
presently destroy it; for it immediately divides and splits it into the
_future and past_, being of necessity to consider it divided in two. The
same happens to nature, that is measured, as to time that measures it;
for she has nothing more subsisting and permanent than the other, but
all things are either born, bearing, or dying. So that it were sinful to
say of God, who is he only who _is, that he was, or that he shall be _;
for those are terms of declension, transmutation, and vicissitude, of
what cannot continue or remain in being; wherefore we are to conclude
that God alone is, not according to any measure of time, but according
to an immutable and an immovable eternity, not measured by time, nor
subject to any declension; before whom nothing was, and after whom
nothing shall be, either more new or more recent, but a real being, that
with one sole now fills the for ever, and that there is nothing that
truly is but he alone; without our being able to say, _he has been, or
shall be_; without beginning, and without end.” To this so religious