Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 049

with a good conscience; and that, on the contrary, those of his time
were all sweet odour without, but stunk within of all sorts of vices;
that is to say, as I interpret it, that they abounded with learning
and eloquence, but were very defective in moral honesty. Incivility,
ignorance, simplicity, roughness, are the natural companions of
innocence; curiosity, subtlety, knowledge, bring malice in their train;
humility, fear, obedience, and affability, which are the principal
things that support and maintain human society, require an empty and
docile soul, and little presuming upon itself.
Christians have a particular knowledge, how natural and original an evil
curiosity is in man; the thirst of knowledge, and the desire to
become more wise, was the first ruin of man, and the way by which he
precipitated himself into eternal damnation. Pride was his ruin and
corruption. ‘Tis pride that diverts him from the common path, and makes
him embrace novelties, and rather choose to be head of a troop, lost and
wandering in the path of error; to be a master and a teacher of lies,
than to be a disciple in the school of truth, suffering himself to be
led and guided by the hand of another, in the right and beaten
road. ‘Tis, peradventure, the meaning of this old Greek saying, that
superstition follows pride, and obeys it as if it were a father:
[--Greek--] Ah, presumption, how much dost thou hinder us?
After that Socrates was told that the god of wisdom had assigned to him
the title of sage, he was astonished at it, and, searching and examining
himself throughout, could find no foundation for this divine judgment.
He knew others as just, temperate, valiant, and learned, as himself; and
more eloquent, more handsome, and more profitable to their country than
he. At last he concluded that he was not distinguished from others, nor
wise, but only because he did not think himself so; and that his God
considered the opinion of knowledge and wisdom as a singular absurdity
in man; and that his best doctrine was the doctrine of ignorance, and
simplicity his best wisdom. The sacred word declares those miserable
among us who have an opinion of themselves: “Dust and ashes,” says it
to such, “what hast thou wherein to glorify thyself?” And, in another
place, “God has made man like unto a shadow,” of whom who can judge,
when by removing the light it shall be vanished! Man is a thing of
nothing.
Our force is so far from being able to comprehend the divine height,
that, of the works of our Creator, those best bear his mark, and are
with better title his, which we the least understand. To meet with an
incredible thing is an occasion to Christians to believe; and it is
so much the more according to reason, by how much it is against human
reason. If it were according to reason, it would be no more a miracle;
and if it were according to example, it would be no longer a singular
thing. _Melius scitur Deus nesdendo_: “God is better known by not
knowing him,” says St. Austin: and Tacitus, _Sanctius est ac reverentius
de actis Deorum credere, quam scire_; “it is more holy and reverent to
believe the works of God than to know them;” and Plato thinks there is
something of impiety in inquiring too curiously into God, the world,
and the first causes of things: _Atque illum quidem parentem hujus
universitaiis invenire, difficile; et, quum jam inveneris, indicare in
vulgtis, nefas_: “to find out the parent of the world is very difficult;
and when found out, to reveal him to the vulgar is sin,” says Cicero. We
talk indeed of power, truth, justice; which are words that signify some
great thing; but that thing we neither see nor conceive at all. We say
that God fears, that God is angry, that God loves,

Immortalia mortali sermone notantes:
“Giving to things immortal mortal names.”

These are all agitations and emotions that cannot be in God, according
to our form, nor can we imagine them, according to his. It only belongs
to God to know himself, and to interpret his own works; and he does it
in our language, going out of himself, to stoop to us who grovel upon
the earth. How can prudence, which is the choice between good and evil,
be properly attributed to him whom no evil can touch? How can reason
and intelligence, which we make use of, to arrive by obscure at apparent
things; seeing that nothing is obscure to him? How justice, which
distributes to every one what appertains to him, a thing begot by the
society and community of men, how is that in God? How temperance, which
is the moderation of corporal pleasures, that have no place in the
Divinity? Fortitude to support pain, labour, and dangers, as little
appertains to him as the rest; these three things have no access to
him. For which reason Aristotle holds him equally exempt from virtue
and vice: _Neque gratia, neque ira teneri potest; quod quo talia essent,
imbecilla essent omnia?_ “He can neither be affected with favour nor
indignation, because both these are the effects of frailty.”
The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is,
is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to
understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common
people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ
to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our
own acquiring; ‘tis purely the gift of another’s bounty: ‘tis not by
meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have
acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the
imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it;
and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: ‘tis more by__ the
mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing
of the divine wisdom. ‘Tis no wonder if our natural and earthly parts
cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring
nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the
understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?
Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world
knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save
them that believe.”
Finally, should I examine whether it be in the power of man to find out
that which he seeks and if that quest, wherein he has busied himself so
many ages, has enriched him with any new force, or any solid truth; I
believe he will confess, if he speaks from his conscience, that all
he has got by so long inquiry is only to have learned to know his
own weakness. We have only by a long study confirmed and verified the
natural ignorance we were in before. The same has fallen out to men
truly wise, which befalls the ears of corn; they shoot and raise their
heads high and pert, whilst empty; but when full and swelled with grain
in maturity, begin to flag and droop. So men, having tried and sounded
all things, and having found in that mass of knowledge, and provision of
so many various things, nothing solid and firm, and nothing but
vanity, have quitted their presumption, and acknowledged their natural
condition. ‘Tis what Velleius reproaches Cotta withal and Cicero, “that
they had learned of Philo, that they had learned nothing.” Pherecydes,
one of the seven sages, writing to Thales upon his death-bed; “I have,”
said he, “given order to my people, after my interment, to carry my
writings to thee. If they please thee and the other sages, publish; if
not, suppress them. They contain no certainty with which I myself am
satisfied. Neither do I pretend to know the truth, or to attain to it.
I rather open than discover things.” The wisest man that ever was, being
asked what he knew, made answer, “He knew this, that he knew nothing.”
By which he verified what has been said, that the greatest part of what
we know is the least of what we do not; that is to say, that even
what we think we know is but a piece, and a very little one, of our
ignorance. We know things in dreams, says Plato, and are ignorant of
them in truth. _Ormes pene veteres nihil cognosci, nihil percipi,
nihil sciri posse dixerunt; angustos sensus, imbecilles animos, brevia
curricula vito._ “Almost all the ancients have declared that there is
nothing to be known, nothing to be perceived or understood; the senses
are too limited, men’s minds too weak, and the course of life too short.”
And of Cicero himself, who stood indebted to his learning for all he
was worth, Valerius says, “That he began to disrelish letters in his old
age; and when at his studies, it was with great independency upon any
one party; following what he thought probable, now in one sect, and
then in another, evermore wavering under the doubts of the academy.”
_Dicendum est, sed ita ut nihil affirment, quceram omnia, dubitans
plerumque, et mihi diffidens._ “Something I must say, but so as to
affirm nothing; I inquire into all things, but for the most part in
doubt and distrust of myself.”
I should have too fair a game should I consider man in his common way of
living and in gross; yet I might do it by his own rule, who judges truth
not by weight, but by the number of votes. Let us set the people aside,

Qui vigilans stertit,....
Mortua cui vita est prope jam vivo atque videnti;
“Half of his life by lazy sleep’s possess’d,
And when awake his soul but nods at best;”

who neither feel nor judge, and let most of their natural faculties lie
idle; I will take man in his highest ground. Let us consider him in
that little number of men, excellent and culled out from the rest, who,
having been endowed with a remarkable and particular natural force, have
moreover hardened and whetted it by care, study, and art, and raised
it to the highest pitch of wisdom to which it can possibly arrive. They
have adjusted their souls to all ways and all biases; have propped and
supported them with all foreign helps proper for them, and enriched and
adorned them with all they could borrow for their advantage, both within
and without the world; ‘tis in these is placed the utmost and most
supreme height to which human nature can attain. They have regulated
the world with policies and laws. They have instructed it with arts and
sciences, and by the example of their admirable manners. I shall make
account of none but such men as these, their testimony and experience.
Let us examine how far they have proceeded, and where they stopped. The
errors and defects that we shall find amongst these men the world may
boldly avow as their own.
Whoever goes in search of any thing must come to this, either to say
that he has found it, or that it is not to be found, or that he is yet
upon the search. All philosophy is divided into these three kinds; her
design is to seek out truth, knowledge, and certainty. The Peripatetics,
Epicureans, Stoics, and others, have thought they have found it. These
established the sciences we have, and have treated of them as of certain
knowledge. Clitomachus, Carneades, and the Academics, have despaired
in their search, and concluded that truth could not be conceived by our
understandings. The result of these is weakness and human ignorance.
This sect has had the most and the most noble followers. Pyrrho, and
other skeptics or epechists, whose dogmas are held by many of the
ancients to be taken from Homer, the seven sages, and from Archilochus
and Euripides, and to whose number these are added, Zeno, Democritus,
and Xenophanes, say that they are yet upon the inquiry after truth.
These conclude that the others, who think they have found it out, are
infinitely deceived; and that it is too daring a vanity in the second
sort to determine that human reason is not able to attain unto it;
for this establishing a standard of our power, to know and judge the
difficulty of things, is a great and extreme knowledge, of which they
doubt whether man is capable:--

Nil sciri quisquis putat, id quoque nescit,
An sciri possit; quam se nil scire fatetur.
“He that says nothing can be known, o’erthrows
His own opinion, for he nothing knows,
So knows not that.”

The ignorance that knows itself, judges and condemns itself, is not an
absolute ignorance; to be such, it must be ignorant of itself; so that
the profession of the Pyrrhonians is to waver, doubt, and inquire, not
to make themselves sure of, or responsible to themselves for any
thing. Of the three actions of the soul, imaginative, appetitive, and
consentive, they receive the two first; the last they kept ambiguous,
without inclination or approbation, either of one thing or another,
so light as it is. Zeno represented the motion of his imagination upon
these divisions of the faculties of the soul thus: “An open and expanded
hand signified appearance; a hand half shut, and the fingers a little
bending, consent; a clenched fist, comprehension; when with the left
he yet thrust the right fist closer, knowledge.” Now this situation of
their judgment upright and inflexible, receiving all objects without
application or consent, leads them to their ataraxy, which is a
peaceable condition of life, temperate, and exempt from the agitations
we receive by the impression of opinion and knowledge that we think we
have of things; whence spring fear, avarice, envy, immoderate desires,
ambition, pride, superstition, love of novelty, rebellion, disobedience,
obstinacy, and the greatest part of bodily ills; nay, and by that they
are exempt from the jealousy of their discipline; for they debate after
a very gentle manner; they fear no requital in their disputes; when they
affirm that heavy things descend they would be sorry to be believed,
and love tobe contradicted, to engender doubt and suspense of judgment,
which is their end. They only put forward their propositions to
contend with those they think we have in our belief. If you take their
arguments, they will as readily maintain the contrary; ‘tis all one to
them, they have no choice. If you maintain that snow is black, they will
argue on the contrary that it is white; if you say it is neither the
one nor the other, they will maintain that it is both. If you hold, of
certain judgment, that you know nothing, they will maintain that you do.
Yea, and if by an affirmative axiom you assure them that you doubt, they
will argue against you that you doubt not; or that you cannot judge and
determine that you doubt. And by this extremity of doubt, which jostles
itself, they separate and divide themselves from many opinions, even
of those they have several ways maintained, both concerning doubt and
ignorance. “Why shall not they be allowed to doubt,” say they, “as well
as the dogmatists, one of whom says green, another yellow? Can any thing
be proposed to us to grant, or deny, which it shall not be permitted to
consider as ambiguous?” And where others are carried away, either by
the custom of their country, or by the instruction of parents, or by
accident, as by a tempest, without judgment and without choice, nay,
and for the most part before the age of discretion, to such and such
an opinion, to the sect whether Stoic or Epicurean, with which they
are prepossessed, enslaved, and fast bound, as to a thing they cannot
forsake: _Ad quamcumque disciplinant, velut tempestate, delati, ad earn,
tanquam ad saxum, adhorescunt;_ “every one cleaves to the doctrine he
has happened upon, as to a rock against which he has been thrown by
tempest;” why shall not these likewise be permitted to maintain their
liberty, and consider things without obligation or slavery? _hoc
liberiores et solutiores, quod integra illis est judicandi potestas_:
“in this more unconstrained and free, because they have the greater
power of judging.” Is it not of some advantage to be disengaged from the
necessity that curbs others? Is it not better to remain in suspense than
to entangle one’s self in the innumerable errors that human fancy has
produced? Is it not much better to suspend one’s persuasion than to
intermeddle with these wrangling and seditious divisions: “What shall
I choose?” “What you please, provided you will choose.” A very foolish
answer; but such a one, nevertheless, as all dogmatism seems to point
at, and by which we are not permitted to be ignorant of what we are
ignorant of.
Take the most eminent side, that of the greatest reputation; it will
never be so sure that you shall not be forced to attack and contend with
a hundred and a hundred adversaries to defend it. Is it not better to
keep out of this hurly-burly? You are permitted to embrace Aristotle’s
opinions of the immortality of the soul with as much zeal as your honour
and life, and to give the lie to Plato thereupon, and shall they be
interdicted to doubt him? If it be lawful for Panætius to maintain
his opinion about augury, dreams, oracles, vaticinations, of which the
Stoics made no doubt at all; why may not a wise man dare to do the
same in all things that he dared to do in those he had learned of his
masters, established by the common consent of the school, whereof he
is a professor and a member? If it be a child that judges, he knows not
what it is; if a wise man, he is prepossessed. They have reserved for
themselves a marvellous advantage in battle, having eased themselves of
the care of defence. If you strike them, they care not, provided
they strike too, and they turn every thing to their own use. If they
overcome, your argument is lame; if you, theirs; if they fall short,
they verify ignorance; if you fall short, you do it; if they prove that
nothing is known, ‘tis well; if they cannot prove it, ‘tis also well:
_Ut quurn in eadem re paria contrariis in partibus momenta inveniuntur,
facilius ab utraque parte assertio sustineatur:_ “That when like
sentiments happen _pro_ and _con_ in the same thing, the assent may on
both sides be more easily suspended.” And they make account to find out,
with much greater facility, why a thing is false, than why ‘tis true;
that which is not, than that which is; and what they do not believe,
than what they do. Their way of speaking is: “I assert nothing; it is no
more so than so, or than neither one nor t’other; I understand it not.
Appearances are everywhere equal; the law of speaking, _pro_ or _con_,
is the same. Nothing seems true, that may not seem false.” Their
sacramental word is that is to say, “I hold, I stir not.” This is the
burden of their song, and others of like stuff. The effect of which is
a pure, entire, perfect, and absolute suspension of judgment. They make
use of their reason to inquire and debate, but not to fix and determine.
Whoever shall imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment
without bias, propension, or inclination, upon any occasion whatever,
conceives a true idea of Pyrrhonism. I express this fancy as well as
I can, by reason that many find it hard to conceive, and the authors
themselves represent it a little variously and obscurely.
As to what concerns the actions of life, they are in this of the
common fashion. They yield and give up themselves to their natural
inclinations, to the power and impulse of passions, to the constitution
of laws and customs, and to the tradition of arts; _Non enim nos Deus
ista scire, sed tantummodo uti, voluit._ “For God would not have us
know, but only use those things.” They suffer their ordinary actions to
be guided by those things, without any dispute or judgment. For
which reason I cannot consent to what is said of Pyrrho, by those
who represent him heavy and immovable, leading a kind of savage and
unsociable life, standing the jostle of carts, going upon the edge of
precipices, and refusing to accommodate himself to the laws. This is to
enhance upon his discipline; he would never make himself a stock or
a stone, he would show himself a living man, discoursing, reasoning,
enjoying all reasonable conveniences and pleasures, employing and making
use of all his corporal and spiritual faculties in rule and reason.
The fantastic, imaginary, and false privileges that man had usurped
of lording it, ordaining, and establishing, he has utterly quitted and
renounced. Yet there is no sect but is constrained to permit her sage to
follow several things not comprehended, perceived, or consented to, if
he means to live. And if he goes to sea, he follows that design, not
knowing whether his voyage shall be successful or no; and only insists
upon the tightness of the vessel, the experience of the pilot, and the
convenience of the season, and such probable circumstances; after which
he is bound to go, and suffer himself to be governed by appearances,
provided there be no express and manifest contrariety in them. He has a
body, he has a soul; the senses push them, the mind spurs them on. And
although he does not find in himself this proper and singular sign of
judging, and that he perceives that he ought not to engage his
consent, considering that there may be some false, equal to these true
appearances, yet does he not, for all that, fail of carrying on the
offices of his life with great liberty and convenience. How many arts
are there that profess to consist more in conjecture than knowledge;
that decide not on true and false, and only follow that which seems so!
There are, say they, true and false, and we have in us wherewith to seek
it; but not to make it stay when we touch it. We are much more prudent,
in letting ourselves be regulated by the order of the world, without
inquiry. A soul clear from prejudice has a marvellous advance towards
tranquillity and repose. Men that judge and control their judges, do
never duly submit to them.
How much more docile and easy to be governed, both by the laws of
religion and civil polity, are simple and incurious minds, than those
over-vigilant wits, that will still be prating of divine and human
causes! There is nothing in human invention that carries so great a show
of likelihood and utility as this; this presents man, naked and empty,
confessing his natural weakness, fit to receive some foreign force from
above, unfurnished of human, and therefore more apt to receive into him
the divine knowledge, making nought of his own judgment, to give more
room to faith; neither disbelieving nor establishing any dogma against
common observances; humble, obedient, disciplinable, and studious; a
sworn enemy of heresy; and consequently freeing himself from vain and
irreligious opinions, introduced by false sects. ‘Tis a blank paper
prepared to receive such forms from the finger of God as he shall please
to write upon it. The more we resign and commit ourselves to God, and
the more we renounce ourselves, of the greater value we are. “Take in
good part,” says Ecclesiastes, “the things that present themselves to
thee, as they seem and taste from hand to mouth; the rest is out of thy
knowledge.” _Dominus novit cogitationes hominum, quoniam vanæ sunt_:
“The Lord knoweth the hearts of men, that they are but vanity.”
Thus we see that of the three general sects of philosophy, two make open
profession of doubt and ignorance; and in that of the Dogmatists, which
is the third, it is easy to discover that the greatest part of them only
assume this face of confidence and assurance that
they may produce the better effect; they have not so much thought
to establish any certainty for us, as to show us how far they have
proceeded in their search of truth: _Quam docti jingunt magis quam
nôrunt_: “Which the learned rather feign than know.” Timæus, being
to instruct Socrates in what he knew of the gods, the world, and men,
proposes to speak to him as a man to a man; and that it is sufficient,
if his reasons are probable as those of another; for that exact
reasons were neither in his nor any other mortal hand; which one of
his followers has thus imitated: _Ut potero, explicabo: nec tamen, ut
Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa quæ dixero; sed, ut homunculus,
probabilia conjecturâ sequens:_ “I will, as well as I am able, explain;
affirming, yet not as the Pythian oracle, that what I say is fixed and
certain, but like a mere man, that follows probabilities by conjecture.”
And this, upon the natural and common subject of the contempt of death;
he has elsewhere translated from the very words of Plato: _Si forte, de
Deorum naturâ ortuque mundi disserentes, minus id quod habemiis in animo
consequi-mur, haud erit mirum; oquum est enim meminisse, et me, qui
disseram, hominem esse, et vos, qui judicetis, ut, si probabilia
dicentur, nihil ultra requiratis?_ “If perchance, when we discourse
of the nature of God, and the world’s original, we cannot do it as we
desire, it will be no great wonder. For it is just you should remember
that both I who speak and you who are to judge, are men; so that if
probable things are delivered, you shall require and expect no more.”
Aristotle ordinarily heaps up a great number of other men’s opinions and
beliefs, to compare them with his own, and to let us see how much he has
gone beyond them, and how much nearer he approaches to the likelihood of
truth; for truth is not to be judged by the authority and testimony
of others; which made Epicurus religiously avoid quoting them in his
writings. This is the prince of all dogmatists, and yet we are told by
him that the more we know the more we have room for doubt. In earnest,
we sometimes see him shroud and muffle up himself in so thick and so
inextricable an obscurity that we know not what to make of his advice;
it is, in effect, a Pyrrhonism under a resolutive form. Hear Cicero’s
protestation, who expounds to us another’s fancy by his own: _Qui
requirunt quid de quâque re ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt quam
necesse est,... Hoc in philosophiâ ratio, contra omnia disserendi,
nuttamque rem aperte judicandi, profecta a Socrate, repetita
ab Arcesila, conjirmata a Gameade, usquê ad nostram viget
cetatem..........Hi sumus, qui omnibus veris falsa quodam adjuncta esse
dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et
assentiendi nota._ “They who desire to know what we think of every
thing are therein more inquisitive than is necessary. This practice
in philosophy of disputing against every thing, and of absolutely
concluding nothing, begun by Socrates, repeated by Arcesilaus, and
confirmed by Cameades, has continued in use even to our own times. We
are they who declare that there is so great a mixture of things false
amongst all that are true, and they so resemble one another, that there
can be in them no certain mark to direct us either to judge or assent.”
Why hath not Aristotle only, but most of the philosophers, affected
difficulty, if not to set a greater value upon the vanity of the
subject, and amuse the curiosity of our minds by giving them this hollow
and fleshless bone to pick? Clitomachus affirmed “That he could never
discover by Carneades’s writings what opinion he was of.” This was it
that made Epicurus affect to be abstruse, and that procured Heraclitus
the epithet of [--Greek--] Difficulty is a coin the learned make use
of, like jugglers, to conceal the vanity of their art, and which human
sottishness easily takes for current pay.

Claras, ob obscuram linguam, magis inter manes...
Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque
Inversis quæ sub verbis latitantia cemunt.
“Bombast and riddle best do puppies please,
For fools admire and love such things as these;
And a dull quibble, wrapt in dubious phrase,
Up to the height doth their wise wonder raise.”

Cicero reprehends some of his friends for giving more of their time
to the study of astrology, logic, and geometry, than they were really
worth; saying that they were by these diverted from the duties of life,
and more profitable and proper studies. The Cyrenaick philosophers, in
like manner, despised physics and logic. Zeno, in the very beginning of
the books of the commonwealth, declared all the liberal arts of no use.
Chrysippus said “That what Plato and Aristotle had writ, concerning
logic, they had only done in sport, and by way of exercise;” and could