Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 052

of the worthy Faustina, where this eagle is represented carrying these
deified souls to heaven with their heels upwards. ‘Tis pity that we
should fool ourselves with our own fopperies and inventions,

Quod finxere, timent,
“They fear their own inventions,”

like children who are frighted with the same face of their playfellow,
that they themselves have smeared and smutted. _Quasi quicquam
infelicius sit homine, cui sua figmenta dominantur:_
“As if any thing could be more unhappy than man, who is insulted over by
his own imagination.” ‘Tis far from honouring him who made us, to honour
him that we have made. Augustus had more temples than Jupiter, served
with as much religion and belief of miracles. The Thracians, in return
of the benefits they had received from Agesilaus, came to bring him word
that they had canonized him: “Has your nation,” said he to them, “the
power to make gods of whom they please? Pray first deify some one
amongst yourselves, and when I shall see what advantage he has by it,
I will thank you for your offer.” Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot
make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens. Hear Trismegistus
in praise of our sufficiency: “Of all the wonderful things, it surmounts
all wonder that man could find out the divine nature and make it.” And
take here the arguments of the school of philosophy itself:--

Nosse cui divos et coli munina soli,
Aut soli nescire, datum.
“To whom to know the deities of heaven,
Or know he knows them not, alone ‘tis given.”

“If there is a God, he is a living creature; if he be a living creature,
he has sense; and if he has sense, he is subject to corruption. If he
be without a body he is without a soul, and consequently without action;
and if he has a body, it is perishable.” Is not here a triumph? we
are incapable of having made the world; there must then be some more
excellent nature that has put a hand to the work. It were a foolish and
ridiculous arrogance to esteem ourselves the most perfect thing of the
universe. There must then be something that is better, and that must be
God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not
know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for
rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial
palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some
possessor, who is much greater than we? Is not the most supreme always
the most worthy? but we are in the lowest form. Nothing without a soul
and without reason can produce a living creature capable of reason. The
world produces us, the world then has soul and reason. Every part of us
is less than we. We are part of the world, the world therefore is endued
with wisdom and reason, and that more abundantly than we. ‘Tis a fine
thing to have a great government; the government of the world then
appertains to some happy nature. The stars do us no harm; they are then
full of goodness. We have need of nourishment; then so have the gods
also, and feed upon the vapours of the earth. Worldly goods are not
goods to God; therefore they are not goods to us; offending and being
offended are equally testimonies of imbecility; ‘tis therefore folly to
fear God. God is good by his nature; man by his industry, which is more.
The divine and human wisdom have no other distinction, but that the
first is eternal; but duration is no accession to wisdom, therefore we
are companions. We have life, reason, and liberty; we esteem goodness,
charity, and justice; these qualities are then in him. In conclusion,
building and destroying, the conditions of the Divinity, are forged by
man, according as they relate to himself. What a pattern, and what a
model! let us stretch, let us raise and swell human qualities as much as
we please; puff up thyself, poor man, yet more and more, and more:--

Non, si tu ruperis, inquit.
“Not if thou burst,” said he.

_Profecto non Deum, quern cogitare non possunt, sed semetip pro illo
cogitantes, non ilium, sed seipsos, non illi, sed sibi comparant?_
“Certainly they do not imagine God, whom they cannot imagine; but
they imagine themselves in his stead; they do not compare him, but
themselves, not to him, but to themselves.” In natural things the
effects do but half relate to their causes. What’s this to the purpose?
His condition is above the order of nature, too elevated, too remote,
and too mighty, to permit itself to be bound and fettered by our
conclusions. ‘Tis not through ourselves that we arrive at that place;
our ways lie too low. We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis
than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe.
They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times,
and so many generations. Paulina, the wife of Satuminus, a matron of
great reputation at Rome, thinking she lay with the god Serapis, found
herself in the arms of an amoroso of hers, through the panderism of the
priests of his temple. Varro, the most subtle and most learned of all
the Latin authors, in his book of theology, writes, that the sexton of
Hercules’s temple, throwing dice with one hand for himself, and with the
other for Hercules, played after that manner with him for a supper and
a wench; if he won, at the expense of the offerings; if he lost, at his
own. The sexton lost, and paid the supper and the wench. Her name was
Laurentina, who saw by night this god in her arms, who moreover told
her, that the first she met the next day, should give her a heavenly
reward; which proved to be Taruncius, a rich young man, who took her
home to his house, and in time left her his inheritrix. She, in her
turn, thinking to do a thing that would be pleasing to the god, left the
people of Rome heirs to her; and therefore had divine honours attributed
to her. As if it had not been sufficient that Plato was originally
descended from the gods by a double line, and that he had Neptune for
the common father of his race, it was certainly believed at Athens, that
Aristo, having a mind to enjoy the fair Perictione, could not, and
was warned by the god Apollo, in a dream, to leave her unpolluted and
untouched, till she should first be brought to bed. These were the
father and mother of Plato. How many ridiculous stories are there of
like cuckoldings, committed by the gods against poor mortal men! And how
many husbands injuriously scandaled in favour of the children! In the
Mahometan religion there are Merlins enough found by the belief of the
people; that is to say, children without fathers, spiritual, divinely
conceived in the wombs of virgins, and carry names that signify so much
in their language.
We are to observe that to every thing nothing is more dear and estimable
than its being (the lion, the eagle the dolphin, prize nothing above
their own kind); and that every thing assimilates the qualities of all
other things to its own proper qualities, which we may indeed extend
or contract, but that’s all; for beyond that relation and principle our
imagination cannot go, can guess at nothing else, nor possibly go out
thence, nor stretch beyond it; whence spring these ancient conclusions:
of all forms the most beautiful is that of man; therefore God must be
of that form. No one can be happy without virtue, nor virtue be without
reason, and reason cannot inhabit anywhere but in a human shape; God is
therefore clothed in a human figure. _Ita est informatum et anticipatum
mentibus nostris, ut homini, quum de Deo cogitet, forma occurrat
hu-mana._ “It is so imprinted in our minds, and the fancy is so
prepossessed with it, that when a man thinks of God, a human figure ever
presents itself to the imagination.” Therefore it was that Xenophanes
pleasantly said, “That if beasts frame any gods to themselves, as ‘tis
likely they do, they make them certainly such as themselves are, and
glorify themselves in it, as we do. For why may not a goose say thus;
“All the parts of the universe I have an interest in; the earth serves
me to walk upon; the sun to light me; the stars have their influence
upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters;
there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me;
I am the darling of nature! Is it not man that keeps, lodges, and serves
me? ‘Tis for me that he both sows and grinds; if he eats me he does the
same by his fellow-men, and so do I the worms that kill and devour him.”
As much might be said by a crane, and with greater confidence, upon the
account of the liberty of his flight, and the possession of that high
and beautiful region. _Tam blanda conciliatrix, et tam sui est lena ipsa
natura._ “So flattering and wheedling a bawd is nature to herself.”
Now by the same consequence, the destinies are then for us; for us the
world; it shines it thunders for us; creator and creatures, all are for
us; ‘tis the mark and point to which the universality of things aims.
Look into the records that philosophy has kept for two thousand years
and more, of the affairs of heaven; the gods all that while have
neither acted nor spoken but for man. She does not allow them any other
consultation or occupation. See them here against us in war:--

Domitosque Herculeâ manu
Telluris juvenes, unde periculum
Fulgens contre mu it domus
Saturai veteris.
“The brawny sons of earth, subdu’d by hand
Of Hercules on the Phlegræan strand,
Where the rude shock did such an uproar make,
As made old Saturn’s sparkling palace shake.”

And here you shall see them participate of our troubles, to make a
return for our having so often shared in theirs:--

Neptunus muros, magnoque emota tridenti
Fundamenta quatit, totamque à sedibus urbem
Emit: hie Juno Scæas sævissima portas Prima tenet.
“Amidst that smother Neptune holds his place,
Below the walls’ foundation drives his mace,
And heaves the city from its solid base.
See where in arms the cruel Juno stands,
Full in the Scæan gate.”

The Caunians, jealous of the authority of their own proper gods, armed
themselves on the days of their devotion, and through the whole of their
precincts ran cutting and slashing the air with their swords, by that
means to drive away and banish all foreign gods out of their territory.
Their powers are limited according that the plague, that the scurf, that
the phthisic; one cures one sort of itch, another another: _Adeo minimis
etiam rebus prava religio inserit Deos?_ “At such a rate does false
religion create gods for the most contemptible uses.” This one makes
grapes grow, that onions; this has the presidence over lechery, that
over merchandise; for every sort of artisan a god; this has his province
and reputation in the east; that his in the west:--

“Here lay her armour, here her chariot stood.”
O sancte Apollo, qui umbilicum certum terrarum obtines!
“O sacred Phoebus, who with glorious ray,
From the earth’s centre, dost thy light display.”
Pallada Cecropidæ, Minola Creta Dianam,
Vulcanum tellus Hypsipylea colit,
Junonem Sparte, Pelopeladesque Mycenæ;
Pinigerum Fauni Mænalis ora caput;
Mars Latio venerandus.
“Th’ Athenians Pallas, Cynthia Crete adore,
Vulcan is worshipped on the Lemnian shore.
Proud Juno’s altars are by Spartans fed,
Th’ Arcadians worship Faunus, and ‘tis said
To Mars, by Italy, is homage paid.”

to our necessity; this cures horses, that men,

Hic illius arma, Hic currus fuit.

This has only one town or family in his possession; that lives alone;
that in company, either voluntary or upon necessity:--

Junctaque sunt magno templa nepotis avo.
“And temples to the nephew joined are,
To those were reared to the great-grandfather.”

In here are some so wretched and mean (for the number amounts to six and
thirty thousand) that they must pack five or six together, to produce
one ear of corn, and thence take their several names; three to a
door--that of the plank, that of the hinge, and that of the threshold.
Four to a child--protectors of his swathing-clouts, his drink, meat, and
sucking. Some certain, some uncertain and doubtful, and some that are
not yet entered Paradise:--

Quos, quoniam coli nondum dignamur honore,
Quas dedimus certè terras habitare sinanras:
“Whom, since we yet not worthy think of heaven,
We suffer to possess the earth we’ve given.”

There are amongst them physicians, poets, and civilians. Some of a
mean betwixt the divine and human nature; mediators betwixt God and us,
adorned with a certain second and diminutive sort of adoration; infinite
in titles and offices; some good; others ill; some old and decrepit,
and some that are mortal. For Chrysippus was of opinion that in the last
conflagration of the world all the gods were to die but Jupiter. Man
makes a thousand pretty societies betwixt God and him; is he not his
countryman?

Jovis incunabula Creten.
“Crete, the cradle of Jupiter.”

And this is the excuse that, upon consideration of this subject,
Scævola, a high priest, and Varro, a great theologian in their times,
make us: “That it is necessary that the people should be ignorant of
many things that are true, and believe many things that are false.”
_Quum veritatem qua liberetur inquirat credatur ei expedire quod
fallitur._ “Seeing he inquires into the truth, by which he would be
made free, ‘tis fit he should be deceived.” Human eyes cannot perceive
things but by the forms they know; and we do not remember what a leap
miserable Phæton took for attempting to guide his father’s horses with
a mortal hand. The mind of man falls into as great a depth, and is after
the same manner bruised and shattered by his own rashness. If you ask of
philosophy of what matter the heavens and the sun are? what answer will
she return, if not that it is iron, or, with Anaxagoras, stone, or some
other matter that she makes use of? If a man inquire of Zeno what nature
is? “A fire,” says he, “an artisan, proper for generation, and regularly
proceeding.” Archimedes, master of that science which attributes to
itself the precedency before all others for truth and certainty;
“the sun,” says he, “is a god of red-hot iron.” Was not this a fine
imagination, extracted from the inevitable necessity of geometrical
demonstrations? Yet not so inevitable and useful but that Socrates
thought it was enough to know so much of geometry only as to measure the
land a man bought or sold; and that Polyænus, who had been a great
and famous doctor in it, despised it, as full of falsity and manifest
vanity, after he had once tasted the delicate fruits of the lozelly
gardens of Epicurus. Socrates in Xenophon, concerning this affair,
says of Anaxagoras, reputed by antiquity learned above all others in
celestial and divine matters, “That he had cracked his brain, as all
other men do who too immoderately search into knowledges which nothing
belong to them:” when he made the sun to be a burning stone, he did not
consider that a stone does not shine in the fire; and, which is worse,
that it will there consume; and in making the sun and fire one, that
fire does not turn the complexions black in shining upon them; that
we are able to look fixedly upon fire; and that fire kills herbs and
plants. ‘Tis Socrates’s opinion, and mine too, that the best judging
of heaven is not to judge of it at all. Plato having occasion, in his
_Timous_, to speak of the demons, “This undertaking,” says he, “exceeds
my ability.” We are therefore to believe those ancients who said they
were begotten by them; ‘tis against all reason to refuse a man’s faith
to the children of the gods, though what they say should not be proved
by any necessary or probable reasons; seeing they engage to speak of
domestic and familiar things.
Let us see if we have a little more light in the knowledge of human and
natural things. Is it not a ridiculous attempt for us to forge for those
to whom, by our own confession, our knowledge is not able to attain,
another body, and to lend a false form of our own invention; as is
manifest in this motion of the planets; to which, seeing our wits
cannot possibly arrive, nor conceive their natural conduct, we lend them
material, heavy, and substantial springs of our own by which to move:--

Temo aureus, aurea summæ
Curvatura rotæ, radiorum argenteus ordo.
“Gold was the axle, and the beam was gold;
The wheels with silver spokes on golden circles roll’d.”

You would say that we had had coachmakers, carpenters, and painters,
that went up on high to make engines of various motions, and to range
the wheelwork and interfacings of the heavenly bodies of differing
colours about the axis of necessity, according to Plato:--

Mundus domus est maxima rerum,
Quam quinque altitonæ fragmine zonæ
Cingunt, per quam limbus pictus bis sex signis
Stellimicantibus, altus in obliquo æthere, lunæ
Bigas acceptat.
“The world’s a mansion that doth all things hold,
Which thundering zones, in number five, enfold,
Through which a girdle, painted with twelve signs,
And that with sparkling constellations, shines,
In heaven’s arch marks the diurnal course
For the sun’s chariot and his fiery horse.”

These are all dreams and fanatic follies. Why will not nature please for
once to lay open her bosom to us, and plainly discover to us the means
and conduct of her movements, and prepare our eyes to see them? Good
God, what abuse, what mistakes should we discover in our poor science!
I am mistaken if that weak knowledge of ours holds any one thing as it
really is, and I shall depart hence more ignorant of all other things
than my own ignorance.
Have I not read in Plato this divine saying, that “nature is nothing
but enigmatic poesy!” As if a man might perhaps see a veiled and shady
picture, breaking out here and there with an infinite variety of false
lights to puzzle our conjectures: _Latent ista omnia crassis occullata
et circumfusa tenebris; ut nulla acies humani ingenii tanta sit, quæ
penetrare in coelum, terram intrare, possit._ “All those things lie
concealed and involved in so dark an obscurity that no point of human
wit can be so sharp as to pierce heaven or penetrate the earth.” And
certainly philosophy is no other than sophisticated poetry. Whence do
the ancient writers extract their authorities but from the poets? and
the first of them were poets themselves, and writ accordingly. Plato is
but a poet unripped. Timon calls him, insultingly, “a monstrous forger
of miracles.” All superhuman sciences make use of the poetic style. Just
as women make use of teeth of ivory where the natural are wanting, and
instead of their true complexion make one of some artificial matter; as
they stuff themselves out with cotton to appear plump, and in the sight
of every one do paint, patch, and trick up themselves with a false and
borrowed beauty; so does science (and even our law itself has, they say,
legitimate fictions, whereon it builds the truth of its justice);
she gives us in presupposition, and for current pay, things which she
herself informs us were invented; for these _epicycles, eccentrics, and
concentrics_, which astrology makes use of to carry on the motions of
the stars, she gives us for the best she could invent upon that subject;
as also, in all the rest, philosophy presents us not that which really
is, or what she really believes, but what she has contrived with the
greatest and most plausible likelihood of truth, and the quaintest
invention. Plato, upon the discourse of the state of human bodies and
those of beasts, says, “I should know that what I have said is truth,
had I the confirmation of an oracle; but this I will affirm, that what I
have said is the most likely to be true of any thing I could say.”
‘Tis not to heaven only that art sends her ropes, engines, and wheels;
let us consider a little what she says of us ourselves, and of our
contexture.
There is not more retrogradation, trepidation, accession, recession, and
astonishment, in the stars and celestial bodies, than they have found
out in this poor little human body. In earnest, they have good reason,
upon that very account, to call it the little world, so many tools and
parts have they employed to erect and build it. To assist the motions
they see in man, and the various functions that we find in ourselves, in
how many parts have they divided the soul, in how many places lodged it?
in how many orders have they divided, and to how many stories have they
raised this poor creature, man, besides those that are natural and to
be perceived? And how many offices and vocations have they assigned him?
They make it an imaginary public thing. ‘Tis a subject that they hold
and handle; and they have full power granted to them to rip, place,
displace, piece, and stuff it, every one according to his own fancy, and
yet they possess it not They cannot, not in reality only, but even in
dreams, so govern it that there will not be some cadence or sound that
will escape their architecture, as enormous as it is, and botched with
a thousand false and fantastic patches. And it is not reason to excuse
them; for though we are satisfied with painters when they paint heaven,
earth, seas, mountains, and remote islands, that they give us some
slight mark of them, and, as of things unknown, are content with a faint
and obscure description; yet when they come and draw us after life, or
any other creature which is known and familiar to us, we then require of
them a perfect and exact representation of lineaments and colours, and
despise them if they fail in it.
I am very well pleased with the Milesian girl, who observing the
philosopher Thales to be always contemplating the celestial arch, and
to have his eyes ever gazing upward, laid something in his way that he
might stumble over, to put him in mind that it would be time to take up
his thoughts about things that are in the clouds when he had provided
for those that were under his feet. Doubtless she advised him well,
rather to look to himself than to gaze at heaven; for, as Democritus
says, by the mouth of Cicero,--

Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: coeli scrutantur plagas.
“No man regards what is under his feet;
They are always prying towards heaven.”

But our condition will have it so, that the knowledge of what we have in
hand is as remote from us, and as much above the clouds, as that of the
stars. As Socrates says, in Plato, “That whoever meddles with philosophy
may be reproached as Thales was by the woman, that he sees nothing of
that which is before him. For every philosopher is ignorant of what his
neighbour does; aye, and of what he does himself, and is ignorant of
what they both are, whether beasts or men.”
Those people, who find Sebond’s arguments too weak, that are ignorant of
nothing, that govern the world, that know all,--

Quæ mare compescant causæ; quid temperet annum;
Stellæ sponte suâ, jussæve, vagentur et errent;
Quid premat obscurum lunæ, quid proférât orbem;
Quid velit et posait rerum concordia discors;
“What governs ocean’s tides,
And through the various year the seasons guides;
Whether the stars by their own proper force,
Or foreign power, pursue their wand’ring course;
Why shadows darken the pale queen of night;
Whence she renews her orb and spreads her light;--
What nature’s jarring sympathy can mean;”

have they not sometimes in their writings sounded the difficulties they
have met with of knowing their own being? We see very well that the
finger moves, that the foot moves, that some parts assume a voluntary
motion of themselves without our consent, and that others work by our
direction; that one sort of apprehension occasions blushing; another
paleness; such an imagination works upon the spleen only, another upon
the brain; one occasions laughter, another tears; another stupefies and
astonishes all our senses, and arrests the motion of all our members;
at one object the stomach will rise, at another a member that lies
something lower; but how a spiritual impression should make such a
breach into a massy and solid subject, and the nature of the connection
and contexture of these admirable springs and movements, never yet
man knew: _Omnia incerta ratione, et in naturæ majestate abdita._ “All
uncertain in reason, and concealed in the majesty of nature,” says
Pliny. And St Augustin, _Modus quo corporibus adhorent spiritus....
omnino minis est, nec comprehendi ab homine potest; et hoc ipse
homo est,_ “The manner whereby souls adhere to bodies is altogether
wonderful, and cannot be conceived by man, and yet this is man.” And
yet it is not so much as doubted; for the opinions of men are received
according to the ancient belief, by authority and upon trust, as if
it were religion and law. ‘Tis received as gibberish which is commonly
spoken; this truth, with all its clutter of arguments and proofs, is
admitted as a firm and solid body, that is no more to be shaken, no more
to be judged of; on the contrary, every one, according to the best of
his talent, corroborates and fortifies this received belief with the
utmost power of his reason, which is a supple utensil, pliable, and to
be accommodated to any figure; and thus the world comes to be filled
with lies and fopperies. The reason that men doubt of divers things is
that they never examine common impressions; they do not dig to the root,
where the faults and defects lie; they only debate upon the branches;
they do not examine whether such and such a thing be true, but if it
has been so and so understood; it is not inquired into whether Galen has
said any thing to purpose, but whether he has said so or so. In truth it
was very good reason that this curb to the liberty of our judgments and
that tyranny over our opinions, should be extended to the schools and
arts. The god of scholastic knowledge is Aristotle; ‘tis irreligion to
question any of his decrees, as it was those of Lucurgus at Sparta;
his doctrine is a magisterial law, which, peradventure, is as false as
another. I do not know why I should not as willingly embrace either the
ideas of Plato, or the atoms of Epicurus, or the plenum or vacuum of
Leucippus and Democritus, or the water of Thales, or the infinity
of nature of Anaximander, or the air of Diogenes, or the numbers and
symmetry of Pythagoras, or the infinity of Parmenides, or the One of
Musæus, or the water and fire of Apollodorus, or the similar parts of
Anaxagoras, or the discord and friendship of Empedocles, or the fire of
Heraclitus, or any other opinion of that infinite confusion of opinions
and determinations, which this fine human reason produces by its
certitude and clearsightedness in every thing it meddles withal, as I
should the opinion of Aristotle upon this subject of the principles
of natural things; which principles he builds of three pieces--matter,
form, and privation. And what can be more vain than to make inanity
itself the cause of the production of things? Privation is a negative;
of what humour could he then make the cause and original of things that
are? And yet that were not to be controverted but for the exercise of
logic; there is nothing disputed therein to bring it into doubt, but to
defend the author of the school from foreign objections; his authority
is the non-ultra, beyond which it is not permitted to inquire.
It is very easy, upon approved foundations, to build whatever we please;
for, according to the law and ordering of this beginning, the other
parts of the structure are easily carried on without any failure. By
this way we find our reason well-grounded, and discourse at a venture;
for our masters prepossess and gain beforehand as much room in our
belief as is necessary towards concluding afterwards what they
please, as geometricians do by their granted demands, the consent and