Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 055

when are we to expect that they will be agreed? We are nearer neighbours
to ourselves than whiteness to snow, or weight to stones. If man do not
know himself, how should he know his force and functions? It is not,
perhaps, that we have not some real knowledge in us; but ‘tis by chance;
forasmuch as errors are received into our soul by the same way, after
the same manner, and by the same conduct, it has not wherewithal to
distinguish them, nor wherewithal to choose the truth from falsehood.
The Academics admitted a certain partiality of judgment, and thought it
too crude to say that it was not more likely to say that snow was white
than black; and that we were no more assured of the motion of a stone,
thrown by the hand, than of that of the eighth sphere. And to avoid
this difficulty and strangeness, that can in truth hardly lodge in our
imagination, though they concluded that we were in no sort capable of
knowledge, and that truth is engulfed in so profound an abyss as is not
to be penetrated by human sight; yet they acknowledged some things to be
more likely than others, and received into their judgment this faculty,
that they had a power to incline to one appearance more than another,
they allowed him this propension, interdicting all resolution. The
Pyrrhonian opinion is more bold, and also somewhat more likely; for this
academic inclination, and this propension to one proposition rather than
another, what is it other than a recognition of some more apparent
truth in this than in that? If our understanding be capable of the form,
lineaments, port, and face of truth, it might as well see it entire as
by halves, springing and imperfect This appearance of likelihood,
which makes them rather take the left hand than the right, augments
it; multiply this ounce of verisimilitude that turns the scales to
a hundred, to a thousand, ounces; it will happen in the end that the
balance will itself end the controversy, and determine one choice, one
entire truth. But why do they suffer themselves to incline to and be
swayed by verisimilitude, if they know not the truth? How should they
know the similitude of that whereof they do not know the essence? Either
we can absolutely judge, or absolutely we cannot If our intellectual and
sensible faculties are without foot or foundation, if they only pull
and drive, ‘tis to no purpose that we suffer our judgments to be carried
away with any part of their operation, what appearance soever they
may seem to present us; and the surest and most happy seat of our
understanding would be that where it kept itself temperate, upright, and
inflexible, without tottering, or without agitation: _Inter visa, vera
aut falsa, ad animi assensum, nihil interest:_ “Amongst things that
seem, whether true or false, it signifies nothing to the assent of the
mind.” That things do not lodge in us in their form and essence, and
do not there make their entry by their own force and authority, we
sufficiently see; because, if it were so, we should receive them after
the same manner; wine would have the same relish with the sick as with
the healthful; he who has his finger chapt or benumbed would find the
same hardness in wood or iron that he handles that another does; foreign
subjects then surrender themselves to our mercy, and are seated in us as
we please. Now if on our part we received any thing without alteration,
if human grasp were capable and strong enough to seize on truth by our
own means, these means being common to all men, this truth would be
conveyed from hand to hand, from one to another; and at least there
would be some one thing to be found in the world, amongst so many as
there are, that would be believed by men with an universal consent;
but this, that there is no one proposition that is not debated and
controverted amongst us, or that may not be, makes it very manifest that
our natural judgment does not very clearly discern what it embraces; for
my judgment cannot make my companions approve of what it approves; which
is a sign that I seized it by some other means than by a natural power
that is in me and in all other men.
Let us lay aside this infinite confusion of opinions, which we see even
amongst the philosophers themselves, and this perpetual and universal
dispute about the knowledge of things; for this is truly presupposed,
that men, I mean the most knowing, the best bom, and of the best parts,
are not agreed about any one thing, not that heaven is over our heads;
for they that doubt of every thing, do also doubt of that; and they
who deny that we are able to comprehend any thing, say that we have not
comprehended that the heaven is over our heads, and these two opinions
are, without comparison, the stronger in number.
Besides this infinite diversity and division, through the trouble that
our judgment gives ourselves, and the incertainty that every one is
sensible of in himself, ‘tis easy to perceive that its seat is very
unstable and insecure. How variously do we judge of things?--How often
do we alter our opinions? What I hold and believe to-day I hold and
believe with my whole belief; all my instruments and engines seize and
take hold of this opinion, and become responsible to me for it, at least
as much as in them lies; I could not embrace nor conserve any truth
with greater confidence and assurance than I do this; I am wholly and
entirely possessed with it; but has it not befallen me, not only once,
but a hundred, a thousand times, every day, to have embraced some other
thing with all the same instruments, and in the same condition, which
I have since judged to be false? A man must at least become wise at his
own expense; if I have often found myself betrayed under this colour; if
my touch proves commonly false, and my balance unequal and unjust, what
assurance can I now have more than at other times? Is it not stupidity
and madness to suffer myself to be so often deceived by my guide?
Nevertheless, let fortune remove and shift us five hundred times from
place to place, let her do nothing but incessantly empty and fill into
our belief, as into a vessel, other and other opinions; yet still the
present and the last is the certain and infallible one; for this we must
abandon goods, honour, life, health, and all.

Posterior.... res ilia reperta
Perdit, et immutat sensus ad pristina qnæqne.
“The last things we find out are always best,
And make us to disrelish all the rest.”

Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we should still
remember that it is man that gives and man that receives; ‘tis a mortal
hand that presents it to us; ‘tis a mortal hand that accepts it The
things that come to us from heaven have the sole right and authority of
persuasion, the sole mark of truth; which also we do not see with our
own eyes, nor receive by our own means; that great and sacred image
could not abide in so wretched a habitation if God for this end did not
prepare it, if God did not by his particular and supernatural grace and
favour fortify and reform it. At least our frail and defective condition
ought to make us behave ourselves with more reservedness and moderation
in our innovations and changes; we ought to remember that, whatever we
receive into the understanding, we often receive things that are false,
and that it is by the same instruments that so often give themselves the
lie and are so often deceived.
Now it is no wonder they should so often contradict themselves, being
so easy to be turned and swayed by very light occurrences. It is certain
that our apprehensions, our judgment, and the faculties of the soul in
general, suffer according to the movements and alterations of the body,
which alterations are continual. Are not our minds more sprightly, ouï
memories more prompt and quick, and our thoughts more lively, in health
than in sickness? Do not joy and gayety make us receive subjects
that present themselves to our souls quite otherwise than care and
melancholy? Do you believe that Catullus’s verses, or those of Sappho,
please an old doting miser as they do a vigorous, amorous young man?
Cleomenes, the son of Anexandridas, being sick, his friends reproached
him that he had humours and whimsies that were new and unaccustomed;
“I believe it,” said he; “neither am I the same man now as when I am in
health; being now another person, my opinions and fancies are also other
than they were before.” In our courts of justice this word is much in
use, which is spoken of criminals when they find the judges in a good
humour, gentle, and mild, _Gaudeat de bonâ fortunâ _; “Let him rejoice
in his good fortune;” for it is most certain that men’s judgments are
sometimes more prone to condemnation, more sharp and severe, and at
others more facile, easy, and inclined to excuse; he that carries with
him from his house the pain of the gout, jealousy, or theft by his man,
having his whole soul possessed with anger, it is not to be doubted
but that his judgment will lean this way. That venerable senate of the
Areopagites used to hear and determine by night, for fear lest the sight
of the parties might corrupt their justice. The very air itself, and the
serenity of heaven, will cause some mutation in us, according to these
verses in Cicero:--

Tales sunt hominnm mentes, quali pater ipse
Jupiter auctiferâ lustravit lampade terras.
“Men’s minds are influenc’d by th’ external air,
Dark or serene, as days are foul or fair.”

‘Tis not only fevers, debauches, and great accidents, that overthrow our
judgments,--the least things in the world will do it; and we are not to
doubt, though we may not be sensible of it, that if a continued fever
can overwhelm the soul, a tertian will in some proportionate measure
alter it; if an apoplexy can stupefy and totally extinguish the sight of
our understanding, we are not to doubt but that a great cold will dazzle
it; and consequently there is hardly one single hour in a man’s whole
life wherein our judgment is in its due place and right condition, our
bodies being subject to so many continual mutations, and stuffed with so
many several sorts of springs, that I believe the physicians, that it is
hard but that there must be always some one or other out of order.
As to what remains, this malady does not very easily discover itself,
unless it be extreme and past remedy; forasmuch as reason goes always
lame, halting, and that too as well with falsehood as with truth; and
therefore ‘tis hard to discover her deviations and mistakes. I always
call that appearance of meditation which every one forges in himself
reason; this reason, of the condition of which there may be a hundred
contrary ones about one and the same subject, is an instrument of lead
and of wax, ductile, pliable, and accommodate to all sorts of biases,
and to all measures; so that nothing remains but the art and skill how
to turn and mould it. How uprightly soever a judge may mean, if he
does not look well to himself, which few care to do, his inclination to
friendship, to relationship, to beauty or revenge, and not only things
of that weight, but even the fortuitous instinct that makes us favour
one thing more than another, and that, without reason’s permission, puts
the choice upon us in two equal subjects, or some shadow of like
vanity, may insensibly insinuate into his judgment the recommendation or
disfavour of a cause, and make the balance dip.
I, that watch myself as narrowly as I can, and that have my eyes
continually bent upon myself, like one that has no great business to do
elsewhere,

Quis sub Arcto Rex gelidæ metuatur oræ,
Quid Tyridatem terreat, unice Securus,
“I care not whom the northern clime reveres,
Or what’s the king that Tyridates fears,”

dare hardly tell the vanity and weakness I find in myself My foot is so
unstable and unsteady, I find myself so apt to totter and reel, and my
sight so disordered, that, fasting, I am quite another man than when
full; if health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very affable,
good-natured man; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humour,
and not to be seen. The same pace of a horse seems to me one while
hard, and another easy; and the same way one while shorter, and another
longer; and the same form one while more, another less agreeable: I am
one while for doing every thing, and another for doing nothing at all;
and what pleases me now would be a trouble to me at another time. I
have a thousand senseless and casual actions within myself; either I
am possessed by melancholy or swayed by choler; now by its own private
authority sadness predominates in me, and by and by, I am as merry as
a cricket. When I take a book in hand I have then discovered admirable
graces in such and such passages, and such as have struck my soul; let
me light upon them at another time, I may turn and toss, tumble
and rattle the leaves to no purpose; ‘tis then to me an inform and
undiscovered mass. Even in my own writings I do not always find the air
of my first fancy; I know not what I would have said, and am often put
to it to correct and pump for a new sense, because I have lost the first
that was better. I do nothing but go and come; my judgment does not
always advance--it floats and roams:--

Velut minuta magno
Deprensa navis in mari vesaniente vento.
“Like a small bark that’s tost upon the main.
When winds tempestuous heave the liquid plain.”

Very often, as I am apt to do, having for exercise taken to maintain an
opinion contrary to my own, my mind, bending and applying itself that
way, does so engage me that way that I no more discern the reason of my
former belief, and forsake it I am, as it were, misled by the side to
which I incline, be it what it will, and carried away by my own weight.
Every one almost would say the same of himself, if he considered himself
as I do. Preachers very well know that the emotions which steal upon
them in speaking animate them towards belief; and that in passion we
are more warm in the defence of our proposition, take ourselves a deeper
impression of it, and embrace it with greater vehemence and approbation
than we do in our colder and more temperate state. You only give your
counsel a simple brief of your cause; he returns you a dubious and
uncertain answer, by which you find him indifferent which side he takes.
Have you feed him well that he may relish it the better, does he begin
to be really concerned, and do you find him interested and zealous in
your quarrel? his reason and learning will by degrees grow hot in your
cause; behold an apparent and undoubted truth presents itself to his
understanding; he discovers a new light in your business, and does in
good earnest believe and persuade himself that it is so. Nay, I do not
know whether the ardour that springs from spite and obstinacy, against
the power and violence of the magistrate and danger, or the interest of
reputation, may not have made some men, even at the stake, maintain the
opinion for which, at liberty, and amongst friends, they would not have
burned a finger. The shocks and jostles that the soul receives from the
body’s passions can do much in it, but its own can do a great deal more;
to which it is so subjected that perhaps it may be made good that it has
no other pace and motion but from the breath of those winds, without the
agitation of which it would be becalmed and without action, like a
ship in the middle of the sea, to which the winds hare denied
their assistance. And whoever should maintain this, siding with the
Peripatetics, would do us no great wrong, seeing it is very well known
that the greatest and most noble actions of the soul proceed from, and
stand in need of, this impulse of the passions. Valour, they say,
cannot be perfect without the assistance of anger; _Semper Ajax fortis,
fortissimus tamen in furore;_ “Ajax was always brave, but most when in
a fury:” neither do we encounter the wicked and the enemy vigorously
enough if we be not angry; nay, the advocate, it is said, is to inspire
the judges with indignation, to obtain justice.
Irregular desires moved Themistocles, and Demosthenes, and have pushed
on the philosophers to watching, fasting, and pilgrimages; and lead us
to honour, learning, and health, which are all very useful ends. And
this meanness of soul, in suffering anxiety and trouble, serves to breed
remorse and repentance in the conscience, and to make us sensible of
the scourge of God, and politic correction for the chastisement of
our offences; compassion is a spur to clemency; and the prudence of
preserving and governing ourselves is roused by our fear; and how many
brave actions by ambition! how many by presumption! In short, there is
no brave and spiritual virtue without some irregular agitation. May not
this be one of the reasons that moved the Epicureans to discharge God
from all care and solicitude of our affairs; because even the effects of
his goodness could not be exercised in our behalf without disturbing its
repose, by the means of passions which are so many spurs and instruments
pricking on the soul to virtuous actions; or have they thought
otherwise, and taken them for tempests, that shamefully hurry the soul
from her tranquillity? _Ut maris tranquillitas intettigitur, nullâ, ne
minima quidem, aura fluctus commovente: Sic animi quietus et placatus
status cemitur, quum perturbatis nulla est, qua moveri queat.._ “As it
is understood to be a calm sea when there is not the least breath of air
stirring; so the state of the soul is discerned to be quiet and appeased
when there is no perturbation to move it.”
What varieties of sense and reason, what contrariety of imaginations
does the diversity of our passions inspire us with! What assurance then
can we take of a thing so mobile and unstable, subject by its condition
to the dominion of trouble, and never going other than a forced and
borrowed pace? If our judgment be in the power even of sickness and
perturbation; if it be from folly and rashness that it is to receive the
impression of things, what security can we expect from it?
Is it not a great boldness in philosophy to believe that men perform the
greatest actions, and nearest approaching the Divinity, when they
are furious, mad, and beside themselves? We better ourselves by the
privation of our reason, and drilling it. The two natural ways to
enter into the cabinet of the gods, and there to foresee the course of
destiny, are fury and sleep.
This is pleasant to consider; by the dislocation that passions cause
in our reason, we become virtuous; by its extirpation, occasioned by
madness or the image of death, we become diviners and prophets. I was
never so willing to believe philosophy in any thing as this. ‘Tis a pure
enthusiasm wherewith sacred truth has inspired the spirit of philosophy,
which makes it confess, contrary to its own proposition, that the most
calm, composed, and healthful estate ef the soul that philosophy can
seat it in is not its best condition; our waking is more a sleep than
sleep itself, our wisdom less wise than folly; our dreams are worth more
than our meditation; and the worst place we can take is in ourselves.
But does not philosophy think that we are wise enough to consider
that the voice that the spirit utters, when dismissed from man, so
clear-sighted, so great, and so perfect, and whilst it is in man so
terrestrial, ignorant, and dark, is a voice proceeding from the spirit
of dark, terrestrial, and ignorant man, and for this reason a voice not
to be trusted and believed?
I, being of a soft and heavy complexion, have no great experience of
these vehement agitations, the most of which surprise the soul on a
sudden, without giving it leisure to recollect itself. But the passion
that is said to be produced by idleness in the hearts of young men,
though it proceed leisurely, and with a measured progress, does
evidently manifest, to those who have tried to oppose its power, the
violence our judgment suffers in this alteration and conversion. I have
formerly attempted to withstand and repel it; for I am so far from being
one of those that invite vices, that I do not so much as follow them, if
they do not haul me along; I perceived it to spring, grow, and increase,
in spite of my resistance; and at last, living and seeing as I was,
wholly to seize and possess me. So that, as if rousing from drunkenness,
the images of things began to appear to me quite other than they used
to be; I evidently saw the advantages of the object I desired, grow,
and increase, and expand by the influence of my imagination, and the
difficulties of my attempt to grow more easy and smooth; and both my
reason and conscience to be laid aside; but this fire being evaporated
in an instant, as from a flash of lightning, I was aware that my soul
resumed another kind of sight, another state, and another judgment;
the difficulties of retreat appeared great and invincible, and the same
things had quite another taste and aspect than the heat of desire had
presented them to me; which of the two most truly? Pyrrho knows nothing
about it. We are never without sickness. Agues have their hot and cold
fits; from the effects of an ardent passion we fall again to shivering;
as much as I had advanced, so much I retired:--

Qualis ubi alterno procurrens gurgite pontus,
Nunc ruit ad terras, scopulosque superjacit undam
Spumeus, extremamque sinu perfundit arenam;
Nunc rapidus retro, atque æstu revoluta resorbens
Saxa, fugit, littusque vado labente relihquit.
“So swelling surges, with a thundering roar,
Driv’n on each others’ backs, insult the shore,
Bound o’er the rocks, encroach upon the land,
And far upon the beach heave up the sand;
Then backward rapidly they take their way,
Repulsed from upper ground, and seek the sea.”

Now, from the knowledge of this volubility of mine, I have accidentally
begot in myself a certain constancy of opinions, and have not much
altered those that were first and natural in me; for what appearance
soever there may be in novelty, I do not easily change, for fear of
losing by the bargain; and, as I am not capable of choosing, I take
other men’s choice, and keep myself in the station wherein God has
placed me; I could not otherwise keep myself from perpetual rolling.
Thus have I, by the grace of God, preserved myself entire, without
anxiety or trouble of conscience, in the ancient faith of our religion,
amidst so many sects and divisions as our age has produced. The writings
of the ancients, the best authors I mean, being full and solid, tempt
and carry me which way almost they will; he that I am reading seems
always to have the most force; and I find that every one in his turn is
in the right, though they contradict one another. The facility that good
wits have of rendering every thing likely they would recommend, and
that nothing is so strange to which they do not undertake to give colour
enough to deceive such simplicity as mine, this evidently shows the
weakness of their testimony. The heavens and the stars have been
three thousand years in motion; all the world were of that belief
till Cleanthes the Samian, or, according to Theophrastus, Nicetas of
Syracuse, took it into his head to maintain that it was the earth that
moved, turning about its axis by the oblique circle of the zodiac.
And Copernicus has in our times so grounded this doctrine that it very
regularly serves to all astrological consequences; what use can we
make of this, if not that we ought not much to care which is the true
opinion? And who knows but that a third, a thousand years hence, may
over throw the two former.

Sic volvenda ætas commutât tempora rerum:
Quod fuit in pretio, fit nullo denique honore;
Porro aliud succedit, et e contemptibus exit,
Inque dies magis appetitur, floretque repertum
Laudibus, et miro est mortales inter honore.
“Thus ev’ry thing is changed in course of time,
What now is valued passes soon its prime;
To which some other thing, despised before,
Succeeds, and grows in vogue still more and more;
And once received, too faint all praises seem,
So highly it is rais’d in men’s esteem.”

So that when any new doctrine presents itself to us, we have great
reason to mistrust, and to consider that, before that was set on foot,
the contrary had been generally received; and that, as that has been
overthrown by this, a third invention, in time to come, may start
up which may damn the second. Before the principles that Aristotle
introduced were in reputation, other principles contented human reason,
as these satisfy us now. What patent have these people, what particular
privilege, that the career of our invention must be stopped by them, and
that the possession of our whole future belief should belong to them?
They are no more exempt from being thrust out of doors than their
predecessors were. When any one presses me with a new argument, I ought
to believe that what I cannot answer another can; for to believe all
likelihoods that a man cannot confute is great simplicity; it would
by that means come to pass that all the vulgar (and we are all of the
vulgar) would have their belief as tumable as a weathercock; for their
souls, being so easy to be imposed upon, and without any resistance,
must of force incessantly receive other and other impressions, the last
still effacing all footsteps of that which went before. He that finds
himself weak ought to answer, according to practice, that he will speak
with his counsel, or refer himself to the wiser, from whom he received
his instruction. How long is it that physic has been practised in the
world? ‘Tis said that a new comer, called Paracelsus, changes and
overthrows the whole order of ancient rules, and maintains that, till
now, it has been of no other use but to kill men. I believe he will
easily make this good, but I do not think it were wisdom to venture my
life in making trial of his own experience. We are not to believe every
one, says the precept, because every one can say all things. A man of
this profession of novelties and physical reformations not long since
told me that all the ancients were notoriously mistaken in the nature
and motions of the winds, which he would evidently demonstrate to me if
I would give him the hearing. After I had with some patience heard his
arguments, which were all full of likelihood of truth: “What, then,”
said I, “did those that sailed according to Theophrastus make way
westward, when they had the prow towards the east? did they go sideward
or backward?” “That’s fortune,” answered he, “but so it is that they
were mistaken.” I replied that I had rather follow effects than reason.
Now these are things that often interfere with one another, and I have
been told that in geometry (which pretends to have gained the highest
point of certainty of all science) there are inevitable demonstrations
found which subvert the truth of all experience; as Jacques Pelletier
told me, at my own house, that he had found out two lines stretching
themselves one towards the other to meet, which nevertheless he
affirmed, though extended to infinity, could never arrive to touch one
another. And the Pyrrhonians make no other use of their arguments and
their reason than to ruin the appearance of experience; and ‘tis a
wonder how far the suppleness of our reason has followed them in this
design of controverting the evidence of effects; for they affirm that we
do not move, that we do not speak, and that there is neither weight nor
heat, with the same force of argument that we affirm the most likely
things. Ptolemy, who was a great man, had established the bounds of this
world of ours; all the ancient philosophers thought they had the measure
of it, excepting some remote isles that might escape their knowledge;
it had been Pyrrhonism, a thousand years ago, to doubt the science of
cosmography, and the opinions that every one had received from it; it
was heresy to admit the antipodes; and behold, in this age of ours,
there is an infinite extent of terra firma discovered, not an island or