Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 057

want of wit that he did not write “a question for a friend” throughout.
The advocates and judges of our times find bias enough in all causes
to accommodate them to what they themselves think fit. In so infinite
a science, depending upon the authority of so many opinions, and so
arbitrary a subject, it cannot be but that of necessity an extreme
confusion of judgments must arise; there is hardly any suit so clear
wherein opinions do not very much differ; what one court has determined
one way another determines quite contrary, and itself contrary to that
at another time. Of which we see very frequent examples, owing to that
practice admitted amongst us, and which is a marvellous blemish to the
ceremonious authority and lustre of our justice, of not abiding by one
sentence, but running from judge to judge, and court to court, to decide
one and the same cause.
As to the liberty of philosophical opinions concerning vice and virtue,
‘tis not necessary to be insisted upon; therein are found many opinions
that are better concealed than published to weak minds. Arcesilaus said,
“That in venery it was no matter where, or with whom, it was committed:”
_Et obsccenas voluptates, si natura requirit, non genere, aut loco, aut
ordine, sed forma, otate, jigurâ, metiendas Epicurus putat.... ne amores
quidem sanctos a sapiente alienos esse arbitrantur.... Queeramus, ad
quam usque otatem juvenes amandi sint._ “And obscene pleasures, if
nature requires them,” Epicurus thinks, “are not to be measured either
by race, kind, place, or rank, but by age, shape, and beauty.... Neither
are sacred loves thought to be foreign to wise men;... we are to
inquire till what age young men are to be loved.” These last two stoical
quotations, and the reproach that Dicæarchus threw into the teeth of
Plato himself, upon this account, show how much the soundest philosophy
indulges licenses and excesses very remote from common custom.
Laws derive their authority from possession and custom. ‘Tis dangerous
to trace them back to their beginning; they grow great, and ennoble
themselves, like our rivers, by running on; but follow them upward to
their source, ‘tis but a little spring, scarce discernable,
that swells thus, and thus fortifies itself by growing old. Do but
consult the ancient considerations that gave the first motion to this
famous torrent, so full of dignity, awe, and reverence, you will find
them so light and weak that it is no wonder if these people, who weigh
and reduce every thing to reason, and who admit nothing by authority, or
upon trust, have their judgments often very remote, and differing from
those of the public. It is no wonder if people, who take their pattern
from the first image of nature, should in most of their opinions swerve
from the common path; as, for example, few amongst them would have
approved of the strict conditions of our marriages, and most of them
have been for having wives in common, and without obligation; they would
refuse our ceremonies. Chrysippus said, “That a philosopher would make
a dozen somersaults, aye, and without his breeches, for a dozen of
olives.” That philosopher would hardly have advised Clisthenes to have
refused Hippoclides the fair Agarista his daughter, for having seen him
stand on his head upon a table. Metrocles somewhat indiscreetly broke
wind backwards while in disputation, in the presence of a great auditory
in his school, and kept himself hid in his own house for shame, till
Crates coming to visit him, and adding to his consolations and reasons
the example of his own liberty, by falling to try with him who should
sound most, cured him of that scruple, and withal drew him to his own
stoical sect, more free than that more reserved one of the Peripatetics,
of which he had been till then. That which we call decency, not to dare
to do that in public which is decent enough to do in private, the Stoics
call foppery; and to mince it, and to be so modest as to conceal and
disown what nature, custom, and our desires publish and proclaim of our
actions, they reputed a vice. The other thought it was to undervalue the
mysteries of Venus to draw them out of the private oratory, to expose
them to the view of the people; and that to bring them out from behind
the curtain was to debase them. Modesty is a thing of weight; secrecy,
reservation, and circumspection, are parts of esteem. Pleasure did
very ingeniously when, under the mask of virtue, she sued not to be
prostituted in the open streets, trodden under foot, and exposed to
the public view, wanting the dignity and convenience of her private
cabinets. Hence some say that to put down public stews is not only to
disperse fornication into all places, that was confined to one, but
moreover, by the difficulty, to incite wild and idle people to this
vice:--

Mochus es Aufidiæ, qui vir,
Scævine, fuisti:
Rivalis fuerat qui tuus, ille vir est.
Cur aliéna placet tibi, quæ tua non placet uxor?
Numquid securus non potes arrigere?

This experience diversifies itself in a thousand examples:--

Nullus in urbe fuit totâ, qui tangere vellet
Uxorem gratis, Cæciliane, tuam,
Dum licuit: sed nunc, positis custodibus, ingens
Turba fututorum est. Ingeniosus homo es.

A philosopher being taken in the very act, and asked what he was doing,
coldly replied, “I am planting man;” no more blushing to be so caught
than if they had found him planting garlic.
It is, I suppose, out of tenderness and respect to the natural modesty
of mankind that a great and religious author is of opinion that this act
is so necessarily obliged to privacy and shame that he cannot persuade
himself there could be any absolute performance in those impudent
embraces of the Cynics, but that they contented themselves to represent
lascivious gestures only, to maintain the impudence of their school’s
profession; and that, to eject what shame had withheld and restrained,
it was afterward necessary for them to withdraw into the shade. But he
had not thoroughly examined their debauches; for Diogenes, playing the
beast with himself in public, wished, in the presence of all that saw
him, that he could fill his belly by that exercise. To those who asked
him why he did not find out a more commodious place to eat in than
in the open street, he made answer, “Because I am hungry in the open
street.” The women philosophers who mixed with their sect, mixed also
with their persons, in all places, without reservation; and Hipparchia
was not received into Crates’s society, but upon condition that she
should, in all things, follow the practice and customs of his rule.
These philosophers set a great price upon virtue, and renounce all other
discipline but the moral; and yet, in all their actions, they attributed
the sovereign authority to the election of their sage, and above the
laws; and gave no other curb to voluptuousness but moderation only, and
the conservation of the liberty of others.
Heraclitus and Protagoras, forasmuch as wine seemed bitter to the sick,
and pleasant to the sound, the rudder crooked in the water, and straight
when out, and such like contrary appearances as are found in subjects,
argued thence that all subjects had, in themselves, the causes of these
appearances; and there was some bitterness in the wine which had some
sympathy with the sick man’s taste, and the rudder some bending quality
sympathizing with him that looks upon it in the water; and so of all
the rest; which is to say, that all is in all things, and, consequently,
nothing in any one; for, where all is, there is nothing.
This opinion put me in mind of the experience we have that there is
no sense or aspect of any thing, whether bitter or sweet, straight
or crooked, that the human mind does not find out in the writings it
undertakes to tumble over. Into the cleanest, purest, and most perfect
words that can possibly be, how many lies and falsities have we
suggested! What heresy has not there found ground and testimony
sufficient to make itself embraced and defended! ‘Tis for this that the
authors of such errors will never depart from proof of the testimony of
the interpretation of words. A person of dignity, who would approve to
me, by authority, the search of the philosopher’s stone, wherein he
was head over ears engaged, lately alleged to me at least five or six
passages of the Bible upon which, he said, he first founded his attempt,
for the discharge of his conscience (for he is a divine); and, in truth,
the idea was not only pleasant, but, moreover, very well accommodated to
the defence of this fine science.
By this way the reputation of divining fables is acquired. There is no
fortune-teller, if we have this authority, but, if a man will take the
pains to tumble and toss, and narrowly to peep into all the folds and
glosses of his words, he may make him, like the Sibyls, say what he
will. There are so many ways of interpretation that it will be hard but
that, either obliquely or in a direct line, an ingenious wit will
find out, in every subject, some air that will serve for his purpose;
therefore we find a cloudy and ambiguous style in so frequent and
ancient use. Let the author but make himself master of that, to busy
posterity about his predictions, which not only his own parts, but the
accidental favour of the matter itself, may do for him; and, as to
the rest, express himself, whether after a foolish or a subtle manner,
somewhat obscurely or contradictorily, ‘tis no matter;--a number of
wits, shaking and sifting him, will bring out a great many several
forms, either according to his meaning, or collateral, or contrary, to
it, which will all redound to his honour; he will see himself enriched
by the means of his disciples, like the regents of colleges by their
pupils yearly presents. This it is which has given reputation to many
things of no worth at all; that has brought several writings in vogue,
and given them the fame of containing all sorts of matter can be
desired; one and the same thing receiving a thousand and a thousand
images and various considerations; nay, as many as we please.
Is it possible that Homer could design to say all that we make him
say, and that he designed so many and so various figures, as that the
divines, law-givers, captains, philosophers, and all sorts of men
who treat of sciences, how variously and opposite soever, should
indifferently quote him, and support their arguments by his authority,
as the sovereign lord and master of all offices, works, and artisans,
and counsellor-general of all enterprises? Whoever has had occasion for
oracles and predictions has there found sufficient to serve his turn.
‘Tis a wonder how many and how admirable concurrences an intelligent
person, and a particular friend of mine, has there found out in favour
of our religion; and cannot easily be put out of the conceit that it was
Homer’s design; and yet he is as well acquainted with this author as
any man whatever of his time. And what he has found in favour of our
religion there, very many anciently have found in favour of theirs. Do
but observe how Plato is tumbled and tossed about; every one ennobling
his own opinions by applying him to himself, and making him take what
side they please. They draw him in, and engage him in all the new
opinions the world receives; and make him, according to the different
course of things, differ from himself; every one makes him disavow,
according to his own sense, the manners and customs lawful in his age,
because they are unlawful in ours; and all this with vivacity and power,
according to the force and sprightliness of the wit of the interpreter.
From the same foundation that Heraclitus and this sentence of his had,
“that all things had in them those forms that we discern,” Democritus
drew quite a contrary conclusion,--“that objects have in them nothing
that we discern in them;” and because honey is sweet to one and bitter
to another, he thence argued that it was neither sweet nor bitter. The
Pyrrhonians would say that they knew not whether it is sweet or bitter,
or whether the one or the other, or both; for these always gained
the highest point of dubitation. The Cyrenaics held that nothing was
perceptible from without, and that that only was perceptible that
inwardly touched us, as pain and pleasure; acknowledging neither sound
nor colour, but certain affections only that we receive from them; and
that man’s judgment had no other seat Protagoras believed that “what
seems true to every one, is true to every one.” The Epicureans lodged
all judgment in the senses, and in the knowledge of things, and in
pleasure. Plato would have the judgment of truth, and truth itself,
derived from opinions and the senses, to belong to the wit and
cogitation.
This discourse has put me upon the consideration of the senses, in which
lies the greatest foundation and Pro°f of our ignorance. Whatsoever is
known, is doubtless known by the faculty of the knower; for, seeing the
judgment proceeds from the operation of him that judges, ‘tis reason
that this operation be performed by his means and will, not by the
constraint of another; as it would happen if we knew things by the
power, and according to the law of their essence. Now all knowledge is
conveyed to us by the senses; they are our masters:--

Via qua munita fidei
Proxima fert humanum in pectus, templaque mentis;
“It is the surest path that faith can find
By which to enter human heart and mind.”

Science begins by them, and is resolved into them. After all, we should
know no more than a stone if we did not know there is sound, odour,
light, taste, measure, weight, softness, hardness, sharpness, colour,
smoothness, breadth, and depth; these are the platforms and principles
of the structure of all our knowledge; and, according to some, science
is nothing else but sense. He that could make me contradict the senses,
would have me by the throat; he could not make me go further back. The
senses are the beginning and the end of human knowledge:--

Invenies primis ab sensibns esse creatam
Notitiam veil; neque sensus posse refelli....
Quid majore fide porro, quam sensus, haberi Debet?
“Of truth, whate’er discoveries are made,
Are by the senses to us first conveyed;
Nor will one sense be baffled; for on what
Can we rely more safely than on that?”

Let us attribute to them the least we can, we must, however, of
necessity grant them this, that it is by their means and mediation that
all our instruction is directed. Cicero says, that Chrysippus having
attempted to extenuate the force and virtue of the senses, presented to
himself arguments and so vehement oppositions to the contrary that he
could not satisfy himself therein; whereupon Cameades, who maintained
the contrary side, boasted that he would make use of the very words and
arguments of Chrysippus to controvert and confute him, and therefore
thus cried out against him: “O miserable! thy force has destroyed thee.”
There can be nothing absurd to a greater degree than to maintain that
fire does not warm, that light does not shine, and that there is no
weight nor solidity in iron, which are things conveyed to us by the
senses; neither is there belief nor knowledge in man that can be
compared to that for certainty.
The first consideration I have upon the subject of the senses is that I
make a doubt whether or no man be furnished with all natural senses. I
see several animals who live an entire and perfect life, some without
sight, others without hearing; who knows whether to us also one, two,
three, or many other senses may not be wanting? For if any one be
wanting, our examination cannot discover the defect. ‘Tis the privilege
of the senses to be the utmost limit of our discovery; there is nothing
beyond them that can assist us in exploration, not so much as one sense
in the discovery of another:--

An poterunt oculos aures reprehendere? an aures
Tactus an hunc porro tactum sapor argnet oris?
An confutabunt nares, oculive revincent?
“Can ears the eyes, the touch the ears, correct?
Or is that touch by tasting to be check’d?
Or th’ other senses, shall the nose or eyes
Confute in their peculiar faculties?”

They all make the extremest limits of our ability:--

Seorsum cuique potestas Divisa est, sua vis cuique est,
“Each has its power distinctly and alone,
And every sense’s power is its own.”

It is impossible to make a man naturally blind conceive that he does not
see; impossible to make him desire sight, or to regret his defect; for
which reason we ought not to derive any assurance from the soul’s being
contented and satisfied with those we have; considering that it cannot
be sensible herein of its infirmity and imperfection, if there be any
such thing. It is impossible to say any thing to this blind man, either
by reasoning, argument, or similitude, that can possess his imagination
with any apprehension of light, colour, or sight; there’s nothing
remains behind that can push on the senses to evidence. Those that
are born blind, whom we hear wish they could see, it is not that they
understand what they desire; they have learned from us that they want
something; that there is something to be desired that we have, which
they can name indeed and speak of its effect and consequences; but yet
they know not what it is, nor apprehend it at all.
I have seen a gentleman of a good family who was born blind, or at least
blind from such an age that he knows not what sight is; who is so little
sensible of his defect that he makes use as we do of words proper for
seeing, and applies them after a manner wholly particular and his own.
They brought him a child to which he was god-father, which, having taken
into his arms, “Good God,” said he, “what a fine child! How beautiful
to look upon! what a pretty face it has!” He will say, like one of us,
“This room has a very fine prospect;--it is clear weather;--the sun
shines bright.” And moreover, being that hunting, tennis, and butts are
our exercises, and he has heard so, he has taken a liking to them, will
ride a-hunting, and believes he has as good share of the sport as we
have; and will express himself as angry or pleased as the best of us
all, and yet knows nothing of it but by the ear. One cries out to him,
“Here’s a hare!” when he is upon some even plain where he may safely
ride; and afterwards, when they tell him, “The hare is killed,” he will
be as overjoyed and proud of it as he hears others say they are. He will
take a tennis-ball in his left hand and strike it away with the racket;
he will shoot with a harquebuss at random, and is contented with what
his people tell him, that he is over, or wide.
Who knows whether all human kind commit not the like absurdity, for want
of some sense, and that through this default the greatest part of
the face of things is concealed from us? What do we know but that the
difficulties which we find in several works of nature proceed hence;
and that several effects of animals, which exceed our capacity, are not
produced by faculty of some sense that we are defective in? and whether
some of them have not by this means a life more full and entire than
ours? We seize an apple with all our senses; we there find redness,
smoothness, odour, and sweetness; but it may have other virtues besides
these, as to heat or binding, which no sense of ours can have any
reference unto. Is it not likely that there are sensitive faculties in
nature that are fit to judge of and to discern those which we call the
occult properties in several things, as for the loadstone to attract
iron; and that the want of such faculties is the cause that we
are ignorant of the true essence of such things? ‘Tis perhaps some
particular sense that gives cocks to understand what hour it is at
midnight, and when it grows to be towards day, and that makes them crow
accordingly; that teaches chickens, before they have any experience of
the matter, to fear a sparrow-hawk, and not a goose or a peacock, though
birds of a much larger size; that cautions them against the hostile
quality the cat has against them, and makes them not to fear a dog; to
arm themselves against the mewing, a kind of flattering voice, of the
one, and not against the barking, a shrill and threatening voice, of the
other; that teaches wasps, ants, and rats, to fall upon the best pear
and the best cheese before they have tasted them, and inspires the stag,
elephant, and serpent, with the knowledge of a certain herb proper for
their cure. There is no sense that has not a mighty dominion, and that
does not by its power introduce an infinite number of knowledges. If
we were defective in the intelligence of sounds, of harmony, and of the
voice, it would cause an unimaginable confusion in all the rest of our
science; for, besides what belongs to the proper effect of every sense,
how many arguments, consequences, and conclusions do we draw to other
things, by comparing one sense with another? Let an understanding man
imagine human nature originally produced without the sense of seeing,
and consider what ignorance and trouble such a defect would bring upon
him, what a darkness and blindness in the soul; he will then see by that
of how great importance to the knowledge of truth the privation of such
another sense, or of two or three, should we be so deprived, would be.
We have formed a truth by the consultation and concurrence of our five
senses; but perhaps we should have the consent and contribution of eight
or ten to make a certain discovery of it in its essence.
The sects that controvert the knowledge of man do it principally by the
uncertainty and weakness of our senses; for since all knowledge is
by their means and mediation conveyed unto us, if they fail in their
report, if they corrupt or alter what they bring us from without, if the
light which by them creeps into the soul be obscured in the passage,
we have nothing else to hold by. From this extreme difficulty all these
fancies proceed: “That every subject has in itself all we there find.
That it has nothing in it of what we think we there find;” and that of
the Epicureans, “That the sun is no bigger than ‘tis judged by our sight
to be:--”

Quidquid id est, nihilo fertur majore figura,
Quam nostris oculis quam cemimus, esse videtur:
“But be it what it will in our esteems,
It is no bigger than to us it seems:”

that the appearances which represent a body great to him that is near,
and less to him that is more remote, are both true:--

Nee tamen hic oculos falli concedimus hilum....
Proinde animi vitium hoc oculis adfingere noli:
“Yet that the eye’s deluded we deny;
Charge not the mind’s faults, therefore, on the eye:”

“and, resolutely, that there is no deceit in the senses; that we are to
lie at their mercy, and seek elsewhere reasons to excuse the difference
and contradictions we there find, even to the inventing of lies and
other flams, if it come to that, rather than accuse the senses.”
Timagoras vowed that, by pressing or turning his eye, he could never
perceive the light of the candle to double, and that the seeming so
proceeded from the vice of opinion, and not from the instrument. The
most absurd of all absurdities, with the Epicureans, is to deny the
force and effect of the senses:--

Proinde, quod in quoquo est his visum tempore, verum est
Et, si non potuit ratio dissolvere causam,
Cur ea, quæ fuerint juxtim quadrata, procul sint
Visa rotunda; tamen præstat rationis egentem
Beddere mendose causas utriusque figuræ,
Quam manibus manifesta suis emittere quæquam,
Et violare fidem primam, et convellere tota
Fundamenta, quibus nixatur vita salusque:
Non modo enim ratio ruat omnis, vita quoque ipsa
Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus ausis,
Procipitesque locos vitare, et cætera, quæ sint
In genere hoc fugienda.
“That what we see exists I will maintain,
And if our feeble reason can’t explain
Why things seem square when they are very near,
And at a greater distance round appear;
‘Tis better yet, for him that’s at a pause,
‘T’ assign to either figure a false cause,
Than shock his faith, and the foundations rend
On which our safety and our life depend:
For reason not alone, but life and all,
Together will with sudden ruin fall;
Unless we trust our senses, nor despise
To shun the various dangers that arise.”

This so desperate and unphilosophical advice expresses only this,--that
human knowledge cannot support itself but by reason unreasonable,
foolish, and mad; but that it is yet better that man, to set a greater
value upon himself, make use of any other remedy, how fantastic soever,
than to confess his necessary ignorance--a truth so disadvantageous to
him. He cannot avoid owning that the senses are the sovereign lords
of his knowledge; but they are uncertain, and falsifiable in all
circumstances; ‘tis there that he is to fight it out to the last; and
if his just forces fail him, as they do, to supply that defect with
obstinacy, temerity, and impudence. In case what the Epicureans say
be true, viz: “that we have no knowledge if the senses’ appearances
be false;” and if that also be true which the Stoics say, “that the
appearances of the senses are so false that they can furnish us with no
manner of knowledge,” we shall conclude, to the disadvantage of these
two great dogmatical sects, that there is no science at all.
As to the error and uncertainty of the operation of the senses, every
one may furnish himself with as many examples as he pleases; so ordinary
are the faults and tricks they put upon us. In the echo of a valley the
sound of a trumpet seems to meet us, which comes from a place behind:--

Exstantesque procul medio de gurgite montes,
Classibus inter qnos liber patet exitus, idem
Apparent, et longe divolsi licet, ingens
Insula conjunctis tamen ex his ana videtur...
Et fugere ad puppim colies campique videntur,
Qnos agimns proter navim, velisque volamus....
Ubi in medio nobis equus acer obhæsit
Flamine, equi corpus transversum ferre videtur
Vis, et in adversum flumen contrudere raptim.
“And rocks i’ th’ seas that proudly raise their head,
Though far disjoined, though royal navies spread,
Their sails between; yet if from distance shown,
They seem an island all combin’d in one.
Thus ships, though driven by a prosperous gale,
Seem fix’d to sailors; those seem under sail
That ride at anchor safe; and all admire,
As they row by, to see the rocks retire.
Thus, when in rapid streams my horse hath stood,
And I look’d downward on the rolling flood;
Though he stood still, I thought he did divide
The headlong streams, and strive against the tide,
And all things seem’d to move on every side.”

Take a musket-ball under the forefinger, the middle finger being lapped
over it, it feels so like two that a man will have much ado to persuade
himself there is but one; the end of the two fingers feeling each of
them one at the same time; for that the senses are very often masters of
our reason, and constrain it to receive impressions which it judges and
knows to be false, is frequently seen. I set aside the sense of feeling,
that has its functions nearer, more lively, and substantial, that so
often, by the effects of the pains it helps the body to, subverts and
overthrows all those fine Stoical resolutions, and compels him to cry
out of his belly, who has resolutely established this doctrine in his
soul--“That the colic, and all other pains and diseases, are indifferent
things, not having the power to abate any thing of the sovereign
felicity wherein the wise man is seated by his virtue.” There is no
heart so effeminate that the rattle and sound of our drums and trumpets
will not inflame with courage; nor so sullen that the harmony of our