The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  Thus, whenever some new doctrine is offered to us we have good cause for distrusting it and for reflecting that the contrary was in fashion before that was produced; it was overturned by this later one, but some third discovery may overturn that too, one day. Before the principles which Aristotle introduced came into repute, other principles satisfied human reason just as his satisfy us now. What letters-patent do Aristotle’s principles have, what exclusive privilege, that the course of our inquiries should stop with them and that they have the right to our assent for all time? They are not exempt: they can be kicked out as their predecessors were. When some new argument presses me hard, it is up to me to decide whether someone else may find a satisfactory reply even if I cannot; for to believe everything that may look true just because we ourselves cannot refute it, is very simple-minded. From that it would follow that the belief of the common people – [C] and all of us are common people – [A] would blow about like a weathercock: for their minds, soft and non-resistant, would constantly be forced to accept different impressions, each one effacing the trace of the other. Anyone who feels too weak to resist should follow legal practice and reply that he will consult counsel – or refer to the wiser heads who trained him.

  How long has medicine been in the world? They say that some newcomer called Paracelsus is changing or reversing the entire order of the old rules, maintaining that, up to the present, medicine has merely served to kill people. He will be able to prove that easily enough, I believe, but it would not be very wise for me, I think, to test his new empiricism at the risk of my life. [AI] ‘Believe nobody,’ as the saying goes. ‘Anyone can say anything.’358

  One of those men who champion novelties and reformations in natural science told me recently that all the Ancients had evidently been wrong about the nature and movements of the winds; if I would only listen he would make me clearly see the palpable truth. After showing some patience in hearing his arguments (which looked extremely probable) I said, ‘What! Those who were navigating according to the rules of Theophrastus, were they really going West when steering East? Were they sailing sideways or astern?’ – ‘That is as may be,’ he replied, ‘but they certainly got it wrong.’ I then retorted that I would rather be guided by results than by reason – for they are always clashing! I have even been told that in geometry (which claims to have reached the highest degree of certainty among the sciences) there are irrefutable demonstrations which overturn truth based on experience. Jacques Peletier, for example, in my own home, told me how he had discovered two lines drawing ever closer together but which, as he could prove, would meet only in infinity.359 And the sole use Pyrrhonists have for their arguments and their reason is to undermine whatever experience shows to be probable; it is wonderful how far our supple reason will go along with their project of denying factual evidence: they can prove that we do not move, that we do not speak and that there is no such thing as weight or heat, with the same force of argument as we have when we prove the most likely things to be true.

  Ptolemy was a great figure; he established the boundaries of the known world; all the ancient philosophers thought they had the measure of it, save for a few remote islands which might have escaped their knowledge. A thousand years ago, if you had questioned the data of cosmography, you would have been accused of Pyrrhonizing – of doubting opinions accepted by everybody; [B] it used to be heresy to allow the existence of the Antipodes!360 [A] But now that in our century new discoveries have revealed, not the odd island or the odd individual country, but an infinite land-mass, almost equal in size to the part we already knew, geographers today proceed to assure us that everything has really been seen and discovered this time.

  Nam quod adest praesto, placet, et pollere videtur.

  [For we are pleased with what is to hand; it works its spell.]361

  Since Ptolemy was once mistaken over his basic tenets, would it not be foolish to trust what moderns are saying now?362 [C] Is it not more likely that this huge body which we call the Universe is very different from what we think? Plato holds that its entire aspect changes – that there comes a point when the heavens, the stars and the sun reverse the motions which we can see there and actually rotate from East to West.363 The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that since the time of their first king, some eleven thousand years ago – (and they showed him the statues of all these kings, portrayed from life) – the Sun had changed its course four times, and the sea and land had changed places. They also said that no date within time can be ascribed to the origin of the world;364 Aristotle and Cicero agree with that; and one of our own people maintained that the world exists from all eternity but has a cycle of deaths and rebirths; he cited Solomon and Isaiah as witnesses, his aim being to counter objections to God’s having been a Creator who had once never created anything, an idle God who only cast aside his idleness when he set his hand to this enterprise and therefore a God subject to change.365

  In the most famous of the Greek Schools of Philosophy the Universe is considered to be a god made by a greater one; it is composed of a body, with a soul situated in the centre but extending to the circumference by means of musical Numbers; it is divine, most blessed, most great, most wise and eternal. Within this ‘god’ there are other gods (the earth, the sea, the heavenly bodies) all maintained by the harmonious and perpetual movement of a sacred dance as they draw together then draw apart, hide then reveal themselves, or move to and fro and change their rows.366

  Heraclitus laid down that the Universe was composed of fire and was destined one day to burst into flames and burn itself out: it would be born again some other time. Apuleius said that Men were ‘sigillatim mortales, cunctim perpetui’ [individually mortal, collectively eternal]. Alexander gave his mother the written record which one of the Egyptian priests had taken from their monuments; it bore witness to the boundless antiquity of that people and included a true account of the birth and growth of other countries. Cicero and Diodorus say that, in their own days, the Chaldaeans kept records going back some four hundred thousand years; Aristotle, Pliny and others date Zoroaster six thousand years before the time of Plato.

  Plato says that the citizens of Sais possess written records covering eight thousand years, adding that the city of Athens was built a thousand years before the foundation of that city.367

  [B] Epicurus taught that there exist in several other worlds objects very like the ones we can see here, fashioned the same way.368 He would have said that with even greater assurance if he could have seen those strange examples of past and present similarities and resemblances to be found between our world and that New World of the West Indies.

  [C] In truth, when I consider what we know about the course of social life on this earth, I have often been struck with wonder at the resemblances there are – separated by immense spaces of place and time – between many savage beliefs or fantastic popular opinions which, whatever way you look at them, do not seem to arise from our natural reasoning. The human mind is a great forger of miracles, we know that: but this relationship has something abnormal about it which I cannot define; you can even see it in names, events and thousands of other ways. [B] For we have newly discovered peoples who, as far as we know, have never heard of us, yet where they believe in circumcision; where countries or great states are entirely governed by women, without men; where you can find something like our Lenten fasts, with the addition of sexual abstinence. We have found peoples where our crosses are honoured in various ways (in one place they even displayed them prominently on their graves); in another crosses were used (especially the cross of St Andrew) to ward off nocturnal visions; they also put them on their children’s beds against enchantments. Elsewhere was discovered a wooden cross, immensely tall, which was worshipped as the god of rain – and that was very far from the coast. Also found there were the express image of our penitents, the use of mitres, the practice of priestly celibacy, the art of divination from the entrails of sacrificed animals, [C] a total abstention from all kinds of fish and fl
esh, [B] the custom for priests to make liturgical use of a special tongue not the common one; the idea that the first god was driven away by a second, his younger brother; the belief that they were created with all kinds of advantages which were subsequently cut off because of their sin; their land changed and their natural condition made harsher; they were submerged by a heaven-sent flood, only a few families being saved who had taken refuge in high mountain caves, which they blocked up to stop the waters getting in; various species of animals were shut in there too; when they thought the rain had ceased, dogs were sent out: they came back dripping wet and clean, so it was judged that the waters had only begun to subside; later other dogs were sent out. When they returned all covered in mud the humans emerged to re-people the world, which they found to be full of nothing but snakes.

  In one case the inhabitants were convinced of a Day of Judgement. When the Spaniards scattered the bones of their dead about as they plundered their graves in search of treasure, they were beside themselves with anger, declaring that such scattered bones could not easily be put together again. They have trade by barter (but no other) with fairs and markets for this purpose; they have dwarves and deformed people to enliven the banquets of their princes; falconry they have, but with their own native birds; they have tyrannous taxation, elegant gardens, acrobats, dancing, musical instruments, coats-of-arms, tennis-courts, games of dice and chance – at which they get so carried away that they stake themselves and their freedom; they have medicine based entirely on magic charms, pictorial writing, a belief in one first man who was father of all peoples; they have the worship of a god who once lived as a Man in perfect celibacy, abstinence and penitence, preaching the law of Nature and liturgical ceremonies and who disappeared from the world without a natural death; a belief in giants, the custom of getting drunk on their local drink and seeing who can down the most, religious ornaments painted with bones and death’s heads, surplices, holy water and aspergilla, women and servants who gaily volunteer to be burnt or buried alive with their husband or masters, laws of inheritance which leave everything to the eldest son and set nothing but obedience aside for the younger one, the custom that a man promoted to high rank adopts a new name and abandons his old one, the custom of sprinkling chalk on the knee of a newborn babe, saying to him: ‘Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return’; and they have the art of augury.

  Such vain shadows of our religion as may be seen in some of these examples witness to its dignity and holiness: it has penetrated into infidel nations on our side of the world by a kind of imitation, but to those natives of far-off lands it came by a shared supernatural inspiration. For we found a belief in Purgatory but of a difference style: they attribute to cold what we attribute to heat, thinking that the souls of the dead are punished and purged by the rigours of extreme cold.

  That reminds me of another pleasing example of diversity: some peoples like to uncover the end of the penis, circumcizing the foreskin like Jews or Moslems, whereas others have such conscientious objections to ever uncovering it that, lest the top of it should ever see the light of day, they scrupulously stretch the foreskin right over it and tie it together with little cords.

  And here is another one: just as we honour kings and festive days by putting on our best clothes, there are regions where they emphasize the disparity between themselves and their king and mark their total submission to him by appearing in their shabbiest clothing; as they go into the palace they put a tattered robe over their good one, so that all pomp and glory should belong to the king alone.369

  But to get on.

  [AI] If Nature includes among her normal activities – along with everything else – the beliefs, judgements and opinions of men; and if such things have their cycles, seasons, births and deaths, every bit as much as cabbages do, the heavens changing them and influencing them at will: what permanent, magisterial authority should we go on attributing to them?370

  [B] Now if experience makes it clear that the very form of our being – not only our colour, build, complexion and behaviour but our mental faculties as well – depends upon our native air, climate and soil ([C] as Vegetius said: ‘et plaga coeli non solum ad robur corporum, sed etiam animorum facit’ [the heavenly regions contribute not only to the strength of men’s bodies but of their souls as well]);371 and if the goddess who founded Athens chose for her city a country of temperate climate which made men wise – that is what the priests of Egypt told Solon: ‘Athenis tenue coelum, ex quo etiam acutiores putantur Attici; crassum Thebis, itaque pingues Thebani et valentes’ [the air of Athens is not oppressive, which is why the Athenians are considered most intelligent; that of Thebes is oppressive, therefore the Thebans are considered heavy and tough]372 – [B] then men must vary as flora and fauna do: whether they are more warlike, just, equable, clever or dull, depends on where they were born. Here they are addicted to wine: there, to robbery and lechery; here they are inclined towards superstition: there to disbelief; [C] here, to freedom: there, to slavery; [B] they may be more suited to learn one particular art of science than another; they may be slow or intelligent, obedient or rebellious, good or bad, all depending on inclinations arising from their physical environment. Change their location, and, like trees, they take on a new character. That was why Cyrus refused to allow the Persians to give up their squat and rugged land and emigrate to softer plains; [C] he said that rich soft lands make for soft men, that fertile lands make for barren minds.373 [B] Now, if we can see that the influence of the stars makes an art or an opinion to flourish; and if a particular age produces a particular kind of nature and inclines the human race towards some particular trait of character (their spirits producing good crops then lean crops, as fields do): what happens to all those special privileges which we pride ourselves upon? A wise man can be mistaken; a hundred men can; indeed, according to us, the whole human race has gone wrong for centuries at a time over this or that: so how can we be sure that human nature ever stops getting things wrong, [C] and that she is not wrong now, in our own period?

  [A] Among other considerations witnessing to Man’s weakness, it seems to me that we should not overlook that even his desires cannot lead him to discover what he needs; I am not talking about fruition, but about thinking and wishing: we cannot even agree on what we need to make us contented. Even if we let our thoughts tailor everything to their wishes, they cannot even desire what is proper to them [C] and so be satisfied:

  [B] quid enim ratione timemus

  Aut cupimus? quid tam dextro pede concipis, ut te

  Conatus non poeniteat votique peracti?

  [Is it reason that governs our fears and our desires? What have you ever conceived, even auspiciously, without being sorry about the outcome – even of its success?]374

  [A] That is why [C] Socrates prayed the gods to give him only what they knew to be good for him. The Spartans, in public as in private, simply prayed that good and beauteous gifts be vouchsafed to them; they left the choice and selection to the gods:375

  [B] Conjugium petimus partumque uxoris; at illi

  Notum qui pueri qualisque futura sit uxor.

  [We pray to have a wife and children, yet only Jupiter knows what the children and that wife will be like.]376

  [A] In his supplications the Christian says, ‘Thy will be done’, in order not to suffer that unseemly state which poets feign for King Midas: he prayed to God that all he touched should turn to gold. His prayer was granted: his wine was gold, his bread was gold, so were the very feathers in his bed, his undershirt and all his garments. In this way he found that the enjoyment of his desires crushed him and that he had been granted a boon no man could bear. He had to unpray his prayers:

  Attonitus novitate mali, divesque miserque,

  Effugere optat opes, et quae modo voverat, odit.

  [Thunderstruck by so new an evil, rich and wretched both at once, he hates what once he prayed for.]377

  [B] I can cite my own case. When I was young I begged Fortune, as much as anything, for the
Order of St Michael: it was then the highest mark of honour for the French nobility, and very rare. Fortune granted it to me, but with a smirk instead of elevating me, instead of lifting me up so that I could reach it, she used greater condescension: she debased the Order, and brought it right down to my neck – lower still in fact.

  [C] Cleobis and Bito asked their god, Trophonius and Agamedes their goddess, for rewards worthy of their piety; the gift they were given was death: so different from ours, where our needs are concerned, are the opinions of heaven.378

  [A] It is sometimes to our detriment that God vouchsafes us riches, honour, life and health itself: the things which please us are not always good for us. If, instead of a cure, he sends us death or a worsening of our ills – ‘Virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa me consolata sunt’ [Even thy rod and thy staff do comfort me] – God acts thus by reason of his Providence, which knows our deserts far more accurately than we can ever do; whatever comes from a hand most loving and omniscient we must accept as good:

  si consilium vis

  Permittes ipsis expendere numinibus, quid

  Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris:

  Charior est illis homo quam sibi.

  [If you want my advice, allow the gods to judge what is best for us and most advantageous for our affairs; a man is dearer to them than he is to himself.]379

  For to ask the gods for honour and high office is like begging them to send you into battle, into a game of dice or into some other situation where the outcome is unknown and the gain dubious.380

  [A] No quarrel among philosophers is more violent or so bitter as the one which looms over the question of Man’s sovereign good; [C] according to Varro’s calculation, 288 sects were produced by it:381‘Qui autem de summo bono dissentit, de tota philosophiae ratione dissentit’ [Whoever disagrees over the sovereign good disagrees about the whole of philosophy].382