The Complete Essays
Page 164
228. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Democritus, IX, 45; cf. Epicurus, IX, 85.
229. What follows derives from Pliny, Hist. Nat., VI, 2; VIII, 22; Herodotus, III, 101; IV, 191. Pliny’s ‘errors’ and Herodotus’ ‘lies’ were often evoked in the Renaissance.
230. Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune, 623 F (producing amused laughter from the hearers).
231. The standard definitions of Man, as a thinking, laughing or ‘political’ animal, could not apply to men without brains in their heads or mouths to laugh with or cities to live in (as political animals).
232. A miracle is, for Christians, an event ‘against the whole order of Nature’. To recognize such an event by natural reason requires, therefore, a true knowledge of the limits of Nature.
233. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxi, 100, cf. xxxiii, 105–8; the verses from Euripides were inscribed in Montaigne’s library; they are cited by Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, 229, but in a different form; Montaigne’s version derives from Stobaeus, Sermo 119, but there are minor variations in many editions of this text.
234. Plato, Theaetetus, 180E–183E; Seneca, Epist., LXXXVIII, 43–6; Plato, Parmenides, 138.
’88 (In place of [C]): I do not know whether Ecclesiastical teaching judges otherwise – and I submit myself, in all things everywhere to its ordinance, but it has always seemed to me…
235. Matthew 26:26. Disputes over the eucharistic formula ‘This (Hoc) is my body’ are central to Christian controversy. Cf. H. C. Agrippa, On the Vanity of all Learning, III.
236. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, xxix, 95.
237. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Pyrrho, IX, 76 (for ‘rhubarb’ the text gives medicamenta).
238. In 1576 (doubtless under the influence of Pyrrho), Montaigne struck a medal with a Balance, poised, bearing the device Que sçay-ie?
239. ’88: that scoffer Pliny exploited… (Pliny, Hist. Nat., II, 7; the two following quotations are from Horace, Odes, III, 29, 43; Pliny, ibid., II, 23.)
240. Seneca, Epist., XCII, 275. The Stoics ‘subject God to destiny’: the Christians who are alleged to do so are doubtless, for Montaigne, Calvinists – cf. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, 29.
241. Tertullian, apparently, while still a Catholic; he became a Montanist.
242. Cicero, De nat. deorum, II, lxvi, 167; III, xxxv, 86; St Augustine, City of God, XI, 22; Cicero, Acad., II, xxviii, 121.
243. Epicurus’ principle of isonomia (Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xix, 50) and the contentions of Cicero’s brother in De divinat. I, lvii, 129, are here countered by Romans 1:22–23.
244. Lucan, Pharsalia, I, 486. (For ancient deifications and medals, cf. G. du Choul, De la religion des anciens Romains, 1556, p. 75, etc.; also Joachim Du Bellay, Regrets, TLF, Songe XI and illustration.) Seneca, Epist., XXIV, 13; St Augustine, City of God, VIII, 23–4.
245. Plutarch, Les Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 210 GH; Hermes Trismegistus, Asclepius, 37, apud St Augustine, City of God, VIII, 24; Lucan, Pharsalia, I, 452 (adapted).
246. Several Stoic commonplaces and major borrowings from Cicero (De nat. deorum, II, vi, 16-VIII, 22) and others (cf. Pontus de Tyard, Second Curieux in Discours philosophiques, 1587, 310); Horace’s fable of the puffed-up frog (Satires, II, iii, 319); finally St Augustine, City of God, XII, 18.
247. Commonplace deriving from Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XVIII, 4 (but in the temple of Anubis not Serapis).
248. Varro apud St Augustine, City of God, VI, 7; tale current since Antiquity.
249. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Plato, III, ii, 185.
250. Guillaume Postel, Des Histoires Orientales (De la République des Turcs), 1575, 919 r.°
251. Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xxvii, 76–78.
252. Eusebius Pamphilus, Preparatio evangelka, XIII, 13, perhaps via Ph. Duplessis–Mornay, De la Verité de la religion chrestienne, chapters. I(end), 4 (beginning).
253. Developments inspired by Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xxvii, 78: ‘Suppose animals possessed reason: would they not attribute superiority to their own kind?’ Latin quotation: ibid., 77.
254. Horace, Odes, II, 12, 6; Virgil, Aeneid, II, 610; Herodotus, I, 172. (For the gods of grapes and garlic, cf. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, On the Loss of Grace and the State of Sin, book X, chapter ix, ‘An enumeration of the maladies and wounds of the human mind’, § 6, in Opera, 1593, 487B.)
255. Livy, XXVII, xxiii; Virgil, Aeneid, I, 16; Anon., cited Cicero, De divinatione, II, Ivi, 115; Ovid, Fasti, III, 81 and I, 294.
256. Echoes of St Augustine, City of God, IV, 8; VI, 5 and 7; III, 12 etc.; quotation from Ovid, Metam., I, 194 in Vivès’s commentary (ibid., Ill, 12); Plutarch, Contre les Stoïques, 583A (cf. Rabelais, Quart Livre, TLF, XXVII, p. 135); Ovid, ibid., VIII, 99.
257. St Augustine, City of God, IV, xxxi and xxxvii.
258. Phaëton was the son of Helios and Clymene. Seeking to reach the heavens he was drowned: the symbol of hubris. (The ‘forms’, or ‘Ideas’, exist in the heavenly regions; Man only knows those which God makes accessible to him: to try and discover more is to court disaster.)
259. Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, vii, 2; Cicero, De nat. deorum, II, xxii, 57–58; for Archimedes and the compelling power of geometry, Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxvii, 116–17 (influenced by a reading of S. Bodin, De la démonomanie des sorciers); Guy de Brués, Dialogues, p. 90.
260. Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, vii, 7.
261. Ibid., IV, vii 7; Socrates’ verdict was proverbial (Erasmus, Adages, Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos).
262. Plato, Timaeus, 40 DE (not evidently ironical in Ficino’s Latin rendering, p. 710).
263. Ovid, Metam., II, 107.
264. Plato, Republic, X, xii, 616.
265. Varro: known only from Probus’ commentary on Virgil, Eclogue, VI.
266. ’88: principles (ressorts) for moiens (means).
267. Plato, Alcibiades, II, 147: ‘For poetry as a whole is inclined to be enigmatic’; Ficino’s Latin rendering (p. 47) is ambiguous, giving rise to Montaigne’s rendering, also found (for example) in Cognatus’ adage, ‘Multa novit, sed male novit omnia’ (cf. Adagia, id est proverbiorum… omnium, Wechel, 1643, index rerum s.v. natura) 268. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 122.
268. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 122.
’95: disjointed poet. All superhuman sciences bedeck themselves in the style of poetry. When their natural… (Timon of Athens’ insult, repeated by Montaigne in II, 16, ‘On glory’; Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Plato, III, xxvi, 119.)
269. Astronomy, for example, was concerned to ‘save the appearances’ – that is, to account for observed phenomena; it did not claim to be describing fact but ‘appearances’ (phenomena), which may or may not really be true.
270. Plato, Timaeus, 72D (Ficino, p. 724).
271. ’88: monstrous (monstrueuse) for abnormal (enormale).
272. Plato, Critias, 107, CD (adapted) (Ficino, p. 107).
273. Erasmus, Adages: Ad pedes (but the servant-girl did not trip him up: he fell); Cicero, De div., II, xiii, 30 (a verse from the Iphigeneia of Ennius); Plato, Theaetetus, 174B (Ficino, p. 149).
274. Horace, Epistles, I, xii, 16.
275. Pliny, Hist. nat., II, xxxvii; St Augustine, City of God, XXI, 10.
276. Criticism of Aristotle’s doctrine of the creative force of privation was current: e.g. in Ramus and in Guy de Brués, Dialogues, 161. Cf. also Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxvii (118–19); De nat. deorum, I, X, xi.
277. H. C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, III (ad fin.). The axiom cited above was not Pythagorean: cf. Cognatus’ adage, ‘Peritis in sua arte credendum’.
278. Plato, Republic, V. 480 A. (For what follows, cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Diogenes, L: when Zeno was proving ‘by most acute arguments that there is no such thing as motion’, Diogenes got up and walked away. ‘What are you doing, Diogenes?’ asked Zeno in surprise. ‘I am confuting your arguments,’ he replied.)
279. Lucretius, I, 112 (Lambin, p. 16). The foll
owing list of opinions combines commonplaces from Sextus Empiricus, Cicero and, especially, H. C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, II. But one of the most influential studies of the soul in the Renaissance was Melanchthon’s De anima. Some of the matter of the following pages can be found there or may derive from there.
280. Virgil, Aeneid, IX, 349 and VI, 730. Both cited in Melanchthon, De anima (Opera, 1541, III, 9); Lucretius, III, 99 (Lambin, pp. 198–9).
281. For entelechy (actuality or activity) as principle of soul, see Aristotle, De anima, 2, I and Metaph., 8. 3; discussed, similarly, in Melanchthon, De anima, II ff. (cf. Tertullian, De anima, 32); Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xi; St Bernard, De anima seu meditationes devotissimae, I, in princ; Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Heraclitus, IX, vii. What follows may be influenced by H. C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, LII; for Renaissance scholarship, see Melanchthon, De anima, 17 ff. (Quid est organum?).
282. Lucretius, III, 102; 142 (Lambin, pp. 198–99, 201–204) = where stomach a breast.
283. A basic interdict of the Law of Moses, e.g. Leviticus 7:26–27; but it is the anima (life) not animus (mind) which is ‘in the blood’: ibid., 17:11. Cf. Melanchthon, De anima, 16.
284. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxvii, 67. Montaigne used Cicero as a source, but he was impatient with his wordiness and credited him with no originality as a thinker.
285. Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Piatonis, II, ii; Stoics, rejected by Seneca, Epist., LVII, 7–8. In the original French, Montaigne confusingly uses estomach in both its Latin sense (stomach) and its Greek sense (breast).
286. Platonists, including Origen (criticized by St Augustine, City of God, XI, 23).
287. Plutarch, Life of Theseus, I, 1.
288. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Diogenes, VI, 40.
’80: sleep. And then Plato defined man…
289. Cicero, De fin., I, v, 13–vi, 21; De nat. deorum, II, xxxvi, 93–4 (adapted); III, ix, 20–3. Cotta is mocking Zeno.
290. ’88: find many similar examples…; (in place of [C], below): schools, as you can see in the infinite examples in Plutarch, against the Epicureans and Stoics: and in Seneca against the Peripatetics. We…
291. Plato, Alcibiades, I, 129 A.
292. Cicero, De divinat., II, lviii, 119.
293. ’88: souls, (for I have chosen this one example as being the most convenient for witnessing to our feebleness and vanity) Plato…(Cf. Melanchthon, De anima, 29 f.)
294. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Plato, III, lxvii, 224 apud Guy de Brués, p. 79 f.
295. Claudian, cited in the Politici of Justus Lipsius, IV, ix; then Lucretius, III, 143 (Lambin, pp. 201–2). Montaigne misreads momen (impulse) as nomen (name, authority) despite Lambin’s explanation.
296. Aristotelian opinions, backed by Virgil, Georgics, IV, 221.
297. This doctrine (traducianism) is discussed by Melanchthon, De anima, along with other notions mentioned by Montaigne.
298. First line, anon., second, Horace, Odes, IV, iv, 29.
299. Lucretius, III, 741 (Lambin, 241–2). Cf. Andreas Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, VII, 1–4. It was accepted that sensitive and vegetative souls could be transmitted in semen: the human rational soul was individually created (Melanchthon, De anima, 15).
300. Lucretius, III, 671 (Lambin, p. 235: criticism of Pythagoreans, citing Aristotle). There follows criticism of the Platonic doctrine that all learning is recollection of knowledge pre-dating the imprisonment of the soul in the body (Phaedo, XVIII, 73E). Similar refutations are found elsewhere (e.g. in L. Joubert’s Erreurs populaires, 1578 (Preface), exploited above, note 66, on natural language). Christianity avoids the problem of rewards and punishments in the afterlife by making them depend on the presence or absence of imputed merits (Christ’s not Man’s).
301. Lucretius, III, 674 (Lambin, pp. 265–7, reading longior for longiter).
302. Plato, Republic, X, 615. Origen and the Universalists held that, eventually, Hell would be empty and all would be saved. Montaigne may also be alluding to misconceptions of Purgatory (as a modification of Hell, rather than of Heaven).
303. A series of sustained borrowings from Lucretius, III, 445 f.; 510 f.; 175 f.; 499–501; 492 f.; 463 f.; 800 f.; 458; 110 f. Throughout, the comments of Lambin are relevant (pp. 190–272). For a Christian answer in the dedication of Book III of Lucretius, see the Introduction, p. xxxvii.
304. Ignorant medical deformation of hydrophobia.
305. Cicero, De divinat., II, lviii, 119. Montaigne takes some of these arguments up again in III, 13, ‘On experience’.
306. The last of this series of borrowings from Sextus Empiricus; then Aristotle, Metaphysics, II, I, 993 b (a bat not an owl).
307. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xvi.
308. Seneca, Epist., CII, 2 (a major treatment of the theme of immortality, influencing the following argument).
309. Plato, Laws, X, 907.
310. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxviii, 121 (citing Democritus).
311. Nembroth (Nimrod) was King of Babel; the Tower of Babel, sometimes portrayed as pyramidal, sought to ‘reach unto heaven’; God overthrew it and confounded men’s language, ‘that they may not understand another’s speech’: Genesis 10:9–11:9; then I Corinthians 1:19; St Augustine, City of God, XI, 22.
312. Points made in Lambin’s dedication of Book III of Lucretius to ‘Germano Valenti Pimpuntio’: no human arguments assure us of immortality, not even Plato’s: only Christ does. Cf. Introduction, p. 25 xxiv ff.
313. Seneca, Epist., CXVII, 6.
314. Cicero, Tusc. disp., I, xxxi; cf. Rabelais, Quart Livre, XXVII, ad fin.
315. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Diogenes, VIII, 526.
’88 (in place of [C]): another. Socrates, Plato and virtually all those who wished to believe in the immortality of souls, allowed themselves to be convinced by that discovery, as well as whole nations, our own among them. But… (Cf. Caesar, De bello gallico, VI, 18.)
316. Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 719 (cf. St Augustine, City of God, XIV, 5). Platonic teachings: cf. Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune, 626 C–H (the ‘orchard of Dis’).
317. St Augustine, City of God, XXI, 16–17; XXII, 28 (including note by Vivès).
318. Plato, Meno, 82 (Ficino, p. 19).
319. Plato, Timaeus, 42. E D (Ficino, p. 710).
320. Lucretius, III, 776 f. (Lambin, pp. 243–5). The following passage draws on III, 712–40 (Lambin, pp. 237–41).
321. Plutarch, Life of Romulus, XIV, ad. fin.
322. In Amyot’s Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune, 614–27, and Du Demon ou esprit familier de Socrates (636–49). (This is a reminder of a revolution in thought; the generation of Rabelais still sought mystical religious truths in these treatises.)
323. Discussion of the body, and of the various theories of human reproduction form a major element in Melanchthon’s De anima (cf. 39 ff.). Since the human egg had yet to be discovered, all theories of generation turned on the nature of semen and of the womb. Rival schools, especially those of Hippocrates and Galen, clashed from Antiquity (cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, TLF, VIII; XXXIII; and notes). Montaigne draws on H.C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, LXXXII, and Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Des opinions des philosophes, 456 G–459 D. Cf. also Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, XV, 10–11.
324. The duration of pregnancies was a question of great actuality: in general doctors accepted as legitimate children born after eleven (or even thirteen) months; some lawyers denied the possibility. Cf. Rabelais, Gargantua, TLF, III and notes. Also discussed in Melanchthon. Montaigne was born after a prolonged pregnancy of eleven months.
325. Pliny, II, I.
326. For Protagoras, the arch-Sceptic and agnostic who introduced total relativism by making each individual man the measure of all things, see Plato, Theaetetus, 152 A–C: 166D; 174 A–B; Aristotle, Metaph., XV, v, 6, (1062 b). Later, Montaigne draws on these pages as well as on Sextus, Hypotyposes, I, XXXII, 216 ff.
327. Thales (Diogenes Laertius, Lives, T
hales, I, XXXV, 36), as cited by Erasmus in his Socratic adage Nosce teipsum. (For Justus Lipsius, Montaigne was ‘our Thales’.)
328. See above, p. 529. Montaigne undermines the case of deriving knowledge from sense-data – a central contention of Pyrrhonism.
329. Herodotus, III, 73, cited by Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’amy, 41 B–C.
330. Cf. S. Goulart, Hist. du Portugal, XII, xxiii, 366r°; similar but not identical account.