Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 61

It was what a Roman senator of the latter ages said, that their predecessors' breath stunk of garlic, but their stomachs were perfumed with a good conscience; and that, on the contrary, those of his time were all sweet odour without, but stunk within of all sorts of vices; that is to say, as I interpret it, that they abounded with learning and eloquence, but were very defective in moral honesty. Incivility, ignorance, simplicity, roughness, are the natural companions of innocence; curiosity, subtlety, knowledge, bring malice in their train; humility, fear, obedience, and affability, which are the princ.i.p.al things that support and maintain human society, require an empty and docile soul, and little presuming upon itself.

Christians have a particular knowledge, how natural and original an evil curiosity is in man; the thirst of knowledge, and the desire to become more wise, was the first ruin of man, and the way by which he precipitated himself into eternal d.a.m.nation. Pride was his ruin and corruption. 'Tis pride that diverts him from the common path, and makes him embrace novelties, and rather choose to be head of a troop, lost and wandering in the path of error; to be a master and a teacher of lies, than to be a disciple in the school of truth, suffering himself to be led and guided by the hand of another, in the right and beaten road. 'Tis, peradventure, the meaning of this old Greek saying, that superst.i.tion follows pride, and obeys it as if it were a father: [--Greek--] Ah, presumption, how much dost thou hinder us?

After that Socrates was told that the G.o.d of wisdom had a.s.signed to him the t.i.tle of sage, he was astonished at it, and, searching and examining himself throughout, could find no foundation for this divine judgment.

He knew others as just, temperate, valiant, and learned, as himself; and more eloquent, more handsome, and more profitable to their country than he. At last he concluded that he was not distinguished from others, nor wise, but only because he did not think himself so; and that his G.o.d considered the opinion of knowledge and wisdom as a singular absurdity in man; and that his best doctrine was the doctrine of ignorance, and simplicity his best wisdom. The sacred word declares those miserable among us who have an opinion of themselves: "Dust and ashes," says it to such, "what hast thou wherein to glorify thyself?" And, in another place, "G.o.d has made man like unto a shadow," of whom who can judge, when by removing the light it shall be vanished! Man is a thing of nothing.

Our force is so far from being able to comprehend the divine height, that, of the works of our Creator, those best bear his mark, and are with better t.i.tle his, which we the least understand. To meet with an incredible thing is an occasion to Christians to believe; and it is so much the more according to reason, by how much it is against human reason. If it were according to reason, it would be no more a miracle; and if it were according to example, it would be no longer a singular thing. _Melius scitur Deus nesdendo_: "G.o.d is better known by not knowing him," says St. Austin: and Tacitus, _Sanctius est ac reverentius de actis Deorum credere, quam scire_; "it is more holy and reverent to believe the works of G.o.d than to know them;" and Plato thinks there is something of impiety in inquiring too curiously into G.o.d, the world, and the first causes of things: _Atque illum quidem parentem hujus universitaiis invenire, difficile; et, quum jam inveneris, indicare in vulgtis, nefas_: "to find out the parent of the world is very difficult; and when found out, to reveal him to the vulgar is sin," says Cicero. We talk indeed of power, truth, justice; which are words that signify some great thing; but that thing we neither see nor conceive at all. We say that G.o.d fears, that G.o.d is angry, that G.o.d loves,

Immortalia mortali sermone notantes:

"Giving to things immortal mortal names."

These are all agitations and emotions that cannot be in G.o.d, according to our form, nor can we imagine them, according to his. It only belongs to G.o.d to know himself, and to interpret his own works; and he does it in our language, going out of himself, to stoop to us who grovel upon the earth. How can prudence, which is the choice between good and evil, be properly attributed to him whom no evil can touch? How can reason and intelligence, which we make use of, to arrive by obscure at apparent things; seeing that nothing is obscure to him? How justice, which distributes to every one what appertains to him, a thing begot by the society and community of men, how is that in G.o.d? How temperance, which is the moderation of corporal pleasures, that have no place in the Divinity? Fort.i.tude to support pain, labour, and dangers, as little appertains to him as the rest; these three things have no access to him. For which reason Aristotle holds him equally exempt from virtue and vice: _Neque gratia, neque ira teneri potest; quod quo talia essent, imbecilla essent omnia?_ "He can neither be affected with favour nor indignation, because both these are the effects of frailty."

The partic.i.p.ation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, is not acquired by our own force: G.o.d has sufficiently given us to understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; 'tis purely the gift of another's bounty: 'tis not by meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more a.s.sist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: 'tis more by__ the mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing of the divine wisdom. 'Tis no wonder if our natural and earthly parts cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?

Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not G.o.d made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of G.o.d, the world knew not G.o.d, it pleased G.o.d by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."

Finally, should I examine whether it be in the power of man to find out that which he seeks and if that quest, wherein he has busied himself so many ages, has enriched him with any new force, or any solid truth; I believe he will confess, if he speaks from his conscience, that all he has got by so long inquiry is only to have learned to know his own weakness. We have only by a long study confirmed and verified the natural ignorance we were in before. The same has fallen out to men truly wise, which befalls the ears of corn; they shoot and raise their heads high and pert, whilst empty; but when full and swelled with grain in maturity, begin to flag and droop. So men, having tried and sounded all things, and having found in that ma.s.s of knowledge, and provision of so many various things, nothing solid and firm, and nothing but vanity, have quitted their presumption, and acknowledged their natural condition. 'Tis what Velleius reproaches Cotta withal and Cicero, "that they had learned of Philo, that they had learned nothing." Pherecydes, one of the seven sages, writing to Thales upon his death-bed; "I have,"

said he, "given order to my people, after my interment, to carry my writings to thee. If they please thee and the other sages, publish; if not, suppress them. They contain no certainty with which I myself am satisfied. Neither do I pretend to know the truth, or to attain to it.

I rather open than discover things." The wisest man that ever was, being asked what he knew, made answer, "He knew this, that he knew nothing."

By which he verified what has been said, that the greatest part of what we know is the least of what we do not; that is to say, that even what we think we know is but a piece, and a very little one, of our ignorance. We know things in dreams, says Plato, and are ignorant of them in truth. _Ormes pene veteres nihil cognosci, nihil percipi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt; angustos sensus, imbecilles animos, brevia curricula vito._ "Almost all the ancients have declared that there is nothing to be known, nothing to be perceived or understood; the senses are too limited, men's minds too weak, and the course of life too short."

And of Cicero himself, who stood indebted to his learning for all he was worth, Valerius says, "That he began to disrelish letters in his old age; and when at his studies, it was with great independency upon any one party; following what he thought probable, now in one sect, and then in another, evermore wavering under the doubts of the academy."

_Dicendum est, sed ita ut nihil affirment, quceram omnia, dubitans plerumque, et mihi diffidens._ "Something I must say, but so as to affirm nothing; I inquire into all things, but for the most part in doubt and distrust of myself."

I should have too fair a game should I consider man in his common way of living and in gross; yet I might do it by his own rule, who judges truth not by weight, but by the number of votes. Let us set the people aside,

Qui vigilans stert.i.t,....

Mortua cui vita est prope jam vivo atque videnti;

"Half of his life by lazy sleep's possess'd, And when awake his soul but nods at best;"

who neither feel nor judge, and let most of their natural faculties lie idle; I will take man in his highest ground. Let us consider him in that little number of men, excellent and culled out from the rest, who, having been endowed with a remarkable and particular natural force, have moreover hardened and whetted it by care, study, and art, and raised it to the highest pitch of wisdom to which it can possibly arrive. They have adjusted their souls to all ways and all biases; have propped and supported them with all foreign helps proper for them, and enriched and adorned them with all they could borrow for their advantage, both within and without the world; 'tis in these is placed the utmost and most supreme height to which human nature can attain. They have regulated the world with policies and laws. They have instructed it with arts and sciences, and by the example of their admirable manners. I shall make account of none but such men as these, their testimony and experience.

Let us examine how far they have proceeded, and where they stopped. The errors and defects that we shall find amongst these men the world may boldly avow as their own.

Whoever goes in search of any thing must come to this, either to say that he has found it, or that it is not to be found, or that he is yet upon the search. All philosophy is divided into these three kinds; her design is to seek out truth, knowledge, and certainty. The Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, and others, have thought they have found it. These established the sciences we have, and have treated of them as of certain knowledge. c.l.i.tomachus, Carneades, and the Academics, have despaired in their search, and concluded that truth could not be conceived by our understandings. The result of these is weakness and human ignorance.

This sect has had the most and the most n.o.ble followers. Pyrrho, and other skeptics or epechists, whose dogmas are held by many of the ancients to be taken from Homer, the seven sages, and from Archilochus and Euripides, and to whose number these are added, Zeno, Democritus, and Xenophanes, say that they are yet upon the inquiry after truth.

These conclude that the others, who think they have found it out, are infinitely deceived; and that it is too daring a vanity in the second sort to determine that human reason is not able to attain unto it; for this establis.h.i.+ng a standard of our power, to know and judge the difficulty of things, is a great and extreme knowledge, of which they doubt whether man is capable:--

Nil sciri quisquis putat, id quoque nescit, An sciri possit; quam se nil scire fatetur.

"He that says nothing can be known, o'erthrows His own opinion, for he nothing knows, So knows not that."

The ignorance that knows itself, judges and condemns itself, is not an absolute ignorance; to be such, it must be ignorant of itself; so that the profession of the Pyrrhonians is to waver, doubt, and inquire, not to make themselves sure of, or responsible to themselves for any thing. Of the three actions of the soul, imaginative, appet.i.tive, and consentive, they receive the two first; the last they kept ambiguous, without inclination or approbation, either of one thing or another, so light as it is. Zeno represented the motion of his imagination upon these divisions of the faculties of the soul thus: "An open and expanded hand signified appearance; a hand half shut, and the fingers a little bending, consent; a clenched fist, comprehension; when with the left he yet thrust the right fist closer, knowledge." Now this situation of their judgment upright and inflexible, receiving all objects without application or consent, leads them to their ataraxy, which is a peaceable condition of life, temperate, and exempt from the agitations we receive by the impression of opinion and knowledge that we think we have of things; whence spring fear, avarice, envy, immoderate desires, ambition, pride, superst.i.tion, love of novelty, rebellion, disobedience, obstinacy, and the greatest part of bodily ills; nay, and by that they are exempt from the jealousy of their discipline; for they debate after a very gentle manner; they fear no requital in their disputes; when they affirm that heavy things descend they would be sorry to be believed, and love tobe contradicted, to engender doubt and suspense of judgment, which is their end. They only put forward their propositions to contend with those they think we have in our belief. If you take their arguments, they will as readily maintain the contrary; 'tis all one to them, they have no choice. If you maintain that snow is black, they will argue on the contrary that it is white; if you say it is neither the one nor the other, they will maintain that it is both. If you hold, of certain judgment, that you know nothing, they will maintain that you do.

Yea, and if by an affirmative axiom you a.s.sure them that you doubt, they will argue against you that you doubt not; or that you cannot judge and determine that you doubt. And by this extremity of doubt, which jostles itself, they separate and divide themselves from many opinions, even of those they have several ways maintained, both concerning doubt and ignorance. "Why shall not they be allowed to doubt," say they, "as well as the dogmatists, one of whom says green, another yellow? Can any thing be proposed to us to grant, or deny, which it shall not be permitted to consider as ambiguous?" And where others are carried away, either by the custom of their country, or by the instruction of parents, or by accident, as by a tempest, without judgment and without choice, nay, and for the most part before the age of discretion, to such and such an opinion, to the sect whether Stoic or Epicurean, with which they are prepossessed, enslaved, and fast bound, as to a thing they cannot forsake: _Ad quamc.u.mque disciplinant, velut tempestate, delati, ad earn, tanquam ad saxum, adh.o.r.esc.u.n.t;_ "every one cleaves to the doctrine he has happened upon, as to a rock against which he has been thrown by tempest;" why shall not these likewise be permitted to maintain their liberty, and consider things without obligation or slavery? _hoc liberiores et solutiores, quod integra illis est judicandi potestas_: "in this more unconstrained and free, because they have the greater power of judging." Is it not of some advantage to be disengaged from the necessity that curbs others? Is it not better to remain in suspense than to entangle one's self in the innumerable errors that human fancy has produced? Is it not much better to suspend one's persuasion than to intermeddle with these wrangling and seditious divisions: "What shall I choose?" "What you please, provided you will choose." A very foolish answer; but such a one, nevertheless, as all dogmatism seems to point at, and by which we are not permitted to be ignorant of what we are ignorant of.

Take the most eminent side, that of the greatest reputation; it will never be so sure that you shall not be forced to attack and contend with a hundred and a hundred adversaries to defend it. Is it not better to keep out of this hurly-burly? You are permitted to embrace Aristotle's opinions of the immortality of the soul with as much zeal as your honour and life, and to give the lie to Plato thereupon, and shall they be interdicted to doubt him? If it be lawful for Panaetius to maintain his opinion about augury, dreams, oracles, vaticinations, of which the Stoics made no doubt at all; why may not a wise man dare to do the same in all things that he dared to do in those he had learned of his masters, established by the common consent of the school, whereof he is a professor and a member? If it be a child that judges, he knows not what it is; if a wise man, he is prepossessed. They have reserved for themselves a marvellous advantage in battle, having eased themselves of the care of defence. If you strike them, they care not, provided they strike too, and they turn every thing to their own use. If they overcome, your argument is lame; if you, theirs; if they fall short, they verify ignorance; if you fall short, you do it; if they prove that nothing is known, 'tis well; if they cannot prove it, 'tis also well: _Ut quurn in eadem re paria contrariis in partibus momenta inveniuntur, facilius ab utraque parte a.s.sertio sustineatur:_ "That when like sentiments happen _pro_ and _con_ in the same thing, the a.s.sent may on both sides be more easily suspended." And they make account to find out, with much greater facility, why a thing is false, than why 'tis true; that which is not, than that which is; and what they do not believe, than what they do. Their way of speaking is: "I a.s.sert nothing; it is no more so than so, or than neither one nor t'other; I understand it not.

Appearances are everywhere equal; the law of speaking, _pro_ or _con_, is the same. Nothing seems true, that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is that is to say, "I hold, I stir not." This is the burden of their song, and others of like stuff. The effect of which is a pure, entire, perfect, and absolute suspension of judgment. They make use of their reason to inquire and debate, but not to fix and determine.

Whoever shall imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without bias, propension, or inclination, upon any occasion whatever, conceives a true idea of Pyrrhonism. I express this fancy as well as I can, by reason that many find it hard to conceive, and the authors themselves represent it a little variously and obscurely.

As to what concerns the actions of life, they are in this of the common fas.h.i.+on. They yield and give up themselves to their natural inclinations, to the power and impulse of pa.s.sions, to the const.i.tution of laws and customs, and to the tradition of arts; _Non enim nos Deus ista scire, sed tantummodo uti, voluit._ "For G.o.d would not have us know, but only use those things." They suffer their ordinary actions to be guided by those things, without any dispute or judgment. For which reason I cannot consent to what is said of Pyrrho, by those who represent him heavy and immovable, leading a kind of savage and unsociable life, standing the jostle of carts, going upon the edge of precipices, and refusing to accommodate himself to the laws. This is to enhance upon his discipline; he would never make himself a stock or a stone, he would show himself a living man, discoursing, reasoning, enjoying all reasonable conveniences and pleasures, employing and making use of all his corporal and spiritual faculties in rule and reason.

The fantastic, imaginary, and false privileges that man had usurped of lording it, ordaining, and establis.h.i.+ng, he has utterly quitted and renounced. Yet there is no sect but is constrained to permit her sage to follow several things not comprehended, perceived, or consented to, if he means to live. And if he goes to sea, he follows that design, not knowing whether his voyage shall be successful or no; and only insists upon the tightness of the vessel, the experience of the pilot, and the convenience of the season, and such probable circ.u.mstances; after which he is bound to go, and suffer himself to be governed by appearances, provided there be no express and manifest contrariety in them. He has a body, he has a soul; the senses push them, the mind spurs them on. And although he does not find in himself this proper and singular sign of judging, and that he perceives that he ought not to engage his consent, considering that there may be some false, equal to these true appearances, yet does he not, for all that, fail of carrying on the offices of his life with great liberty and convenience. How many arts are there that profess to consist more in conjecture than knowledge; that decide not on true and false, and only follow that which seems so!

There are, say they, true and false, and we have in us wherewith to seek it; but not to make it stay when we touch it. We are much more prudent, in letting ourselves be regulated by the order of the world, without inquiry. A soul clear from prejudice has a marvellous advance towards tranquillity and repose. Men that judge and control their judges, do never duly submit to them.

How much more docile and easy to be governed, both by the laws of religion and civil polity, are simple and incurious minds, than those over-vigilant wits, that will still be prating of divine and human causes! There is nothing in human invention that carries so great a show of likelihood and utility as this; this presents man, naked and empty, confessing his natural weakness, fit to receive some foreign force from above, unfurnished of human, and therefore more apt to receive into him the divine knowledge, making nought of his own judgment, to give more room to faith; neither disbelieving nor establis.h.i.+ng any dogma against common observances; humble, obedient, disciplinable, and studious; a sworn enemy of heresy; and consequently freeing himself from vain and irreligious opinions, introduced by false sects. 'Tis a blank paper prepared to receive such forms from the finger of G.o.d as he shall please to write upon it. The more we resign and commit ourselves to G.o.d, and the more we renounce ourselves, of the greater value we are. "Take in good part," says Ecclesiastes, "the things that present themselves to thee, as they seem and taste from hand to mouth; the rest is out of thy knowledge." _Dominus novit cogitationes hominum, quoniam vanae sunt_: "The Lord knoweth the hearts of men, that they are but vanity."

Thus we see that of the three general sects of philosophy, two make open profession of doubt and ignorance; and in that of the Dogmatists, which is the third, it is easy to discover that the greatest part of them only a.s.sume this face of confidence and a.s.surance that

they may produce the better effect; they have not so much thought to establish any certainty for us, as to show us how far they have proceeded in their search of truth: _Quam docti jingunt magis quam norunt_: "Which the learned rather feign than know." Timaeus, being to instruct Socrates in what he knew of the G.o.ds, the world, and men, proposes to speak to him as a man to a man; and that it is sufficient, if his reasons are probable as those of another; for that exact reasons were neither in his nor any other mortal hand; which one of his followers has thus imitated: _Ut potero, explicabo: nec tamen, ut Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa quae dixero; sed, ut homunculus, probabilia conjectura sequens:_ "I will, as well as I am able, explain; affirming, yet not as the Pythian oracle, that what I say is fixed and certain, but like a mere man, that follows probabilities by conjecture."

And this, upon the natural and common subject of the contempt of death; he has elsewhere translated from the very words of Plato: _Si forte, de Deorum natura ortuque mundi disserentes, minus id quod habemiis in animo consequi-mur, haud erit mirum; oquum est enim meminisse, et me, qui disseram, hominem esse, et vos, qui judicetis, ut, si probabilia dicentur, nihil ultra requiratis?_ "If perchance, when we discourse of the nature of G.o.d, and the world's original, we cannot do it as we desire, it will be no great wonder. For it is just you should remember that both I who speak and you who are to judge, are men; so that if probable things are delivered, you shall require and expect no more."

Aristotle ordinarily heaps up a great number of other men's opinions and beliefs, to compare them with his own, and to let us see how much he has gone beyond them, and how much nearer he approaches to the likelihood of truth; for truth is not to be judged by the authority and testimony of others; which made Epicurus religiously avoid quoting them in his writings. This is the prince of all dogmatists, and yet we are told by him that the more we know the more we have room for doubt. In earnest, we sometimes see him shroud and m.u.f.fle up himself in so thick and so inextricable an obscurity that we know not what to make of his advice; it is, in effect, a Pyrrhonism under a resolutive form. Hear Cicero's protestation, who expounds to us another's fancy by his own: _Qui requirunt quid de quaque re ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt quam necesse est,... Hoc in philosophia ratio, contra omnia disserendi, nuttamque rem aperte judicandi, profecta a Socrate, repet.i.ta ab Arcesila, conjirmata a Gameade, usque ad nostram viget cetatem..........Hi sumus, qui omnibus veris falsa quodam adjuncta esse dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et a.s.sentiendi nota._ "They who desire to know what we think of every thing are therein more inquisitive than is necessary. This practice in philosophy of disputing against every thing, and of absolutely concluding nothing, begun by Socrates, repeated by Arcesilaus, and confirmed by Cameades, has continued in use even to our own times. We are they who declare that there is so great a mixture of things false amongst all that are true, and they so resemble one another, that there can be in them no certain mark to direct us either to judge or a.s.sent."

Why hath not Aristotle only, but most of the philosophers, affected difficulty, if not to set a greater value upon the vanity of the subject, and amuse the curiosity of our minds by giving them this hollow and fleshless bone to pick? c.l.i.tomachus affirmed "That he could never discover by Carneades's writings what opinion he was of." This was it that made Epicurus affect to be abstruse, and that procured Herac.l.i.tus the epithet of [--Greek--] Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of, like jugglers, to conceal the vanity of their art, and which human sottishness easily takes for current pay.

Claras, ob obscuram linguam, magis inter manes...

Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque Inversis quae sub verbis lat.i.tantia cemunt.

"Bombast and riddle best do puppies please, For fools admire and love such things as these; And a dull quibble, wrapt in dubious phrase, Up to the height doth their wise wonder raise."

Cicero reprehends some of his friends for giving more of their time to the study of astrology, logic, and geometry, than they were really worth; saying that they were by these diverted from the duties of life, and more profitable and proper studies. The Cyrenaick philosophers, in like manner, despised physics and logic. Zeno, in the very beginning of the books of the commonwealth, declared all the liberal arts of no use.

Chrysippus said "That what Plato and Aristotle had writ, concerning logic, they had only done in sport, and by way of exercise;" and could not believe that they spoke in earnest of so vain a thing. Plutarch says the same of metaphysics. And Epicurus would have said as much of rhetoric, grammar, poetry, mathematics, and, natural philosophy excepted, of all the sciences; and Socrates of them all, excepting that which treats of manners and of life. Whatever any one required to be instructed in, by him, he would ever, in the first place, demand an account of the conditions of his life present and past, which he examined and judged, esteeming all other learning subsequent to that and supernumerary: _Parum mihi placeant eae littero quo ad virtutem doctoribus nihil pro-fuerunt._ "That learning is in small repute with me which nothing profited the teachers themselves to virtue." Most of the arts have been in like manner decried by the same knowledge; but they did not consider that it was from the purpose to exercise their wits in those very matters wherein there was no solid advantage.

As to the rest, some have looked upon Plato as a dogmatist, others as a doubter, others in some things the one, and in other things the other.

Socrates, the conductor of his dialogues, is eternally upon questions and stirring up disputes, never determining, never satisfying, and professes to have no other science but that of opposing himself. Homer, their author, has equally laid the foundations of all the sects of philosophy, to show how indifferent it was which way we should choose.

'Tis said that ten several sects sprung from Plato; yet, in my opinion, never did any instruction halt and stumble, if his does not.

Socrates said that midwives, in taking upon them the trade of helping others to bring forth, left the trade of bringing forth themselves; and that by the t.i.tle of a wise man or sage, which the G.o.ds had conferred upon him, he was disabled, in his virile and mental love, of the faculty of bringing forth, contenting himself to help and a.s.sist those that could; to open their nature, anoint the pa.s.ses, and facilitate their birth; to judge of the infant, baptize, nourish, fortify, swath, and circ.u.mcise it, exercising and employing his understanding in the perils and fortunes of others.

It is so with the most part of this third sort of authors, as the ancients have observed in the writings of Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Xenophanes, and others. They have a way of writing, doubtful in substance and design, rather inquiring than teaching, though they mix their style with some dogmatical periods. Is not the same thing seen in Seneca and Plutarch? How many contradictions are there to be found if a man pry narrowly into them! So many that the reconciling lawyers ought first to reconcile them every one to themselves. Plato seems to have affected this method of philosophizing in dialogues; to the end that he might with greater decency, from several mouths, deliver the diversity and variety of his own fancies. It is as well to treat variously of things as to treat of them conformably, and better, that is to say, more copiously and with greater profit. Let us take example from ourselves: judgments are the utmost point of all dogmatical and determinative speaking; and yet those _arrets_ that our parliaments give the people, the most exemplary of them, and those most proper to nourish in them the reverence due to that dignity, princ.i.p.ally through the sufficiency of the persons acting, derive their beauty not so much from the conclusion, which with them is quotidian and common to every judge, as from the dispute and heat of divers and contrary arguments that the matter of law and equity will permit And the largest field for reprehension that some philosophers have against others is drawn from the diversities and contradictions wherein every one of them finds himself perplexed, either on purpose to show the vacillation of the human mind concerning every thing, or ignorantly compelled by the volubility and incomprehensibility of all matter; which is the meaning of the maxim--"In a slippery and sliding place let us suspend our belief;" for, as Euripides says,--

"G.o.d's various works perplex the thoughts of men."

Like that which Empedocles, as if transported with a divine fury, and compelled by truth, often strewed here and there in his writings: "No, no, we feel nothing, we see nothing; all things are concealed from us; there is not one thing of which we can positively say what it is;"

according to the divine saying: _Cogitationes mortalium timidae, et incertae adinventiones nostro et providentice._ "For the thoughts of mortal men are doubtful; and our devices are but uncertain." It is not to be thought strange if men, despairing to overtake what they hunt after, have not however lost the pleasure of the chase; study being of itself so pleasant an employment; and so pleasant that amongst the pleasures, the Stoics forbid that also which proceeds from the exercise of the mind, will have it curbed, and find a kind of intemperance in too much knowledge.

Democritus having eaten figs at his table that tasted of honey, fell presently to considering with himself whence they should derive this unusual sweetness; and to be satisfied in it, was about to rise from the table to see the place whence the figs had been gathered; which his maid observing, and having understood the cause, smilingly told him that "he need not trouble himself about that, for she had put them into a vessel in which there had been honey." He was vexed at this discovery, and that she had deprived him of the occasion of this inquiry, and robbed his curiosity of matter to work upon: "Go thy way," said he, "thou hast done me an injury; but, for all that, I will seek out the cause as if it were natural;" and would willingly have found out some true reason for a false and imaginary effect. This story of a famous and great philosopher very clearly represents to us that studious pa.s.sion that puts us upon the pursuit of things, of the acquisition of which we despair. Plutarch gives a like example of some one who would not be satisfied in that whereof he was in doubt, that he might not lose the pleasure of inquiring into it; like the other who would not that his physician should allay the thirst of his fever, that he might not lose the pleasure of quenching it by drinking. _Satius est supervacua discere, quam nihil._ "'Tis better to learn more than necessary than nothing at all." As in all sorts of feeding, the pleasure of eating is very often single and alone, and that what we take, which is acceptable to the palate, is not always nouris.h.i.+ng or wholesome; so that which our minds extract from science does not cease to be pleasant, though there be nothing in it either nutritive or healthful. Thus they say: "The consideration of nature is a diet proper for our minds, it raises and elevates us, makes us disdain low and terrestrial things, by comparing them with those that are celestial and high. The mere inquisition into great and occult things is very pleasant, even to those who acquire no other benefit than the reverence and fear of judging it." This is what they profess. The vain image of this sickly curiosity is yet more manifest in this other example which they so often urge. "Eudoxus wished and begged of the G.o.ds that he might once see the sun near at hand, to comprehend the form, greatness, and beauty of it; even though he should thereby be immediately burned." He would at the price of his life purchase a knowledge, of which the use and possession should at the same time be taken from him; and for this sudden and vanis.h.i.+ng knowledge lose all the other knowledge he had in present, or might afterwards have acquired.

I cannot easily persuade myself that Epicurus, Plato, and Pytagoras, have given us their atom, idea and numbers, for current pay. They were too wise to establish their articles of faith upon things so disputable and uncertain. But in that obscurity and ignorance in which the world then was, every one of these great men endeavoured to present some kind of image or reflection of light, and worked their brains for inventions that might have a pleasant and subtle appearance; provided that, though false, they might make good their ground against those that would oppose them. _Unicuique ista pro ingenio finguntur, non ex scientiae vi._ "These things every one fancies according to his wit, and not by any power of knowledge."

One of the ancients, who was reproached, "That he professed philosophy, of which he nevertheless in his own judgment made no great account,"

made answer, "That this was truly to philosophize."