“And hounds stir often in their quiet rest,

Spending their mouths, as if upon a quest,

Snuff, and breathe quick and short, as if they went

In a full chase upon a burning scent:

Nay, being wak’d, imagin’d stags pursue,

As if they had them in their real view,

Till, having shook themselves more broad awake,

They do at last discover the mistake:”

the watch-dogs, that we often observe to snarl in their dreams, and

afterwards bark out, and start up as if they perceived some stranger

at hand; the stranger that their soul discerns is a man spiritual and

imperceptible, without dimension, without colour, and without being:--

Consueta domi catulorum blanda propago

Degere, sæpe levem ex oculis volucremque soporem

Discutere, et corpus de terra corripere instant,

Proinde quasi ignotas facies atque ora tuantur.

“The fawning whelps of household curs will rise,

And, shaking the soft slumber from their eyes,

Oft bark and stare at ev’ry one within,

As upon faces they had never seen.”

to the beauty of the body, before I proceed any further I should know

whether or no we are agreed about the description. ‘Tis likely we do

not well know what beauty is in nature and in general, since to our

own human beauty we give so many divers forms, of which, were there any

natural rule and prescription, we should know it in common, as the heat

of the fire. But we fancy the forms according to our own appetite and

liking:--

Turpis Romano Belgicus ore color:

“A German hue ill suits, a Roman face.”

The Indians paint it black and tawny, with great swelled lips, wide flat

noses and load the cartilage betwixt the nostrils with great rings of

gold, to make it hang down to the mouth; as also the under lip with

great hoops, enriched with precious stones, that weigh them down to fall

upon the chin, it being with them a singular grace to show their teeth,

even below the roots. In Peru the greatest ears are the most beautiful,

which they stretch out as far as they can by art. And a man now living

says that he has seen in an eastern nation this care of enlarging them

in so great repute, and the ear loaded with so ponderous jewels, that he

did with great ease put his arm, sleeve and all, through the hole of

an ear. There are elsewhere nations that take great care to black their

teeth, and hate to see them white, whilst others paint them red. The

women are reputed more beautiful, not only in Biscay, but elsewhere,

for having their heads shaved; and, which is more, in certain frozen

countries, as Pliny reports. The Mexicans esteem a low forehead a great

beauty, and though they shave all other parts, they nourish hair on

the forehead and increase it by art, and have great breasts in so great

reputation that they affect to give their children suck over their

shoulders. We should paint deformity so. The Italians fashion it gross

and massy; the Spaniards gaunt and slender; and amongst us one has

it white, another brown; one soft and delicate, another strong and

vigorous; one will have his mistress soft and gentle, others haughty and

majestic. Just as the preference in beauty that Plato attributes to the

spherical figure the Epicureans gave rather to the pyramidal or square,

and cannot swallow a god in the form of a bowl. But, be it how it will,

nature has no more privileged us in this from her common laws than in

the rest And if we will judge ourselves aright, we shall find that, if

there be some animals less favoured in this than we, there are others,

and in greater number, that are more; _a multis animalibus decore

vincimur_ “Many animals surpass us in beauty,” even among the

terrestrial, our compatriots; for as to those of sea, setting the figure

aside, which cannot fall into any manner of proportion, being so much

another thing in colour, clearness, smoothness, and arrangement, we

sufficiently give place to them; and no less, in all qualities, to the

aerial. And this prerogative that the poets make such a mighty matter

of, our erect stature, looking towards heaven our original,

Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terrain,

Os homini sublime dédit, columque tueri

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus,

“Whilst all the brutal creatures downward bend

Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,

He set man’s face aloft, that, with his eyes

Uplifted, he might view the starry skies,”

is truly poetical; for there are several little beasts who have their

sight absolutely turned towards heaven; and I find the gesture of camels

and ostriches much higher raised and more erect than ours. What animals

have not their faces above and not before, and do not look opposite,

as we do; and that do not in their natural posture discover as much of

heaven and earth as man? And what qualities of our bodily constitution,

in Plato and Cicero, may not indifferently serve a thousand sorts of

beasts? Those that most resemble us are the most despicable and deformed

of all the herd; for those, as to outward appearance and form of visage,

are baboons:--

Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis?

“How like to man, in visage and in shape,

Is, of all beasts the most uncouth, the ape?”

as to the internal and vital parts, the hog. In earnest, when I consider

man stark naked, even in that sex which seems to have greatest share of

beauty, his defects, natural subjection, and imperfections, I find that

we have more reason than any other animal, to cover ourselves; and are

to be excused from borrowing of those to whom nature has in this been

kinder than to us, to trick ourselves out with their beauties, and hide

ourselves under their spoils, their wool, feathers, hair, and silk. Let

us observe, as to the rest, that man is the sole animal whose nudities

offend his own companions, and the only one who in his natural actions

withdraws and hides himself from his own kind. And really ‘tis also

an effect worth consideration, that they who are masters in the trade

prescribe, as a remedy for amorous passions, the full and free view of

the body a man desires; for that to cool the ardour there needs no more

but freely and fully to see what he loves:--

Ille quod obscænas in aperto corpore partes

Viderat, in cursu qui fuit, hæsit amor.

“The love that’s tilting when those parts appear

Open to view, flags in the hot career,”

And, although this receipt may peradventure proceed from a nice and cold

humour, it is notwithstanding a very great sign of our deficiencies

that use and acquaintance should make us disgust one another. It is

not modesty, so much as cunning and prudence, that makes our ladies so

circumspect to refuse us admittance into their cabinets before they are

painted and tricked up for the public view:--

Nec Veneres nostras hoc fallit; quo magis ipsæ

Omnia summopere hos vitæ postscenia celant,

Quos retinere volunt, adstrictoque esse in amore:

“Of this our ladies are full well aware,

Which make them, with such privacy and care,

Behind the scene all those defects remove,

Likely to check the flame of those they love,”

whereas, in several animals there is nothing that we do not love, and

that does not please our senses; so that from their very excrements

we do not only extract wherewith to heighten our sauces, but also our

richest ornaments and perfumes. This discourse reflects upon none but

the ordinary sort of women, and is not so sacrilegious as to comprehend

those divine, supernatural, and extraordinary beauties, which we see

shine occasionally among us like stars under a corporeal and terrestrial

veil.

As to the rest, the very share that we allow to beasts of the bounty

of nature, by our own confession, is very much to their advantage. We

attribute to ourselves imaginary and fantastic good, future and absent

good, for which human capacity cannot of herself be responsible; or

good, that we falsely attribute to ourselves by the license of opinion,

as reason, knowledge, and honour, and leave to them for their dividend,

essential, durable, and palpable good, as peace, repose, security,

innocence, and health; health, I say, the fairest and richest present

that nature can make us. Insomuch that philosophy, even the Stoic, is so

bold as to say, “That Heraclitus and Pherecides, could they have trucked

their wisdom for health, and have delivered themselves, the one of his

dropsy, and the other of the lousy disease that tormented him, they had

done well.” By which they set a greater value upon wisdom, comparing and

putting it into the balance with health, than they do with this other

proposition, which is also theirs; they say that if Circe had presented

Ulysses with the two potions, the one to make a fool become a wise

man, and the other to make a wise man become a fool, that Ulysses ought

rather to have chosen the last, than consent to that by which Circe

changed his human figure into that of a beast; and say that wisdom

itself would have spoke to him after this manner: “Forsake me, let me

alone, rather than lodge me under the body and figure of an ass.” How!

the philosophers, then will abandon this great and divine wisdom for

this corporeal and terrestrial covering? It is then no more by reason,

by discourse, and by the soul, that we excel beasts; ‘tis by our beauty,

our fair complexion, and our fine symmetry of parts, for which we must

quit our intelligence, our prudence, and all the rest. Well, I accept

this open and free confession; certainly they knew that those parts,

upon which we so much value ourselves, are no other than vain fancy.

If beasts then had all the virtue, knowledge, wisdom, and stoical

perfection, they would still be beasts, and would not be comparable to

man, miserable, wicked, mad, man. For, in short, whatever is not as we

are is nothing worth; and God, to procure himself an esteem among us,

must put himself into that shape, as we shall show anon. By which it

appears that it is not upon any true ground of reason, but by a foolish

pride and vain opinion, that we prefer ourselves before other animals,

and separate ourselves from their society and condition.

But to return to what I was upon before; we have for our part

inconstancy, irresolution, incertitude, sorrow, superstition, solicitude

of things to come, even after we shall be no more, ambition, avarice,

jealousy, envy, irregular, frantic, and untamed appetites, war, lying,

disloyalty, detraction, and curiosity. Doubtless, we have strangely

overpaid this fine reason, upon which we so much glorify ourselves, and

this capacity of judging and knowing, if we have bought it at the price

of this infinite number of passions to which we are eternally subject.

Unless we shall also think fit, as even Socrates does, to add to the

counterpoise that notable prerogative above beasts, That whereas nature

has prescribed them certain seasons and limits for the delights of

Venus, she has given us the reins at all hours and all seasons.” _Ut

vinum ogrotis, quia prodest rarô, nocet sopissime, melius est non

adhibere omnino, quam, spe dubio salutis, in apertam per-niciem

incurrere; sic, haud scio an melius fuerit humano generi motum istum

celerem cogitationis, acumen, solertiam, quam rationem vocamus, quoniam

pestifera sint multis, ad-modum paucis saluiaria, non dari omnino,

quam tam muniice et tam large dari?_ As it falls out that wine often

hurting the sick, and very rarely doing them good, it is better not to

give them any at all than to run into an apparent danger out of hope of

an uncertain benefit, so I know not whether it had not been better for

mankind that this quick motion, this penetration, this subtlety that we

call reason, had not been given to man at all; considering how pestiferous

it is to many, and useful but to few, than to have been conferred in so

abundant manner, and with so liberal a hand.” Of what advantage can we

conceive the knowledge of so many things was to Yarro and Aristotle? Did

it exempt them from human inconveniences? Were they by it freed from

the accidents that lay heavy upon the shoulders of a porter? Did they

extract from their logic any consolation for the gout? Or, for knowing

how this humour is lodged in the joints, did they feel it the less?

Did they enter into composition with death by knowing that some nations

rejoice at his approach; or with cuckoldry, by knowing that in some

parts of the world wives are in common? On the contrary, having been

reputed the greatest men for knowledge, the one amongst the Romans

and the other amongst the Greeks, and in a time when learning did most

flourish, we have not heard, nevertheless, that they had any particular

excellence in their lives; nay, the Greek had enough to do to clear

himself from some notable blemishes in his. Have we observed that

pleasure and health have a better relish with him that understands

astrology and grammar than with others?

Illiterati num minus nervi rigent?

“Th’ illiterate ploughman is as fit

For Venus’ service as the wit:”

or shame and poverty less troublesome to the first than to the last?

Scilicet et morbis et debilitate carebis,

Et luctum et curam effugies, et tempora vitæ

Longa tibi post hæc fato meliore dabuntur.

“Disease thy couch shall flee,

And sorrow and care; yes, thou, be sure, wilt see

Long years of happiness, till now unknown.”

I have known in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred labourers, wiser

and more happy than the rectors of the university, and whom I had much

rather have resembled. Learning, methinks, has its place amongst the

necessary, things of life, as glory, nobility, dignity, or at the most,

as beauty, riches, and such other qualities, which indeed are useful

to it, but remotely, and more by opinion than by nature. We stand

very little more in need of offices, rules, and laws of living in our

society, than cranes and ants do in theirs; and yet we see that these

carry themselves very regularly without erudition. If man was wise, he

would take the true value of every thing according as it was useful

and proper to his life. Whoever will number us by our actions and

deportments will find many more excellent men amongst the ignorant than

among the learned; aye, in all sorts of virtue. Old Rome seems to me

to have been of much greater value, both for peace and war, than that

learned Rome that ruined itself. And, though all the rest should be

equal, yet integrity and innocency would remain to the ancients, for

they cohabit singularly well with simplicity. But I will leave this

discourse, that would lead me farther than I am willing to follow; and

shall only say this further, ‘tis only humility and submission that can

make a complete good man. We are not to leave the knowledge of his duty

to every man’s own judgment; we are to prescribe it to him, and not

suffer him to choose it at his own discretion; otherwise, according to

the imbecility, and infinite variety of our reasons and opinions, we

should at large forge ourselves duties that would, as Epicurus says,

enjoin us to eat one another.

The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it

was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire

after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a

rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From

obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from

selfopinion. And, on the contrary, the first temptation that by the

devil was offered to human nature, its first poison insinuated itself

into us by the promise made us of knowledge and wisdom; _Eritis sicut

Dii, scientes bonum et malum._ “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and

evil.” And the sirens, in Homer, to allure Ulysses, and draw him within

the danger of their snares, offered to give him knowledge. The plague of

man is the opinion of wisdom; and for this reason it is that ignorance

is so recommended to us, by our religion, as proper to faith and

obedience; _Cavete ne quis vos decipiat per philosophiam et inanes

seductiones, secundum elementa mundi._ “Take heed, lest any man deceive

you by philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and the

rudiments of the world.” There is in this a general consent amongst

all sorts of philosophers, that the sovereign good consists in the

tranquillity of the soul and body; but where shall we find it?

Ad summum, sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives,

Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex deniqne regum;

Præcipue sanus, nisi cum pituita molesta est:

“In short, the wise is only less than Jove,

Rich, free, and handsome; nay, a king above

All earthly kings; with health supremely blest,

Excepting when a cold disturbs his rest!”

It seems, in truth, that nature, for the consolation of our miserable

and wretched state, has only given us presumption for our inheritance.

‘Tis as Epictetus says, that man has nothing properly his own, but the

use of his opinion; we have nothing but wind and smoke for our portion.

The gods have health in essence, says philosophy, and sickness in

intelligence. Man, on the contrary, possesses his goods by fancy, his

ills in essence. We have reason to magnify the power of our imagination;

for all our goods are only in dream. Hear this poor calamitous animal

huff! “There is nothing,” says Cicero, “so charming as the employment of

letters; of letters, I say, by means whereof the infinity of things, the

immense grandeur of nature, the heavens even in this world, the earth,

and the seas are discovered to us; ‘tis they that have taught us

religion, moderation, and the grandeur of courage, and that have rescued

our souls from darkness, to make her see all things, high, low, first,

last, and middling; ‘tis they that furnish us wherewith to live happily

and well, and conduct us to pass over our lives without displeasure, and

without offence.” Does not this man seem to speak of the condition of

the ever-living and almighty God? But as to effects, a thousand little

countrywomen have lived lives more equal, more sweet, and constant than

his.

Deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi,

Qui princeps vitæ rationem invenit earn, quæ

Nunc appellatur sapientia; quique per artem

Fluctibus è tantis vitam, tantisque tenebris,

In tam tranquilla et tam clara luce locavit:

“That god, great Memmus, was a god no doubt

Who, prince of life, first found that reason out

Now wisdom called; and by his art, who did

That life in tempests tost, and darkness hid,

Place in so great a calm, and clear a light:”

here are brave ranting words; but a very slight accident put this man’s

understanding in a worse condition than that of the meanest shepherd,

notwithstanding this instructing god, this divine wisdom. Of the same

stamp and impudence is the promise of Democritus’s book: “I am going to

speak of all things;” and that foolish title that Aristotle prefixes

to one of his, order only afforded him a few lucid intervals which

he employed in composing his book, and at last made him kill

himself,--Eusebius’s Chronicon.

Of the Mortal Gods; and the judgment of Chrysippus, that “Dion was as

virtuous as God;” and my Seneca himself says, that “God had given him

life; but that to live well was his own;” conformably to this other: _In

virtute vere gloriamur; quod non contingeret, si id donum à Deo, non à

nobis haberemus:_ “We truly glory in our virtue; which would not be,

if it was given us of God, and not by ourselves;” this is also Seneca’s

saying; “that the wise man hath fortitude equal with God, but that his

is in spite of human frailty, wherein therefore he more than equals

God.” There is nothing so ordinary as to meet with sallies of the like

temerity; there is none of us, who take so much offence to see himself

equalled with God, as he does to see himself undervalued by being ranked

with other creatures; so much more are we jealous of our own interest

than that of our Creator.

But we must trample under foot this foolish vanity, and briskly and

boldly shake the ridiculous foundation upon which these false opinions

are founded. So long as man shall believe he has any means and power of

himself, he will never acknowledge what he owes to his Maker; his eggs

shall always be chickens, as the saying is; we must therefore strip him

to his shirt. Let us see some notable examples of the effects of his

philosophy: Posidonius being tormented with a disease so painful as made

him writhe his arms and gnash his teeth, thought he sufficiently scorned

the dolour, by crying out against it: “Thou mayst do thy worst, I will

not confess that thou art an evil.” He was as sensible of the pain as

my footman, but he made a bravado of bridling his tongue, at least,

and restraining it within the laws of his sect: _Re succumbere non

oportebat, verbis gloriantem._ “It did not become him, that spoke so

big, to confess his frailty when he came to the test.” Arcesilas being

ill of the gout, and Car-neades, who had come to see him, going away

troubled at his condition, he called him back, and showing him his feet

and breast: “There is nothing comes thence hither,” said he. This has

something a better grace, for he feels himself in pain, and would be

disengaged from it; but his heart, notwithstanding, is not conquered nor

subdued by it. The other stands more obstinately to his point, but, I

fear, rather verbally than really. And Dionysius Heracleotes, afflicted

with a vehement smarting in his eyes, was reduced to quit these stoical

resolutions. But even though knowledge should, in effect, do as they

say, and could blunt the point, and dull the edge, of the misfortunes

that attend us, what does she, more than what ignorance does more purely

and evidently?--The philosopher Pyrrho, being at sea in very great

danger, by reason of a mighty storm, presented nothing to the imitation

of those who were with him, in that extremity, but a hog they had on

board, that was fearless and unconcerned at the tempest. Philosophy,

when she has said all she can, refers us at last to the example of a

gladiator, wrestler, or muleteer, in which sort of people we commonly

observe much less apprehension of death, sense of pain, and other

inconveniences, and more of endurance, than ever knowledge furnished

any one withal, that was not bom and bred to hardship. What is the cause

that we make incisions, and cut the tender limbs of an infant, and those

of a horse, more easily than our own--but ignorance only? How many has

mere force of imagination made sick? We often see men cause themselves

to be let blood, purged, and physicked, to be cured of diseases they

only feel in opinion.--When real infirmities fail us, knowledge lends us

her’s; that colour, that complexion, portend some catarrhous defluxion;

this hot season threatens us with a fever; this breach in the

life-line of your left hand gives you notice of some near and dangerous

indisposition; and at last she roundly attacks health itself; saying,

this sprightliness and vigour of youth cannot continue in this posture;

there must be blood taken, and the heat abated, lest it turn against

yourself. Compare the life of a man subjected to such imaginations,

to that of a labourer that suffers himself to be led by his natural

appetite, measuring things only by the present sense, without knowledge,

and without prognostic, that feels no pain or sickness, but when he is

really ill. Whereas the other has the stone in his soul, before he has

it in his bladder; as if it were not time enough to suffer the evil when

it shall come, he must anticipate it by fancy, and run to meet it.

What I say of physic may generally serve in example for all other

sciences. Thence is derived that ancient opinion of the philosophers

that placed the sovereign good in the discovery of the weakness of our

judgment My ignorance affords me as much occasion of hope as of fear;

and having no other rule for my health than that of the examples of

others, and of events I see elsewhere upon the like occasion, I find of

all sorts, and rely upon those which by comparison are most favourable

to me. I receive health with open arms, free, full, and entire, and

by so much the more whet my appetite to enjoy it, by how much it is

at present less ordinary and more rare; so far am I from troubling its

repose and sweetness with the bitterness of a new and constrained manner

of living. Beasts sufficiently show us how much the agitation of our

minds brings infirmities and diseases upon us. That which is told us of

those of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to

the serenity and tranquillity of the air they live in; but I rather

attribute it to the serenity and tranquillity of their souls, free from

all passion, thought, or employment, extended or unpleasing, a people

that pass over their lives in a wonderful simplicity and ignorance,

without letters, without law, without king, or any manner of religion.

And whence comes that, which we find by experience, that the heaviest

and dullest men are most able; and the most to be desired in amorous

performances; and that the love of a muleteer often renders itself more

acceptable than that of a gentleman, if it be not that the agitation

of the soul in the latter disturbs his physical ability, dissolves and

tires it, as it also ordinarily troubles and tires itself. What puts the

soul beside itself, and more usually throws it into madness, but her own

promptness, vigour, and agility, and, finally, her own proper force? Of

what is the most subtle folly made, but of the most subtle wisdom? As

great friendships spring from great enmities, and vigorous health from

mortal diseases, so from the rare and vivid agitations of our souls

proceed the most wonderful and most distracted frenzies; ‘tis but half

a turn of the toe from the one to the other. In the actions of madmen we

see how infinitely madness resembles the most vigorous operations of

the soul. Who does not know how indiscernible the difference is betwixt

folly and the sprightly elevations of a free soul, and the effects of a

supreme and extraordinary virtue? Plato says that melancholy persons are

the most capable of discipline, and the most excellent; and accordingly

in none is there so great a propension to madness. Great wits are ruined

by their own proper force and pliability; into what a condition, through

his own agitation and promptness of fancy, is one of the most judicious,

ingenious, and nearest formed, of any other Italian poet, to the air of

the ancient and true poesy, lately fallen! Has he not vast obligation

to this vivacity that has destroyed him? to this light that has blinded

him? to this exact and subtle apprehension of reason that has put him

beside his own? to this curious and laborious search after sciences,

that has reduced him to imbecility? and to this rare aptitude to the

exercises of the soul, that has rendered him without exercise and

without soul? I was more angry, if possible, than compassionate, to see

him at Ferrara in so pitiful a condition surviving himself, forgetting

both himself and his works, which, without his knowledge, though before

his face, have been published unformed and incorrect.

Would you have a man healthy, would you have him regular, and in a

steady and secure posture? Muffle him up in the shades of stupidity and

sloth. We must be made beasts to be made wise, and hoodwinked before we

are fit to be led. And if one shall tell me that the advantage of having

a cold and dull sense of pain and other evils, brings this disadvantage

along with it, to render us consequently less sensible also in the

fruition of good and pleasure, this is true; but the misery of our

condition is such that we have not so much to enjoy as to avoid, and

that the extremest pleasure does not affect us to the degree that a

light grief does: _Segnius homines bona quam mala sentiunt._ We are not

so sensible of the most perfect health as we are of the least sickness.

Pungit

In cute vix sum ma violatum plagula corpus;

Quando valere nihil quemquam movet. Hoc juvat unum,

Quod me non torquet latus, aut pes;

Cætera quisquam Vix queat aut sanum sese, aut sentire valentem.

“The body with a little sting is griev’d,

When the most perfect health is not perceiv’d,

This only pleases me, that spleen nor gout

Neither offend my side nor wring my foot;

Excepting these, scarce any one can tell,

Or e’er observes, when he’s in health and well.”

Our well-being is nothing but the not being ill. Which is the reason why

that sect of philosophers, which sets the greatest value upon pleasure,

has yet fixed it chiefly in unconsciousness of pain. To be freed from

ill is the greatest good that man can hope for or desire; as Ennius

says,--

Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali;

for that every tickling and sting which are in certain pleasures, and

that seem to raise us above simple health and passiveness, that active,

moving, and, I know not how, itching, and biting pleasure; even that

very pleasure itself aims at nothing but insensibility as its mark. The

appetite that carries us headlong to women’s embraces has no other end

but only to cure the torment of our ardent and furious desires, and only

requires to be glutted and laid at rest, and delivered from the fever.

And so of the rest. I say, then, that if simplicity conducts us to a

state free from evil, she leads us to a very happy one according to our

condition. And yet we are not to imagine it so stupid an insensibility

as to be totally without sense; for Crantor had very good reason to

controvert the insensibility of Epicurus, if founded so deep that the

very first attack and birth of evils were not to be perceived: “I do not

approve such an insensibility as is neither possible nor to be desired.

I am very well content not to be sick; but if I am, I would know that

I am so; and if a caustic be applied, or incisions made in any part, I

would feel them.” In truth, whoever would take away the knowledge and

sense of evil, would at the same time eradicate the sense of pleasure,

and finally annihilate man himself: _Istud nihil dolere, non sine magnâ

mercede contingit, immanitatis in animo, stuporis in corpore._ “An

insensibility that is not to be purchased but at the price of inhumanity

in the soul, and of stupidity of the body.” Evil appertains to man

of course. Neither is pain always to be avoided, nor pleasure always

pursued.

‘Tis a great advantage to the honour of ignorance that knowledge itself

throws us into its arms, when she finds herself puzzled to fortify

us against the weight of evil; she is constrained to come to this

composition, to give us the reins, and permit us to fly into the lap

of the other, and to shelter ourselves under her protection from the

strokes and injuries of fortune. For what else is her meaning when she

instructs us to divert our thoughts from the ills that press upon us,

and entertain them with the meditation of pleasures past and gone; to

comfort ourselves in present afflictions with the remembrance of fled

delights, and to call to our succour a vanished satisfaction, to oppose

it to the discomfort that lies heavy upon us? _Levationes ægritudinum

in avocatione a cogitandâ molestiâ, et revocation ad contemplandas

voluptates, ponit_; “He directs us to alleviate our grief and pains by

rejecting unpleasant thoughts, and recalling agreeable ideas;” if it be

not that where her power fails she would supply it with policy, and make

use of sleight of hand where force of limbs will not serve her turn? For

not only to a philosopher, but to any man in his right wits, when he has

upon him the thirst of a burning fever, what satisfaction can it be to

him to remember the pleasure he took in drinking Greek wine a month ago?

It would rather only make matters worse to him:--

Che ricordarsi il ben doppia la noia.

“The thinking of pleasure doubles trouble.”

Of the same stamp is this other counsel that philosophy gives, only to

remember the happiness that is past, and to forget the misadventures we

have undergone; as if we had the science of oblivion in our own power,

and counsel, wherein we are yet no more to seek.

Suavis laborum est præteritorum ræmoria.

“Sweet is the memory of by-gone pain.”

How does philosophy, that should arm me to contend with fortune, and

steel my courage to trample all human adversities under foot, arrive to

this degree of cowardice to make me hide my head at this rate, and save

myself by these pitiful and ridiculous shifts? For the memory represents

to us not what we choose, but what she pleases; nay, there is nothing

that so much imprints any thing in our memory as a desire to forget it.

And ‘tis a good way to retain and keep any thing safe in the soul to

solicit her to lose it. And this is false: _Est situm in nobis, ut

et adversa quasi perpetua oblivione obruamus, et secunda jucunde et

suaviter meminerimus;_ “it is in our power to bury, as it were, in a

perpetual oblivion, all adverse accidents, and to retain a pleasant and

delightful memory of our successes;” and this is true: _Memini etiam quo

nolo; oblivisci non possum quo volo._ “I do also remember what I would

not; but I cannot forget what I would.” And whose counsel is this? His,

_qui se unies sapiervtem profiteri sit ausus;_ “who alone durst profess

himself a wise man.”

Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes

Præstinxit stellas, exortus uti æthereus Sol.

“Who from mankind the prize of knowledge won,

And put the stars out like the rising sun.”

To empty and disfurnish the memory, is not this the true way to

ignorance?

Iners malorum remedium ignorantia est.

“Ignorance is but a dull remedy for evils.”

We find several other like precepts, whereby we are permitted to borrow

frivolous appearances from the vulgar, where we find the strongest

reason will not answer the purpose, provided they administer

satisfaction and comfort Where they cannot cure the wound, they are

content to palliate and benumb it I believe they will not deny this,

that if they could add order and constancy in a state of life that could

maintain itself in ease and pleasure by some debility of judgment, they

would accept it:--

Potare, et spargere flores

Incipiam, patiarque vel inconsultus haberi.

“Give me to drink, and, crown’d with flowers, despise

The grave disgrace of being thought unwise.”

There would be a great many philosophers of Lycas’s mind this man, being

otherwise of very regular manners, living quietly and contentedly in his

family, and not failing in any office of his duty, either towards his

own or strangers, and very carefully preserving himself from hurtful

things, became, nevertheless, by some distemper in his brain, possessed

with a conceit that he was perpetually in the theatre, a spectator of

the finest sights and the best comedies in the world; and being cured by

the physicians of his frenzy, was hardly prevented from endeavouring by

suit to compel them to restore him again to his pleasing imagination:--

Pol I me occidistis, amici,

Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,

Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error;

“By heaven! you’ve killed me, friends, outright,

And not preserved me; since my dear delight

And pleasing error, by my better sense

Unhappily return’d, is banished hence;”

with a madness like that of Thrasylaus the son of Pythodorus, who made

himself believe that all the ships that weighed anchor from the port of

Piræus, and that came into the haven, only made their voyages for

his profit; congratulating them upon their successful navigation, and

receiving them with the greatest joy; and when his brother Crito caused

him to be restored to his better understanding, he infinitely regretted

that sort of condition wherein he had lived with so much delight and

free from all anxiety of mind. ‘Tis according to the old Greek verse,

that “there is a great deal of convenience in not being over-wise.”

And Ecclesiastes, “In much wisdom there is much sorrow;” and “Who gets

wisdom gets labour and trouble.”

Even that to which philosophy consents in general, that last remedy

which she applies to all sorts of necessities, to put an end to the life

we are not able to endure. _Placet?--Pare. Non placet?--Quâcumque vis,

exi. Pungit dolor?--Vel fodiat sane. Si nudus es, da jugulum; sin tectus

armis Vulcaniis, id est fortitudine, résisté;_ “Does it please?--Obey

it. Not please?--Go where thou wilt. Does grief prick thee,--nay, stab

thee?--If thou art naked, present thy throat; if covered with the arms

of Vulcan, that is, fortitude, resist it.” And this word, so used in

the Greek festivals, _aut bibat, aut abeat,_ “either drink or go,” which

sounds better upon the tongue of a Gascon, who naturally changes the h

into v, than on that of Cicero:--

Vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis.

Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti;

Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius æquo

Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius ætas.

“If to live well and right thou dost not know,

Give way, and leave thy place to those that do.

Thou’st eaten, drunk, and play’d to thy content,

‘Tis time to make thy parting compliment,

Lest youth, more decent in their follies, scoff

The nauseous scene, and hiss thee reeling off;”

What is it other than a confession of his impotency, and a sending back

not only to ignorance, to be there in safety, but even to stupidity,

insensibility, and nonentity?

Democritum postquam matura vetustas

Admonuit memorem motus languescere mentis;

Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse.

“Soon as, through age, Democritus did find

A manifest decadence in his mind,

He thought he now surviv’d to his own wrong,

And went to meet his death, that stay’d too long.”

‘Tis what Antisthenes said, “That a man should either make provision

of sense to understand, or of a halter to hang himself;” and what

Chrysippus alleged upon this saying of the poet Tyrtæus:--

“Or to arrive at virtue or at death;”

and Crates said, “That love would be cured by hunger, if not by time;

and whoever disliked these two remedies, by a rope.” That Sextius, of

whom both Seneca and Plutarch speak with so high an encomium, having

applied himself, all other things set aside, to the study of philosophy,

resolved to throw himself into the sea, seeing the progress of his

studies too tedious and slow. He ran to find death, since he could not

overtake knowledge. These are the words of the law upon the subject:

“If peradventure some great inconvenience happen, for which there is no

remedy, the haven is near, and a man may save himself by swimming out

of his body as out of a leaky skiff; for ‘tis the fear of dying, and not

the love of life, that ties the fool to his body.”

As life renders itself by simplicity more pleasant, so more innocent

and better, also it renders it as I was saying before: “The simple

and ignorant,” says St. Paul, “raise themselves up to heaven and take

possession of it; and we, with all our knowledge, plunge ourselves into

the infernal abyss.” I am neither swayed by Valentinian, a professed

enemy to all learning and letters, nor by Licinius, both Roman emperors,

who called them the poison and pest of all political government; nor by

Mahomet, who, as ‘tis said, interdicted all manner of learning to his

followers; but the example of the great Lycurgus, and his authority,

with the reverence of the divine Lacedemonian policy, so great, so

admirable, and so long flourishing in virtue and happiness, without any

institution or practice of letters, ought certainly to be of very great

weight. Such as return from the new world discovered by the Spaniards

in our fathers’ days, testify to us how much more honestly and regularly

those nations live, without magistrate and without law, than ours do,

where there are more officers and lawyers than there are of other sorts

of men and business:--

Di cittatorie piene, e di libelli,

D’esamine, e di carte di procure,

Hanno le mani e il seno, e gran fastelli

Di chioge, di consigli, et di letture:

Per cui le faculta de* poverelli

Non sono mai nelle città sicure;

Hanno dietro e dinanzi, e d’ambi i lati,

Notai, procuratori, ed avvocati.

“Their bags were full of writs, and of citations,

Of process, and of actions and arrests,

Of bills, of answers, and of replications,

In courts of delegates, and of requests,

To grieve the simple sort with great vexations;

They had resorting to them as their guests,

Attending on their circuit, and their journeys,

Scriv’ners, and clerks, and lawyers, and attorneys.”

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 principal

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 damnation. 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

superstition 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 god of wisdom had assigned to him

the title 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 God

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, “God 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 title 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_: “God 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 God than to know them;” and Plato thinks there is

something of impiety in inquiring too curiously into God, 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 God fears, that God is angry, that God loves,

Immortalia mortali sermone notantes:

“Giving to things immortal mortal names.”

These are all agitations and emotions that cannot be in God, according

to our form, nor can we imagine them, according to his. It only belongs

to God 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 God? How temperance, which

is the moderation of corporal pleasures, that have no place in the

Divinity? Fortitude 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 participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is,

is not acquired by our own force: God 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 assist 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 God made foolish the

wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world

knew not God, it pleased God 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 mass 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 stertit,....

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. Clitomachus, 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 noble 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 establishing 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, appetitive, 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, superstition, 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 assure 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 quamcumque disciplinant, velut tempestate, delati, ad earn,

tanquam ad saxum, adhorescunt;_ “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 Panætius 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 assertio sustineatur:_ “That when like

sentiments happen _pro_ and _con_ in the same thing, the assent 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 assert 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 fashion. They yield and give up themselves to their natural

inclinations, to the power and impulse of passions, to the constitution

of laws and customs, and to the tradition of arts; _Non enim nos Deus

ista scire, sed tantummodo uti, voluit._ “For God 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 establishing, 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 circumstances; 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 establishing 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 God as he shall please

to write upon it. The more we resign and commit ourselves to God, 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 vanæ 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

assume this face of confidence and assurance 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

nôrunt_: “Which the learned rather feign than know.” Timæus, being

to instruct Socrates in what he knew of the gods, 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 quæ dixero; sed, ut homunculus,

probabilia conjecturâ 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 naturâ 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 God, 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 muffle 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 quâque re ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt quam

necesse est,... Hoc in philosophiâ ratio, contra omnia disserendi,

nuttamque rem aperte judicandi, profecta a Socrate, repetita

ab Arcesila, conjirmata a Gameade, usquê ad nostram viget

cetatem..........Hi sumus, qui omnibus veris falsa quodam adjuncta esse

dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et

assentiendi 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 assent.”

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? Clitomachus 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 Heraclitus

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 quæ sub verbis latitantia 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 eæ 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 title of a wise man or sage, which the gods had conferred

upon him, he was disabled, in his virile and mental love, of the faculty

of bringing forth, contenting himself to help and assist those that

could; to open their nature, anoint the passes, and facilitate their

birth; to judge of the infant, baptize, nourish, fortify, swath, and

circumcise 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, principally 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,--

“God’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 timidæ, et

incertæ 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 passion 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 nourishing 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 gods 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 vanishing 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 scientiæ 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.”

They wished to consider all, to balance every thing, and found that an

employment well suited to our natural curiosity. Some things they wrote

for the benefit of public society, as their religions; and for that

consideration it was but reasonable that they should not examine public

opinions to the quick, that they might not disturb the common obedience

to the laws and customs of their country.

Plato treats of this mystery with a raillery manifest enough; for where

he writes according to his own method he gives no certain rule. When he

plays the legislator he borrows a magisterial and positive style, and

boldly there foists in his most fantastic inventions, as fit to persuade

the vulgar, as impossible to be believed by himself; knowing very well

how fit we are to receive all sorts of impressions, especially the most

immoderate and preposterous; and yet, in his _Laws_, he takes singular

care that nothing be sung in public but poetry, of which the fiction and

fabulous relations tend to some advantageous end; it being so easy to

imprint all sorts of phantasms in human minds, that it were injustice

not to feed them rather with profitable untruths than with untruths that

are unprofitable and hurtful. He says very roundly, in his _Republic,_

“That it is often necessary, for the benefit of men, to deceive them.”

It is very easy to distinguish that some of the sects have more followed

truth, and the others utility, by which the last have gained their

reputation. ‘Tis the misery of our condition that often that which

presents itself to our imagination for the truest does not appear the

most useful to life. The boldest sects, as the Epicurean, Pyrrhonian,

and the new Academic, are yet constrained to submit to the civil law at

the end of the account.

There are other subjects that they have tumbled and tossed about, some

to the right and others to the left, every one endeavouring, right or

wrong, to give them some kind of colour; for, having found nothing so

abstruse that they would not venture to speak of, they are very

often forced to forge weak and ridiculous conjectures; not that they

themselves looked upon them as any foundation, or establishing any

certain truth, but merely for exercise. _Non tam id sensisse quod

dicerent, quam exercere ingénia materio difficultate videntur voluisse._

“They seem not so much themselves to have believed what they said, as to

have had a mind to exercise their wits in the difficulty of the

matter.” And if we did not take it thus, how should we palliate so

great inconstancy, variety, and vanity of opinions, as we see have been

produced by those excellent and admirable men? As, for example, what

can be more vain than to imagine, to guess at God, by our analogies and

conjectures? To direct and govern him and the world by our capacities

and our laws? And to serve ourselves, at the expense of the divinity,

with what small portion of capacity he has been pleased to impart to

our natural condition; and because we cannot extend our sight to his

glorious throne, to have brought him down to our corruption and our

miseries?

Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to

me the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged God as an

incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all

goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour

and reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies

soever--

Jupiter omnipotens, rerum, regumque, deûmque,

Progenitor, genitrixque.

“Jove, the almighty, author of all things,

The father, mother, of both gods and kings.”

This zeal has universally been looked upon from heaven with a gracious

eye. All governments have reaped fruit from their devotion; impious

men and actions have everywhere had suitable events. Pagan histories

acknowledge dignity, order, justice, prodigies, and oracles, employed

for their profit and instruction in their fabulous religions; God,

through his mercy, vouchsafing, by these temporal benefits, to cherish

the tender principles of a kind of brutish knowledge that natural reason

gave them of him, through the deceiving images of their dreams. Not only

deceiving and false, but impious also and injurious, are those that man

has forged from his own invention: and of all the religions that St.

Paul found in repute at Athens, that which they had dedicated “to the

unknown God” seemed to him the most to be excused.

Pythagoras shadowed the truth a little more closely, judging that

the knowledge of this first cause and being of beings ought to be

indefinite, without limitation, without declaration; that it was nothing

else than the extreme effort of our imagination towards perfection,

every one amplifying the idea according to the talent of his capacity.

But if Numa attempted to conform the devotion of his people to this

project; to attach them to a religion purely mental, without any

prefixed object and material mixture, he undertook a thing of no use;

the human mind could never support itself floating in such an infinity

of inform thoughts; there is required some certain image to be presented

according to its own model. The divine majesty has thus, in some sort,

suffered himself to be circumscribed in corporal limits for our

advantage. His supernatural and celestial sacraments have signs of our

earthly condition; his adoration is by sensible offices and words; for

‘tis man that believes and prays. I shall omit the other arguments upon

this subject; but a man would have much ado to make me believe that the

sight of our crucifixes, that the picture of our Saviour’s passion, that

the ornaments and ceremonious motions of our churches, that the voices

accommodated to the devotion of our thoughts, and that emotion of the

senses, do not warm the souls of the people with a religious passion of

very advantageous effect.

Of those to whom they have given a body, as necessity required in that

universal blindness, I should, I fancy, most incline to those who adored

the sun:--

La Lumière commune,

L’oil du monde; et si Dieu au chef porte des yeux,

Les rayons du soleil sont ses yeulx radieux,

Qui donnent vie à touts, nous maintiennent et gardent,

Et les faictsdes humains en ce monde regardent:

Ce beau, ce grand soleil qui nous faict les saisons,

Selon qu’il entre ou sort de ses douze maisons;

Qui remplit l’univers de ses vertus cognues;

Qui d’un traict de ses yeulx nous dissipe les nues;

L’esprit, l’ame du monde, ardent et flamboyant,

En la course d’un jour tout le Ciel tournoyant;

Plein d’immense grandeur, rond, vagabond, et ferme;

Lequel tient dessoubs luy tout le monde pour terme:

En repos, sans repos; oysif, et sans séjour;

Fils aisné de nature, et le père du jour:

“The common light that equal shines on all,

Diffused around the whole terrestrial ball;

And, if the almighty Ruler of the skies

Has eyes, the sunbeams are his radiant eyes,

That life and safety give to young and old,

And all men’s actions upon earth behold.

This great, this beautiful, the glorious sun,

Who makes their course the varied seasons run;

That with his virtues fills the universe,

And with one glance can sullen clouds disperse;

Earth’s life and soul, that, flaming in his sphere,

Surrounds the heavens in one day’s career;

Immensely great, moving yet firm and round,

Who the whole world below has made his bound;

At rest, without rest, idle without stay,

Nature’s first son, and father of the day:”

forasmuch as, beside this grandeur and beauty of his, ‘tis the only

piece of this machine that we discover at the remotest distance from us;

and by that means so little known that they were pardonable for entering

into so great admiration and reverence of it.

Thales, who first inquired into this sort of matter, believed God to be

a Spirit that made all things of water; Anaximander, that the gods

were always dying and entering into life again; and that there were an

infinite number of worlds; Anaximines, that the air was God, that he

was procreate and immense, always moving. Anaxagoras the first, was of

opinion that the description and manner of all things were conducted by

the power and reason of an infinite spirit. Alcmæon gave divinity to

the sun, moon, and stars, and to the soul. Pythagoras made God a spirit,

spread over the nature of all things, whence our souls are extracted;

Parmenides, a circle surrounding the heaven, and supporting the world by

the ardour of light. Empedocles pronounced the four elements, of which

all things are composed, to be gods; Protagoras had nothing to say,

whether they were or were not, or what they were; Democritus was one

while of opinion that the images and their circuitions were gods;

another while, the nature that darts out those images; and then,

our science and intelligence. Plato divides his belief into several

opinions; he says, in his _Timæus_, that the Father of the World cannot

be named; in his Laws, that men are not to inquire into his being; and

elsewhere, in the very same books, he makes the world, the heavens, the

stars, the earth, and our souls, gods; admitting, moreover, those which

have been received by ancient institution in every republic.

Xenophon reports a like perplexity in Socrates’s doctrine; one while

that men are not to inquire into the form of God, and presently makes

him maintain that the sun is God, and the soul God; that there is but

one God, and then that there are many. Speusippus, the nephew of Plato,

makes God a certain power governing all things, and that he has a soul.

Aristotle one while says it is the spirit, and another the world; one

while he gives the world another master, and another while makes God the

heat of heaven. Zenocrates makes eight, five named amongst the planets;

the sixth composed of all the fixed stars, as of so many members; the

seventh and eighth, the sun and moon. Heraclides Ponticus does nothing

but float in his opinion, and finally deprives God of sense, and makes

him shift from one form to another, and at last says that it is heaven

and earth. Theophrastus wanders in the same irresolution amongst his

fancies, attributing the superintendency of the world one while to the

understanding, another while to heaven, and then to the stars. Strato

says that ‘tis nature, she having the power of generation, augmentation,

and diminution, without form and sentiment Zeno says ‘tis the law of

nature, commanding good and prohibiting evil; which law is an animal;

and takes away the accustomed gods, Jupiter, Juno, and Vesta. Diogenes

Apolloniates, that ‘tis air. Zenophanes makes God round, seeing and

hearing, not breathing, and having nothing in common with human nature.

Aristo thinks the form of God to be incomprehensible, deprives him

of sense, and knows not whether he be an animal or something else;

Cleanthes, one while supposes it to be reason, another while the world,

another the soul of nature, and then the supreme heat rolling about, and

environing all. Perseus, Zeno’s disciple, was of opinion that men have

given the title of gods to such as have been useful, and have added

any notable advantage to human life, and even to profitable things

themselves. Chrysippus made a confused heap of all the preceding

theories, and reckons, amongst a thousand forms of gods that he makes,

the men also that have been deified. Diagoras and Theodoras flatly

denied that there were any gods at all. Epicurus makes the gods shining,

transparent, and perflable, lodged as betwixt two forts, betwixt two

worlds, secure from blows, clothed in a human figure, and with such

members as we have; which members are to them of no use:--

Ego Deum genus esse semper duxi, et dicam colitum;

Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus.

“I ever thought that gods above there were,

But do not think they care what men do here.”

Trust to your philosophy, my masters; and brag that you have found

the bean in the cake when you see what a rattle is here with so many

philosophical heads! The perplexity of so many worldly forms has gained

this over me, that manners and opinions contrary to mine do not so much

displease as instruct me; nor so much make me proud as they humble me,

in comparing them. And all other choice than what comes from the express

and immediate hand of God seems to me a choice of very little privilege.

The policies of the world are no less opposite upon this subject than

the schools, by which we may understand that fortune itself is not more

variable and inconstant, nor more blind and inconsiderate, than our

reason. The things that are most unknown are most proper to be deified;

wherefore to make gods of ourselves, as the ancients did, exceeds the

extremest weakness of understanding. I would much rather have gone along

with those who adored the serpent, the dog, or the ox; forasmuch as

their nature and being is less known to us, and that we have more room

to imagine what we please of those beasts, and to attribute to them

extraordinary faculties. But to have made gods of our own condition, of

whom we ought to know the imperfections; and to have attributed to

them desire, anger, revenge, marriages, generation, alliances, love,

jealousy, our members and bones, our fevers and pleasures, our death and

obsequies; this must needs have proceeded from a marvellous inebriety of

the human understanding;

Quæ procul usque adeo divino ab numine distant,

Inque Deûm numéro quæ sint indigna videri;

“From divine natures these so distant are,

They are unworthy of that character.”

_Formo, otates, vestitus, omatus noti sunt; genera, conjugia,

cognationes, omniaque traducta ad similitudinem imbellitar tis

humano: nam et perturbatis animis inducuntur; accipimus enim deorurn

cupiditates, cegritudines, iracundias_; “Their forms, ages, clothes,

and ornaments are known: their descents, marriages, and kindred, and all

adapted to the similitude of human weakness; for they are represented to

us with anxious minds, and we read of the lusts, sickness, and anger

of the gods;” as having attributed divinity not only to faith,

virtue, honour, concord, liberty, victory, and piety; but also to

voluptuousness, fraud, death, envy, old age, misery; to fear, fever, ill

fortune, and other injuries of our frail and transitory life:--

Quid juvat hoc, templis nostros inducere mores?

O curvæ in terris animæ et colestium inanes!

“O earth-born souls! by earth-born passions led,

To every spark of heav’nly influence dead!

Think ye that what man values will inspire

In minds celestial the same base desire?”

The Egyptians, with an impudent prudence, interdicted, upon pain of

hanging, that any one should say that their gods, Serapis and Isis, had

formerly been men; and yet no one was ignorant that they had been

such; and their effigies, represented with the finger upon the mouth,

signified, says Varro, that mysterious decree to their priests, to

conceal their mortal original, as it must by necessary consequence

cancel all the veneration paid to them. Seeing that man so much desired

to equal himself to God, he had done better, says Cicero, to have

attracted those divine conditions to himself, and drawn them down hither

below, than to send his corruption and misery up on high; but, to take

it right, he has several ways done both the one and the other, with like

vanity of opinion.

When philosophers search narrowly into the hierarchy of their gods, and

make a great bustle about distinguishing their alliances, offices, and

power, I cannot believe they speak as they think. When Plato describes

Pluto’s orchard to us, and the bodily conveniences or pains that attend

us after the ruin and annihilation of our bodies, and accommodates them

to the feeling we have in this life:--

Secreti celant calles, et myrtea circum

Sylva tegit; curæ non ipsâ in morte relinquunt;

“In secret vales and myrtle groves they lie,

Nor do cares leave them even when they die.”

when Mahomet promises his followers a Paradise hung with tapestry,

gilded and enamelled with gold and precious stones, furnished with

wenches of excelling beauty, rare wines, and delicate dishes; it

is easily discerned that these are deceivers that accommodate their

promises to our sensuality, to attract and allure us by hopes and

opinions suitable to our mortal appetites. And yet some amongst us

are fallen into the like error, promising to themselves after the

resurrection a terrestrial and temporal life, accompanied with all sorts

of worldly conveniences and pleasures. Can we believe that Plato, he

who had such heavenly conceptions, and was so well acquainted with the

Divinity as thence to derive the name of the Divine Plato, ever thought

that the poor creature, man, had any thing in him applicable to that

incomprehensible power? and that he believed that the weak holds we are

able to take were capable, or the force of our understanding sufficient,

to participate of beatitude or eternal pains? We should then tell him

from human reason: “If the pleasures thou dost promise us in the other

life are of the same kind that I have enjoyed here below, this has

nothing in common with infinity; though all my five natural senses

should be even loaded with pleasure, and my soul full of all the

contentment it could hope or desire, we know what all this amounts to,

all this would be nothing; if there be any thing of mine there, there is

nothing divine; if this be no more than what may belong to our present

condition, it cannot be of any value. All contentment of mortals is

mortal. Even the knowledge of our parents, children, and friends,

if that can affect and delight us in the other world, if that still

continues a satisfaction to us there, we still remain in earthly and

finite conveniences. We cannot as we ought conceive the greatness of

these high and divine promises, if we could in any sort conceive them;

to have a worthy imagination of them we must imagine them unimaginable,

inexplicable, and incomprehensible, and absolutely another thing than

those of our miserable experience.” “Eye hath not seen,” saith St. Paul,

“nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things

that God hath prepared for them that love him.” And if, to render us

capable, our being were reformed and changed (as thou, Plato, sayest, by

thy purifications), it ought to be so extreme and total a change, that

by physical doctrine it be no more us;--

Hector erat tunc cum bello certabat; at ille

Tractus ab Æmonio non erat Hector eqao;

He Hector was whilst he could fight, but when

Dragg’d by Achilles’ steeds, no Hector then;

it must be something else that must receive these recompenses:--

Quod mutatur... dissolvitur; interit ergo;

Trajiciuntur enim partes, atque ordine migrant.

“Things changed dissolved are, and therefore die;

Their parts are mix’d, and from their order fly.”

For in Pythagoras’s metempsychosis, and the change of habitation that

he imagined in souls, can we believe that the lion, in whom the soul of

Cæsar is enclosed, does espouse Cæsar’s passions, or that the lion

is he? For if it was still Cæsar, they would be in the right who,

controverting this opinion with Plato, reproach him that the son

might be seen to ride his mother transformed into a mule, and the like

absurdities. And can we believe that in the mutations that are made of

the bodies of animals into others of the same kind, the new comers are

not other than their predecessors? From the ashes of a phoenix, a worm,

they say, is engendered, and from that another phoenix; who can

imagine that this second phoenix is no other than the first? We see our

silk-worms, as it were, die and wither; and from this withered body a

butterfly is produced; and from that another worm; how ridiculous would

it be to imagine that this was still the first! That which once has

ceased to be is no more:--

Nec, si materiam nostram collegerit ætas

Post obitum, rursumque redegerit, ut sita nunc est,

Atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitæ,

Pertineat quidquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum,

Interrupta semel cum sit repetentia nostra.

“Neither tho’ time should gather and restore

Our matter to the form it was before,

And give again new light to see withal,

Would that new figure us concern at all;

Or we again ever the same be seen,

Our being having interrupted been.”

And, Plato, when thou sayest in another place that it shall be the

spiritual part of man that will be concerned in the fruition of the

recompense of another life, thou tellest us a thing wherein there is as

little appearance of truth:--

Scilicet, avolsis radicibus, ut nequit ullam

Dispicere ipsa oculus rem, seorsum corpore toto;

“No more than eyes once from their optics torn,

Can ever after any thing discern;”

for, by this account, it would no more be man, nor consequently us,

who would be concerned in this enjoyment; for we are composed of two

principal essential parts, the separation of which is the death and ruin

of our being:--

Inter enim jecta est vital pausa, vageque

Deerrarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes;

“When once that pause of life is come between,

‘Tis just the same as we had never been;”

we cannot say that the man suffers when the worms feed upon his members,

and that the earth consumes them:--

Et nihil hoc ad nos, qui coltu conjugioque

Corporis atque animæ consistimus uniter apti.

“What’s that to us? for we are only we,

While soul and body in one frame agree.”

Moreover, upon what foundation of their justice can the gods take notice

of or reward man after his death and virtuous actions, since it was

themselves that put them in the way and mind to do them? And why should

they be offended at or punish him for wicked ones, since themselves have

created in him so frail a condition, and when, with one glance of their

will, they might prevent him from falling? Might not Epicurus, with

great colour of human reason, object this to Plato, did he not often

save himself with this sentence: “That it is impossible to establish any

thing certain of the immortal nature by the mortal?” She does nothing

but err throughout, but especially when she meddles with divine things.

Who does more evidently perceive this than we? For although we have

given her certain and infallible principles; and though we have

enlightened her steps with the sacred lamp of truth that it has pleased

God to communicate to us; we daily see, nevertheless, that if she swerve

never so little from the ordinary path; and that she stray from, or

wander out of the way set out and beaten by the church, how soon she

loses, confounds and fetters herself, tumbling and floating in this

vast, turbulent, and waving sea of human opinions, without restraint,

and without any determinate end; so soon as she loses that great and

common road, she enters into a labyrinth of a thousand several paths.

Man cannot be any thing but what he is, nor imagine beyond the reach of

his capacity. “Tis a greater presumption,” says Plutarch, “in them who

are but men to attempt to speak and discourse of the gods and demi-gods

than it is in a man utterly ignorant of music to give an opinion of

singing; or in a man who never saw a camp to dispute about arms and

martial affairs, presuming by some light conjecture to understand the

effects of an art he is totally a stranger to.” Antiquity, I believe,

thought to put a compliment upon, and to add something to, the divine

grandeur in assimilating it to man, investing it with his faculties,

and adorning it with his ugly humours and most shameful necessities;

offering it our aliments to eat, presenting it with our dances,

mummeries, and farces, to divert it; with our vestments to cover it,

and our houses to inhabit, coaxing it with the odour of incense and the

sounds of music, with festoons and nosegays; and to accommodate it to

our vicious passions, flattering its justice with inhuman vengeance, and

with the ruin and dissipation of things by it created and preserved as

Tiberius Sempronius, who burnt the rich spoils and arms he had gained

from the enemy in Sardinia for a sacrifice to Vulcan; and Paulus

Æmilius, those of Macedonia, to Mars and Minerva; and Alexander,

arriving at the Indian Ocean, threw several great vessels of gold into

the sea, in honour of Thetes; and moreover loading her altars with

a slaughter not of innocent beasts only, but of men also, as several

nations, and ours among the rest, were commonly used to do; and I

believe there is no nation under the sun that has not done the same:--

Sulmone creatos

Quatuor hîc juvenes, totidem quos educat Ufens,

Viventes rapit, inferias quos immolet umbris.

“Four sons of Sulmo, four whom Ufens bred,

He took in flight, and living victims led,

To please the ghost of Pallas, and expire

In sacrifice before his fun’ral pyre.”

The Getæ hold themselves to be immortal, and that their death is nothing

but a journey to their god Zamolxis. Every five years they dispatch some

one among them to him, to entreat of him such necessaries as they stand

in need of. This envoy is chosen by lot, and the form of dispatching

him, after he has been instructed by word of mouth what he is to

deliver, is that of the assistants, three hold up as many javelins, upon

which the rest throw his body with all their force. If he happen to

be wounded in a mortal part, and that he immediately dies, ‘tis held a

certain argument of divine favour; but if he escapes, he is looked upon

as a wicked and execrable wretch, and another is dismissed after the

same manner in his stead. Amestris, the mother of Xerxes, being grown

old, caused at once fourteen young men, of the best families of Persia,

to be buried alive, according to the religion of the country, to gratify

some infernal deity. And even to this day the idols of Themixtitan

are cemented with the blood of little children, and they delight in no

sacrifice but of these pure and infantine souls; a justice thirsty of

innocent blood:--

Tantum religio potuit suadere maloram.

“Such impious use was of religion made,

So many demon acts it could persuade.”

The Carthaginians immolated their own children to Saturn; and those who

had none of their own bought of others, the father and mother being in

the mean time obliged to assist at the ceremony with a gay and contented

countenance.

It was a strange fancy to think to gratify the divine bounty with our

afflictions; like the Lacedemonians, who regaled their Diana with the

tormenting of young boys, whom they caused to be whipped for her sake,

very often to death. It was a savage humour to imagine to gratify the

architect by the subversion of his building, and to think to take away

the punishment due to the guilty by punishing the innocent; and that

poor Iphigenia, at the port of Aulis, should by her death and immolation

acquit, towards God, the whole army of the Greeks from all the crimes

they had committed;

Et casta inceste, nubendi tempore in ipso,

Hostia concideret mactatu mosta parentis;

“That the chaste virgin in her nuptial band

Should die by an unnat’ral father’s hand;”

and that the two noble and generous souls of the two Decii, the father

and the son, to incline the favour of the gods to be propitious to the

affairs of Rome, should throw themselves headlong into the thickest of

the enemy: _Quo fuit tanta deorum iniquitas, ut placari populo Romano

non possent, nisi tales viri occidissent?_ “How great an injustice in

the gods was it that they could not be reconciled to the people of Rome

unless such men perished!” To which may be added, that it is not for the

criminal to cause himself to be scourged according to his own measure

nor at his own time, but that it purely belongs to the judge, who

considers nothing as chastisements but the penalty that he appoints, and

cannot call that punishment which proceeds from the consent of him that

suffers. The divine vengeance presupposes an absolute dissent in us,

both for its justice and for our own penalty. And therefore it was a

ridiculous humour of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, who, to interrupt the

continued course of his good fortune, and to balance it, went and threw

the dearest and most precious jewel he had into the sea, believing

that by this voluntary and antedated mishap he bribed and satisfied

the revolution and vicissitude of fortune; and she, to mock his folly,

ordered it so that the same jewel came again into his hands, found

in the belly of a fish. And then to what end were those tearings and

dismemberments of the Corybantes, the Menades, and, in our times, of the

Mahometans, who slash their faces, bosoms, and limbs, to gratify their

prophet; seeing that the offence lies in the will, not in the breast,

eyes, genitals, roundness of form, the shoulders, or the throat?

_Tantus est perturbâto mentis, et sedibus suis pilso, furor, ut sic dii

placentur, quemadmodum ne homines quidem soviunt._ “So great is the

fury and madness of troubled minds when once displaced from the seat of

reason, as if the gods should be appeased with what even men are not so

cruel as to approve.” The use of this natural contexture has not only

respect to us, but also to the service of God and other men; ‘tis as

unjust for us voluntarily to wound or hurt it as to kill ourselves upon

any pretence whatever; it seems to be great cowardice and treason to

exercise cruelty upon, and to destroy, the functions of the body that

are stupid and servile, to spare the soul the solicitude of governing

them according to reason: _Ubi iratos deos timent, qui sic propitios

habere merentur? In regiæ libidinis voluptatem castrati sunt quidam;

sed nemo sibi, ne vir esset, jubente domino, mantis intulit._ “Where are

they so afraid of the anger of the gods as to merit their favour at that

rate? Some, indeed, have been made eunuchs for the lust of princes: but

no man at his master’s command has put his own hand to unman himself.”

So did they fill their religion with several ill effects:--

Sæpius olim Religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta.

“In elder times Religion did commit most fearful crimes.”

Now nothing of ours can in any sort be compared or likened unto

the divine nature, which will not blemish and stain it with much

imperfection.

How can that infinite beauty, power, and goodness, admit of any

correspondence or similitude to such abject things as we are, without

extreme wrong and manifest dishonour to his divine greatness? _Infirmum

dei fortius est hominibs; et stultum dei sapientius est hominibus._ “For

the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is

stronger than men.” Stilpo, the philosopher, being asked, “Whether

the gods were delighted with our adorations and sacrifices?”--“You are

indiscreet,” answered he; “let us withdraw apart, if you would talk of

such things.” Nevertheless, we prescribe him bounds, we keep his power

besieged by our reasons (I call our ravings and dreams reason, with the

dispensation of philosophy, which says, “That the wicked man, and even

the fool, go mad by reason, but a particular form of reason”), we

would subject him to the vain and feeble appearances of our

understandings,--him who has made both us and our knowledge. Because

that nothing is made of nothing, God therefore could not make the world

without matter. What! has God put into our hands the keys and most

secret springs of his power? Is he obliged not to exceed the limits of

our knowledge? Put the case, O man! that thou hast been able here to

mark some footsteps of his effects; dost thou therefore think that he

has employed all he can, and has crowded all his forms and ideas in this

work? Thou seest nothing but the order and revolution of this little

cave in which thou art lodged, if, indeed, thou dost see so much;

whereas his divinity has an infinite jurisdiction beyond. This part is

nothing in comparison of the whole:--

Omnia cum colo, terràque, manque,

Nil sunt ad summam summal totius omnem.

“The earth, the sea, and skies, from pole to pole,

Are small, nay, nothing to the mighty whole.”

‘Tis a municipal law that thou allegest, thou knowest not what is

universal Tie thyself to that to which thou art subject, but not him; he

is not of thy brotherhood, thy fellow-citizen, or companion. If he has

in some sort communicated himself unto thee, ‘tis not to debase himself

unto thy littleness, nor to make thee comptroller of his power; the

human body cannot fly to the clouds; rules are for thee. The sun runs

every day his ordinary course; the bounds of the sea and the earth

cannot be confounded; the water is unstable and without firmness; a

wall, unless it be broken, is impenetrable to a solid body; a man cannot

preserve his life in the flames; he cannot be both in heaven and upon

earth, and corporally in a thousand places at once. ‘Tis for thee that

he has made these rules; ‘tis thee that they concern; he has manifested

to Christians that he has enfranchised himself from them all when it

pleased him. And, in truth, why, almighty as he is, should he have

limited his power within any certain bounds? In favour of whom should he

have renounced his privilege? Thy reason has in no other thing more of

likelihood and foundation than in that wherein it persuades thee that

there is a plurality of worlds:--

Terramque et solem, lunam, mare, estera quo rant,

Non esse unica, sed numéro magis innumerali.

“That earth, sun, moon, sea, and the rest that are,

Not single, but innumerable were.”

The most eminent minds of elder times believed it; and some of this

age of ours, compelled by the appearances of human reason, do the same;

forasmuch as in this fabric that we behold there is nothing single and

one,

Cum in summà res nulla sit una,

Unica quo gignatur, et unica solaque crescat;

“Since nothing’s single in this mighty place,

That can alone beget, alone increase;”

and that all the kinds are multiplied in some number; by which it seems

not to be likely that God should have made this work only without a

companion; and that the matter of this form should have been totally

drained in this individual.

Quare etiam atque etiam tales fateare necesse est

Esse alios alibi congressus materiali;

Qualis hic est, avido complexu quem tenet æther.

“Wherefore ‘tis necessary to confess

That there must elsewhere be the like congress

Of the like matter, which the airy space

Holds fast within its infinite embrace.”

Especially if it be a living creature, which its motions render so

credible that Plato affirms it, and that many of our people do either

confirm, or dare not deny it; no more than that ancient opinion that

the heavens, the stars, and other members of the world, are creatures

composed of body and soul, mortal in respect of their composition,

but immortal by the determination of the Creator. Now if there be many

worlds, as Democritus, Epicurus, and almost all philosophy has believed,

what do we know that the principles and rules of this of ours in like

manner concern the rest? They may peradventure have another form and

another polity. Epicurus supposes them either like or unlike. We see

in this world an infinite difference and variety, only by distance of

places; neither com, wine, nor any of our animals are to be seen in that

new comer of the world discovered by our fathers; ‘tis all there another

thing; and in times past, do but consider in how many parts of the world

they had no knowledge either of Bacchus or Ceres. If Pliny and Herodotus

are to be believed, there are in certain places kinds of men very little

resembling us, mongrel and ambiguous forms, betwixt the human and brutal

natures; there are countries where men are bom without heads, having

their mouth and eyes in their breast; where they are all hermaphrodites;

where they go on all four; where they have but one eye in the forehead,

and a head more like a dog than like ours; where they are half fish the

lower part, and live in the water; where the women bear at five years

old, and live but eight; where the head and the skin of the forehead is

so hard that a sword will not touch it, but rebounds again; where men

have no beards; nations that know not the use of fire; others that eject

seed of a black colour. What shall we say of those that naturally change

themselves into wolves, colts, and then into men again? And if it be

true, as Plutarch says, that in some place of the Indies there are men

without mouths, who nourish themselves with the smell of certain odours,

how many of our descriptions are false? He is no longer risible, nor,

perhaps, capable of reason and society. The disposition and cause of our

internal composition would then for the most part be to no purpose, and

of no use.

Moreover, how many things are there in our own knowledge that oppose

those fine rules we have cut out for and prescribe to nature? And yet we

must undertake to circumscribe thereto God himself! How many things do

we call miraculous, and contrary to nature? This is done by every nation

and by every man, according to the proportion of his ignorance. How many

occult properties and quintessences do we daily discover? For, for us

to go “according to nature,” is no more but to go “according to our

understanding,” as far as that is able to follow, and as far as we

are able to see into it; all beyond that is, forsooth, monstrous and

irregular. Now, by this account, all things shall be monstrous to the

wisest and most understanding men; for human reason has persuaded them

that there was no manner of ground nor foundation, not so much as to be

assured that snow is white, and Anaxagoras affirmed it to be black; if

there be any thing, or if there be nothing; if there be knowledge

or ignorance, which Metrodorus of Chios denied that man was able to

determine; or whether we live, as Euripides doubts whether the life we

live is life, or whether that we call death be not life, [--Greek--]

and not without some appearance. For why do we derive the title of being

from this instant, which is but a flash in the infinite course of an

eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual and natural

condition, death possessing all the before and after this moment, and

also a good part of the moment itself. Others swear there is no motion

at all, as followers of Melissus, and that nothing stirs. For if there

be but one, neither can that spherical motion be of any use to him,

nor motion from one place to another, as Plato proves: “That there is

neither generation nor corruption in nature.” Protagoras says that there

is nothing in nature but doubt; that a man may equally dispute of all

things; and even of this, whether a man can equally dispute of all

things; Nausiphanes, that of things which seem to be, nothing is

more than it is not; that there is nothing certain but uncertainty;

Parmenides, that of that which seems, there is no one thing in general;

that there is but one thing; Zeno, that one same is not, and that there

is nothing; if there were one thing, it would either be in another or in

itself; if it be in another, they are two; if it be in itself, they are

yet two; the comprehending, and the comprehended. According to these

doctrines the nature of things is no other than a shadow, either false

or vain.

This way of speaking in a Christian man has ever seemed to me very

indiscreet and irreverent. “God cannot die; God cannot contradict

himself; God cannot do this or that.” I do not like to have the divine

power so limited by the laws of men’s mouths; and the idea which

presents itself to us in those propositions ought to be more religiously

and reverently expressed.

Our speaking has its failings and defects, as well as all the rest. Most

of the occasions of disturbance in the world are grammatical ones; our

suits only spring from disputes as to the interpretation of laws; and

most wars proceed from the inability of ministers clearly to express the

conventions and treaties of amity of princes. How many quarrels, and

of how great importance, has the doubt of the meaning of this syllable,

_hoc_,* created in the world? Let us take the clearest conclusion that

logic itself

* Montaigne here refers to the controversies between

the Catholics and Protestants about transubstantiation.

presents us withal; if you say, “It is fine weather,” and that you

say true, it is then fine weather. Is not this a very certain form of

speaking? And yet it will deceive us; that it will do so, let us follow

the example: If you say, “I lie,” if you say true, you do lie. The art,

the reason, and force of the conclusion of this, are the same with the

other, and yet we are gravelled. The Pyrrhonian philosophers, I see,

cannot express their general conception in any kind of speaking; for

they would require a new language on purpose; ours is all formed of

affirmative propositions, which are totally antarctic to them; insomuch

that when they say “I doubt,” they are presently taken by the throat, to

make them confess that at least they know and are assured that they do

doubt. By which means they have been compelled to shelter themselves

under this medical comparison, without which their humour would be

inexplicable: when they pronounce, “I know not,” or, “I doubt,” they say

that this proposition carries off itself with the rest, no more nor less

than rhubarb, that drives out the ill humours, and carries itself

off with them. This fancy will be more certainly understood by

interrogation: “What do I know?” as I bear it with the emblem of a

balance.