FROM "It Is Folly to Measure the True and False by Our Own Capacity" 667

o himrn hiss, butst andtherto

MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE

FROM "It Is Folly to Measure the True and False

by Our Own Capacity"to an-which• needlaw ofthing.secur-.rmanbody.t have.0 andictatese con-issem-ce butIt GodIman-of na-ie God

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) introduced the essay as a literary form.Born of a wealthy family in the Chateau de Montaigne, near Libourne, he was firsteducated by a tutor who spoke Latin but no French. Until he was six years old,Montaigne learned the classical language as his native tongue. He was further edu-cated at the College du Guyenne, where his fluency intimidated some of the finestLatinists in France, and studied law at Toulouse. In 1554, his father purchased anoffice in the Cour des Aides of Perigeaux, a fiscal court later incorporated into theParlement of Bordeaux, a position he soon resigned to his son. Montaigne spentthirteen years in office at work he found neither pleasant nor useful. In 1571, heretired to the family estate. Apart from brief visits to Paris and Rauen, periods oftravel, and two terms as mayor of Bordeaux (1581-1585), Montaigne spent therest of his life as a country gentleman. His life was not all leisure. He becamegentleman-in-ordinary to the king's chamber and spent the period 1572-1576 tryingto broker a peace between Catholics and Huguenots. His first tWo books of theEssais appeared in 1580; the third and last volume appeared in 1588. These essaysare known for their discursive, conversational style, in which Montaigne undertookexplorations of custom, opinion, and institutions. They gave voice to his oppositionto all forms of dogmatism that were without rational basis. He observed life with adegree of skepticism, emphasizing the limits of human knowledge and the contradic-tions in human behavior. Indeed, Montaigne's essays are often cited as examples ofan epistemological crisis born of the new discoveries, theological debates, and socialtensions that marked the early modern period.

e?

Jose of

From The Complete Essays of Montaigne, translated by Donald M. Frame (Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 132-35.

o form

ereignim?ie state Perhaps it is not without reason that we at-

tribute facility in belief and conviction to sim-plicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I

once learned that belief was a sort of impressionmade on our mind, and that the softer and less re-sistant the mind, the easier it was to imprint some-thing on it. As the scale of the balance must necessarilysink under the weight placed upon it, so must the mindyield to evident things. The more a mind is empty and

rt

without counterpoise, the more easily it gives be-neath the weight of the first persuasive argument.That is why children, common people, women, andsick people are most subject to being led by the ears.But then, on the other hand, it is foolish presump-tion to go around disdaining and condemning asfalse whatever does not seem likely to us; which isan ordinary vice in those who think they have morethan common ability. I used to do so once; and if

668 CHAPTER 15 RELIGIOUS. WARS AND STATE BUILDING, 1540-1660

I heard of returning spirits, prognostications of fu-ture events, enchantments, sorcery, or some otherstory that I could not swallow,

Dreams, witches, miracles, magic alarms,Nocturnal specters, and Thessalian charms,

Horace

I felt compassion for the poor people who weretaken in by these follies. And now I think that Iwas at least as much to be pitied myself. ot thatexperience has since shown me anything surpass-ing my first beliefs, and that through no fault ofmy curiosity; but reason has taught me that tocondemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false andimpossible, is to assume the advantage of knowingthe bounds and limits of God's will and of thepower of our mother Nature; and that there is nomore notable folly in the world than to reducethese things to the measure of our capacity andcompetence. If we call prodigies or miracles what-ever our reason cannot reach, how many of theseappear continually to our eyes! Let us considerthrough what clouds and how gropingly we areled to the knowledge of most of the things thatare right in our hands; assuredly we shall find thatit is rather familiarity than knowledge that takesaway their strangeness, .

But no one now, so tired of seeing are our eyes,Deigns to look up at the bright temples of the

skies,Lucretius

and that if those things were presented to us forthe first time, we should find them as incredibleas any others, or more so.

lf they were here for the first time for men tosee,

lf they were set before us unexpectedly,Nothing more marvelous than these things

could be told,othing more unbelievable for men of old.

Lucretius

He who had never seen a river thought thatthe first one he came across was the ocean. Andthe things that are the greatest within our knowl-

edge we judge to be the utmost that nature cando in that category.

A fair-sized stream seems vast to one who untilthen

Has never seen a greater; so with trees, withmen.

In every field each man regards as vast in sizeThe greatest objects that have come before his

eyes.Lucretius

The mind becomes accustomed to things by the ha-bitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor in-quires about the reasons for the things it sees all thetime.

The novelty of things incites us more thantheir greatness to seek their causes.

We must judge with more reverence the infi-nite power of nature, and with more conscious-ness of our ignorance and weakness. How manythings of slight probability there are, testified toby trustworthy people, which, if we cannot beconvinced of them, we should at least leave in sus-pense! For to condemn them as impossible is topretend, with rash presumption, to know the lim-its of possibility. If people rightly understood thedifference between the impossible and the un-usual, and between what is contrary to the orderlycourse of nature and what is contrary to the com-mon opinion of men, neither believing rashly nordisbelieving easily, they would observe the rule of"nothing too much," enjoined by Chilo.

When we find in Froissart that the count ofFoix, in Beam, learned of the defeat of King Johnof Castile at Iuberoth the day after it happened,and the way he says he learned it, we can laugh atit; and also at the story our annals tell, that PopeHonorius performed public funeral rites for KingPhilip Augustus and commanded them to be per-formed throughout Italy on the very day he diedat Mantes. For the authority of these witnesses hasperhaps not enough rank to keep us in check. Butif Plutarch, besides several examples that he citesfrom antiquity, says that he knows with certainknowledge that in the time of Domitian, the newsof the battle lost by Antonius in Germany was

FROM "It Is Folly to Measure the True and False by Our Own Capacity" 669

published in Rome, several days' journey fromthere, and dispersed throughout the whole world,on the same day it was lost; and if Caesar main-tains that it has often happened that the reporthas preceded the event-shall we say that thesesimple men let themselves be hoaxed like the com-mon herd, because they were not clear-sighted likeourselves? Is there anything more delicate, clearer,and more alert than Pliny's judgment, when hesees fit to bring it into play, or anything fartherfrom inanity? Leaving aside the excellence of hisknowledge, which I count for less, in which ofthese qualities do we surpass him? However, thereis no schoolboy so young but he will convict himof falsehood, and want to give him a lesson on theprogress of nature's works.

When we read in Bouchet about the miraclesdone by the relics of Saint Hilary, let it go: hiscredit is not great enough to take away our rightto contradict him. But to condemn wholesale allsimilar stories seems to me a singular impudence.The great Saint Augustine testifies that he saw ablind child recover his sight upon the relics ofSaint Gervase and Saint Protasius at Milan; awoman at Carthage cured of a cancer by the signof the cross that a newly baptized woman madeover her; Hesperius, a .close friend of his, cast outthe spirits that infested his house with a little earthfrom the sepulcher of our Lord, and a paralytic

'promptly cured by this earth, later, when it hadbeen carried to church; a woman in a procession,having touched Saint Stephen's shrine with a bou-quet, and rubbed her eyes with this bouquet, re-cover her long-lost sight; and he reports manyother miracles at which he says he himself waspresent. Of what shall we accuse both him andtwo holy bishops, Aurelius and Maximinus, whomhe calls upon as his witnesses? Shall it be of ig-norance, simplicity, and credulity, or of knaveryand imposture? Is there any man in our time soimpudent that he thinks himself comparable tothem, either in virtue and piety, or in learning,judgment, and ability? Who, though they broughtforth no proof, might crush me by their mereauthority.

It is a dangerous and fateful nresumotion. he-

sides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdainwhat we do not comprehend. For after you haveestablished, according to your fine understanding,the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns outthat you must necessarily believe things evenstranger than those you deny, you are obligedfrom then on to abandon these limits. Now, whatseems to me to bring as much disorder into ourconsciences as anything, in these religious troublesthat we are in, is this partial surrender of theirbeliefs by Catholics. It seems to them that they arebeing very moderate and understanding when theyyield to their opponents some of the articles indispute. But, besides the fact that they do not seewhat an advantage it is to a man charging you foryou to begin to give ground and withdraw, andhow much that encourages him to pursue hispoint, those articles which they select as the mosttrivial are sometimes very important. We musteither submit completely to the authority of ourecclesiastical government, or do without it com-pletely. It is not for us to decide what portion ofobedience we owe it.

Moreover, I can say this for having tried it. Inother days I exercised this freedom of personalchoice and selection, regarding with negligencecertain points in the observance of our Churchwhich seem more vain or strange than others; un-til, coming to discuss them with learned men, Ifound that these things have a massive and verysolid foundation, and that it is only stupidity andignorance that make us receive them with less rev-erence than the rest. Why do we not rememberhow much contradiction we sense even in ourown judgment? How many things were articles offaith to us yesterday, which are fables to us today?Vainglory and curiosity are the two scourges ofour soul. The latter leads us to thrust our nosesinto everything, and the former forbids us to leaveanything unresolved and undecided.

670 CHAPTER 15 RELIGIOUS WARS AND STATE BUILDING, 1540-1660

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. What are the limits of human knowledge?2. What roles do authority and experience play in

knowledge?3. How does Montaigne's attitude toward prodi-

gies or miracles compare with that of ReginaldScot?

4. How do their conceptions of nature differ?5. How might Montaigne's reflection on knowl-

edge indicate an intellectual crisis?

Now,nothinglwhat I hibarbarisnindeed itreason thions andis alwaysment, thlall thingswild theand in hthat wefrom thcall wiltheir getues andlatter intaste. Anof somequite asown. It'place 0

motherand ricwe have

MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE

FROM "Of Cannibals"

eyes bigger than our stomachs, and more curiositythan capacity. We embrace everything, but weclasp only wind.

From The Complete Essays of Montaigne, translated by Donald M. Frame (Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 1958).

When King Pyrrhus passed over into It-aly, after he had reconnoitered the for-mation of the army that the Romans

were sending to meet him, he said: "I do not knowwhat barbarians these are" (for so the Greekscalled all foreign nations), "but the formation ofthis army that I see is not at all barbarous." TheGreeks said as much of the army that Flamininusbrought into their country, and so did Philip, see-ing from a knoll the order and distribution of theRoman camp, in his kingdom, under Publius Sul-picius Galba. Thus we should beware of clingingto vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason'sway, not by popular say.

I had with me for a long time a man who hadlived for ten or twelve years in that other worldwhich has been discovered in our century, in theplace where Villegaignon landed, and which hecalled Antarctic France. This discovery of aboundless country seems worthy of consideration.I don't know if I can guarantee -that some othersuch discovery will not be made in the future, somany personages greater than ourselves havingbeen mistaken about this one. I am afraid we have

This man I had was a simple, crude fellow-a character fit to bear true witness; for clever peo-ple observe more things and more curiously, butthey interpret them; and to lend weight and con-viction to their interpretation, they cannot helpaltering history a little. They never show youthings as they are, but bend and disguise themaccording to the way they have seen them; and togive credence to their judgment and attract you toit, they are prone to add something to their mat-ter, to stretch it out and amplify it. We need aman either very honest, or so simple that he hasnot the stuff to build up false inventions and givethem plausibility; and wedded to no theory. Suchwas my man; and besides this, he at various timesbrought sailors and merchants, whom he hadknown on that trip, to see me. So I content myselfwith his information, without inquiring what thecosmographers say about it.

All ourthe nestbeautypunyby namostbthe Ie

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