Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 63

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 princ.i.p.al essential parts, the separation of which is the death and ruin of our being:--

Inter enim jecta est vital pausa, vageque Deerrarunt pa.s.sim 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 animae 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds and demi-G.o.ds 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 a.s.similating 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 pa.s.sions, flattering its justice with inhuman vengeance, and with the ruin and dissipation of things by it created and preserved as Tiberius Semp.r.o.nius, who burnt the rich spoils and arms he had gained from the enemy in Sardinia for a sacrifice to Vulcan; and Paulus aemilius, 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 hic 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 Getae hold themselves to be immortal, and that their death is nothing but a journey to their G.o.d 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 a.s.sistants, 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 Themixt.i.tan 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 a.s.sist 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.ble and generous souls of the two Decii, the father and the son, to incline the favour of the G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 chastis.e.m.e.nts 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 perturbato 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 regiae 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 G.o.ds as to merit their favour at that rate? Some, indeed, have been made eunuchs for the l.u.s.t 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:--

Saepius 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 G.o.d is wiser than men, and the weakness of G.o.d is stronger than men." Stilpo, the philosopher, being asked, "Whether the G.o.ds 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, G.o.d therefore could not make the world without matter. What! has G.o.d 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 c.u.m colo, terraque, 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 munic.i.p.al 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 numero 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,

c.u.m in summa 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 G.o.d 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 aether.

"Wherefore 'tis necessary to confess That there must elsewhere be the like congress Of the like matter, which the airy s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mscribe thereto G.o.d 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 a.s.sured 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 t.i.tle 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.