Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 72

and Pygmalion's judgment so troubled by the impression of the sight of his ivory statue that he loves and adores it as if it were a living woman!

Oscnla dat, reddique putat: sequi turque, tenetque, Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris; Et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus.

"He kisses, and believes he's kissed again; Seizes, and 'twixt his arms his love doth strain, And thinks the polish'd ivory thus held Doth to his fingers amorous pressure yield, And has a timorous fear, lest black and blue Should in the parts with ardour press'd ensue."

Put a philosopher into a cage of small thin set bars of iron, hang him on the top of the high tower of Notre Dame at Paris; he will see, by manifest reason, that he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find (unless he has been used to the plumber's trade) that he cannot help but the sight of the excessive height will fright and astound him; for we have enough to do to a.s.sure ourselves in the galleries of our steeples, if they are made with open work, although they are of stone; and some there are that cannot endure so much as to think of it. Let there be a beam thrown over betwixt these two towers, of breadth sufficient to walk upon, there is no philosophical wisdom so firm that can give us the courage to walk over it as we should do upon the ground. I have often tried this upon our mountains in these parts; and though I am one who am not the most subject to be afraid, I was not able to endure to look into that infinite depth without horror and trembling, though I stood above my length from the edge of the precipice, and could not have fallen unless I would. Where I also observed that, what height soever the precipice was, provided there were some tree, or some jutting out of a rock, a little to support and divide the sight, it a little eases our fears, and gives greater a.s.surance; as if they were things by which in falling we might have some relief; but that direct precipices we are not to look upon without being giddy; _Ut despici vine vertigine timid ocvlorum animique non possit:_ "'To that one cannot look without dizziness;" which is a manifest imposture of the sight. And therefore it was that that fine philosopher put out his own eyes, to free the soul from being diverted by them, and that he might philosophize at greater liberty; but, by the same rule, he should have dammed up his ears, that Theophrastus says are the most dangerous instruments about us for receiving violent impressions to alter and disturb us; and, finally, should have deprived himself of all his other senses, that is to say, of his life and being; for they have all the power to command our soul and reason: _Fit etiam sope specie quadam, sope voc.u.m gravitate et cantibus, ut pettantur animi vehementius; sope etiam cura et timore,_ "For it often falls out that the minds are more vehemently struck by some sight, by the quality and sound of the voice, or by singing; and ofttimes also by grief and fear." Physicians hold that there are certain complexions that are agitated by the same sounds and instruments even to fury. I have seen some who could not hear a bone gnawed under the table without impatience; and there is scarce any man who is not disturbed at the sharp and shrill noise that the file makes in grating upon the iron; as also to hear chewing near them, or to hear any one speak who has an impediment in the throat or nose, will move some people even to anger and hatred. Of what use was that piping prompter of Gracchus, who softened, raised, and moved his master's voice whilst he declaimed at Rome, if the movements and quality of the sound had not the power to move and alter the judgments of the auditory? In earnest, there is wonderful reason to keep such a clutter about the firmness of this fine piece, that suffers itself to be turned and twined by the motion and accidents of so light a wind.

The same cheat that the senses put upon our understanding they have in turn put upon them; the soul also some times has its revenge; they lie and contend which should most deceive one another. What we see and hear when we are transported with pa.s.sion, we neither see nor hear as it is:--

Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas.

"Thebes seems two cities, and the sun two suns."

The object that we love appears to us more beautiful than it really is;

Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus Esse in deliciis, summoque in honore vigere;

"Hence 'tis that ugly things in fancied dress Seem gay, look fair to lovers' eyes, and please;"

and that we hate more ugly; to a discontented and afflicted man the light of the day seems dark and overcast. Our senses are not only depraved, but very often stupefied by the pa.s.sions of the soul; how many things do we see that we do not take notice of, if the mind be occupied with other thoughts?

In rebus quoque apertis noscere possis, Si non advertas animum, proinde esse quasi omni Tempore semotae fuerint, longeque remotae:

"Nay, even in plainest things, unless the mind Take heed, unless she sets herself to find, The thing no more is seen, no more belov'd, Than if the most obscure and most remov'd:"

it would appear that the soul retires within, and amuses the powers of the senses. And so both the inside and the outside of man is full of infirmity and falsehood.

They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake; but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps, here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, 'tis still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free from clouds; moreover, sleep, when it is profound, sometimes rocks even dreams themselves asleep; but our waking is never so sprightly that it rightly purges and dissipates those whimsies, which are waking dreams, and worse than dreams. Our reason and soul receiving those fancies and opinions that come in dreams, and authorizing the actions of our dreams with the like approbation that they do those of the day, wherefore do we not doubt whether our thought, our action, is not another sort of dreaming, and our waking a certain kind of sleep?

If the senses be our first judges, it is not ours that we are alone to consult; for, in this faculty, beasts have as great, or greater, than we; it is certain that some of them have the sense of hearing more quick than man; others that of seeing, others that of feeling, others that of touch and taste. Democritus said, that the G.o.ds and brutes had the sensitive faculties more perfect than man. But betwixt the effects of their senses and ours the difference is extreme. Our spittle cleanses and dries up our wounds; it kills the serpent:--

Tantaque in his rebas distantia differitasque est, Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum.

Saepe etenim serpens, hominis contacta saliva, Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa:

"And in those things the difference is so great That what's one's poison is another's meat; For serpents often have been seen, 'tis said, When touch'd with human spittle, to go mad, And bite themselves to death:"

what quality shall we attribute to our spittle? as it affects ourselves, or as it affects the serpent? By which of the two senses shall we prove the true essence that we seek for?

Pliny says there are certain sea-hares in the Indies that are poison to us, and we to them; insomuch that, with the least touch, we kill them. Which shall be truly poison, the man or the fish? Which shall we believe, the fish of the man, or the man of the fish? One quality of the air infects a man, that does the ox no harm; some other infects the ox, but hurts not the man. Which of the two shall, in truth and nature, be the pestilent quality? To them who have the jaundice, all things seem yellow and paler than to us:--

Lurida praeterea fiunt, quaecunque tuentur Arquati.

"Besides, whatever jaundic'd eyes do view Looks pale as well as those, and yellow too."

They who are troubled with the disease that the physicians call hyposphagma--which is a suffusion of blood under the skin--see all things red and b.l.o.o.d.y. What do we know but that these humours, which thus alter the operations of sight, predominate in beasts, and are usual with them? for we see some whose eyes are yellow, like us who have the jaundice; and others of a b.l.o.o.d.y colour; 'tis likely that the colours of objects seem other to them than to us. Which of the two shall make a right judgment? for it is not said that the essence of things has a relation to man only; hardness, whiteness, depth, and sharpness, have reference to the service and knowledge of animals as well as to us, and nature has equally designed them for their use. When we press down the eye, the body that we look upon we perceive to be longer and more extended;--many beasts have their eyes so pressed down; this length, therefore, is perhaps the true form of that body, and not that which our eyes give it in the usual state. If we close the lower part of the eye things appear double to us:--

Bina lucemarum fiorentia lumina flammis...

Et duplices hominum facies, et corpora bina.

"One lamp seems double, and the men appear Each on two bodies double heads to bear."

If our ears be hindered, or the pa.s.sage stopped with any thing, we receive the sound quite otherwise than we usually do; animals, likewise, who have either the ears hairy, or but a very little hole instead of an ear, do not, consequently, hear as we do, but receive another kind of sound. We see at festivals and theatres that, opposing a painted gla.s.s of a certain colour to the light of the flambeaux, all things in the place appear to us green, yellow, or violet:--

Et vulgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela, Et ferrugina, c.u.m, magnis intenta theatris, Per malos vulgata trabesque, trementia pendent; Namque ibi consessum caveai subter, et omnem Scenai speciem, patrum, matrumque, deorumque Inficiunt, coguntque suo volitare colore:

"Thus when pale curtains, or the deeper red, O'er all the s.p.a.cious theatre are spread, Which mighty masts and st.u.r.dy pillars bear, And the loose curtains wanton in the air; Whole streams of colours from the summit flow, The rays divide them in their pa.s.sage through, And stain the scenes, and men, and G.o.ds below:"

'tis likely that the eyes of animals, which we see to be of divers colours, produce the appearance of bodies the same with their eyes.

We should, therefore, to make a right judgment of the oppositions of the senses, be first agreed with beasts, and secondly amongst ourselves; which we by no means are, but enter into dispute every time that one hears, sees, or tastes something otherwise than another does, and contests, as much as upon any other thing, about the diversity of the images that the senses represent to us. A child, by the ordinary rule of nature, hears, sees, and talks otherwise than a man of thirty years old; and he than one of threescore. The senses are, in some, more obscure and dusky, and more open and quick in others. We receive things variously, according as we are, and according as they appear to us. Those rings which are cut out in the form of feathers, which are called _endless feathers_, no eye can discern their size, or can keep itself from the deception that on one side they enlarge, and on the other contract, and come So a point, even when the ring is being turned round the finger; yet, when you feel them, they seem all of an equal size. Now, our perception being so uncertain and so controverted, it is no more a wonder if we are told that we may declare that snow appears white to us; but that to affirm that it is in its own essence really so is more than we are able to justify; and, this foundation being shaken, all the knowledge in the world must of necessity fall to ruin. What! do our senses themselves hinder one another? A picture seems raised and embossed to the sight; in the handling it seems flat to the touch.

Shall we say that musk, which delights the smell, and is offensive to the taste, is agreeable or no? There are herbs and unguents proper for one part o the body, that are hurtful to another; honey is pleasant to the taste, but offensive to the sight. They who, to a.s.sist their l.u.s.t, used in ancient times to make use of magnifying-gla.s.ses to represent the members they were to employ bigger, by that ocular tumidity to please themselves the more; to which of their senses did they give the prize,--whether to the sight, that represented the members as large and great as they would desire, or to the feeling, which represented them little and contemptible? Are they our senses that supply the subject with these different conditions, and have the subjects themselves, nevertheless, but one? As we see in the bread we eat, it is nothing but bread, but, by being eaten, it becomes bones, blood, flesh, hair; and nails:--

Ut cibus in membra atque artus c.u.m diditur omnes, Disperit,, atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se;

"As meats, diffus'd through all the members, lose Their former state, and different things compose;"

the humidity sucked up by the root of a tree becomes trunk, leaf, and fruit; and the air, being but one, is modulated, in a trumpet, to a thousand sorts of sounds; are they our senses, I would fain know, that, in like manner, form these subjects into so many divers qualities, or have they them really such in themselves? And upon this doubt what can we determine of their true essence? Moreover, since the accidents of disease, of raving, or sleep, make things appear otherwise to us than they do to the healthful, the wise, and those that are awake, is it not likely that our right posture of health and understanding, and our natural humours, have, also, wherewith to give a being to things that have a relation to their own condition, and accommodate them to themselves, as well as when they are disordered;--that health is as capable of giving them an aspect as sickness? Why has not the temperate a certain form of objects relative to it, as well as the intemperate?

and why may it not as well stamp it with its own character as the other?

He whose mouth is out of taste, says the wine is flat; the healthful man commends its flavour, and the thirsty its briskness. Now, our condition always accommodating things to itself, and transforming them according to its own posture, we cannot know what things truly are in themselves, seeing that nothing comes to us but what is falsified and altered by the senses. Where the compa.s.s, the square, and the rule, are crooked, all propositions drawn thence, and all buildings erected by those guides, must, of necessity, be also defective; the uncertainty of our senses renders every thing uncertain that they produce:--

Denique ut in fabrica, si prava est regula prima, Normaque si fallax rectis regionibus exit, Et libella aliqua si ex parte claudicat hilum; Omnia mendose fieri, atque obstipa necessum est, Prava, cubantia, p.r.o.na, supina, atque absona tecta; Jam ruere ut quaedam videantux'velle, ruantque Prodita judiciis fallacibus omnia primis; Sic igitur ratio tibi reram prava necesse est, Falsaque sit, falsis quaecunque ab sensibus orta est.

"But lastly, as in building, if the line Be not exact and straight, the rule decline, Or level false, how vain is the design!

Uneven, an ill-shap'd and tottering wall Must rise; this part must sink, that part must fall, Because the rules were false that fashion'd all; Thus reason's rules are false if all commence And rise from failing and from erring sense."

As to what remains, who can be fit to judge of and to determine those differences? As we say in controversies of religion that we must have a judge neither inclining to the one side nor the other, free from all choice and affection, which cannot be amongst Christians, just so it falls out in this; for if he be old he cannot judge of the sense of old age, being himself a party in the case; if young, there is the same exception; if healthful, sick, asleep, or awake, he is still the same incompetent judge. We must have some one exempt from all these propositions, as of things indifferent to him; and by this rule we must have a judge that never was.

To judge of the appearances that we receive of subjects, we ought t have a deciding instrument; to verify this instrument we must have demonstration; to verify this demonstration an instrument; and here we are round again upon the wheel, and no further advanced. Seeing the senses cannot determine our dispute, being full of uncertainty themselves, it must then be reason that must do it; but no reason can be erected upon any other foundation than that of another reason; and so we run back to all infinity. Our fancy does not apply itself to things that are strange, but is conceived by the mediation of the senses; and the senses do not comprehend a foreign subject, but only their own pa.s.sions; by which means fancy and appearance are no part of the subject, but only of the pa.s.sion and sufferance of sense; which pa.s.sion and subject are different things; wherefore whoever judges by appearances judges by another thing than the subject. And to say that the pa.s.sions of the senses convey to the soul the quality of foreign subjects by resemblance, how can the soul and understanding be a.s.sured of this resemblance, having of itself no commerce with foreign subjects? As they who never knew Socrates cannot, when they see his picture, say it is like him. Now, whoever would, notwithstanding, judge by appearances, if it be by all, it is impossible, because they hinder one another by their contrarieties and discrepancies, as we by experience see: shall some select appearances govern the rest? you must verify this select by another select, the second by a third, and thus there will never be any end to it. Finally, there is no constant existence, neither of the objects' being nor our own; both we, and our judgments, and all mortal things, are evermore incessantly running and rolling; and consequently nothing certain can be established from the one to the other, both the judging and the judged being in a continual motion and mutation.