The Complete Essays (98 page)
Read The Complete Essays Online
Authors: Michel de Montaigne
Tags: #Essays, #Philosophy, #Literary Collections, #History & Surveys, #General
With that we come to the end of all the fine doctrines which we can distill from human science about our souls.
There is no less rashness in what science tells us about our bodily parts. We had better choose one or two examples, otherwise we shall drown in the vast and troubled sea of medical error. We can at least find out whether there is any agreement over the material from which Man reproduces himself.
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[C] As for the way Man was originally produced, that is a very deep and ancient problem: small wonder, then, that it leaves the human mind troubled and distraught. Archelaus the natural philosopher of whom Socrates was the disciple (and, according to Aristoxenus, the paramour) taught that men and animals were made of milky sludge, exuded from the earth under the influence of heat.
[A] Pythagoras said that our semen is the foam of our purest blood; Plato, a liquid draining from the marrow of the spinal column (supporting this with the argument that our backs are the first of our members to feel tired when we are on the job); Alcmeon says it is a part of the substance of the brain (proving this by the fact that men’s vision becomes troubled when they work immoderately at that particular exercise); for Democritus it is a substance extracted from the whole mass of the body; for Epicurus, a substance extracted from the soul as well as from the body; for Aristotle, the final excretion drawn from the nutriment of blood which spreads through all our limbs; for others it is concocted blood, digested by heat in the testicles – because extreme exertions can make us ejaculate drops of blood: there may be a little more probability here if, that is, any probability at all can be drawn from confusion so infinite.
How does this semen achieve its purpose? Opinions are as numerous and as contradictory. Aristotle and Democritus hold that women have no semen, but only a kind of sweat which they exude when they bounce about in the heat of their enjoyment: it plays no role in generation. Galen, on the contrary, and those who follow him assert that generation can only occur when semen from male and female come into contact.
And then, see how the doctors, philosophers and lawyers are all disputing and quarrelling with our women about how long a pregnancy can last! Personally I support, from my own case, those who assert that a pregnancy can last eleven months: the whole world is full of such experiences; any simple, uneducated woman could give advice on these disputed questions. And still we cannot reach agreement!
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That suffices to demonstrate that Man has no more knowledge of his own body than of his own soul. We have shown Man to himself – and his reason to his reason, to see what it has to tell us. I have succeeded in showing, I think, how far reason is from understanding even itself.
[C] And what can anyone understand who cannot understand himself?
‘Quasi vero mensuram ullius rei possit agere, qui sui nesciat’
[As though one could measure anything and not know how to measure oneself].
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Protagoras was really and truly having us on when he made Man the measure of all things – Man, who has never known even his own measurements. If Man cannot have it, then his dignity will not let any other creature have it: yet Man is so full of contradictions and his ideas are so constantly undermining each other that so favourable a proposition is simply laughable: it leads to the inevitable conclusion that both measure and the measurer are nothing.
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When Thales reckons that a knowledge of Man is very hard to acquire, he is telling him that knowledge of anything else is impossible.
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For your sake, Patroness,
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I have abandoned my usual practice and have taken some pains to make this into a very long chapter. Sebond is your author: you will, of course, continue to defend him with the usual forms of argument in which you are instructed every day; that will exercise your mind and your scholarship. The ultimate rapier-stroke which I am using here must only be employed as a remedy of last resort. It is a desperate act of dexterity, in which you must surrender your own arms to force your opponent to lose his. It is a covert blow which you should only use rarely and with discretion. It is rashness indeed to undo another by undoing yourself. [B] We must not seek to die as an act of revenge, as Gobrias did when locked in close combat with a Persian nobleman: Darius arrived on the scene, sword in hand, but was afraid to strike for fear of killing him; Gobrias shouted to him to strike boldly, even if he had to run both of them through.
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[C] I have seen the proffered terms of a duel condemned in cases where the weapons or the circumstances left no room for hope that either of the combatants could survive.
The Portuguese took fourteen Turkish prisoners in the Indian Ocean, who, impatient of their captivity, decided to reduce themselves, their masters and the vessel to ashes; they succeeded in doing so by rubbing some of the ship’s nails together until a spark fell among the barrels of gunpowder which were there.
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[A] Here we have now reached the limits and very boundaries of knowledge, where (as in the case of Virtue) extremes become vices. [A1] Keep to the beaten track: it can hardly be good to be so subtle and so clever. Remember the Tuscan proverb,
‘Chi troppo s’assottiglia si scavezza’
[He who becomes too clever is lost]. [A] My advice to you is to cling to moderation and temperance, as much in your opinions and arguments as in your conduct, fleeing what is merely new or odd. All roads which wander from the norm displease me. You, by the authority of your high rank as well as by virtue of qualities which are more strictly your own, can, with a glance, command anyone you please; you ought to have entrusted this task to a professional scholar, who would have been able to make a very different defence of these ideas and to have enriched them more effectively.
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Nevertheless there is ample material here for what you have to do.
When talking of Law, Epicurus said that even the harshest laws were necessary: without them men would start eating each other. [C] Plato is a mere finger’s breadth away from that; he says that, without laws, we would live like wild animals: and he makes a good assay at proving that true.
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[A] Our minds are dangerous tools, rash and prone to go astray: it is hard to reconcile them with order and moderation. We have seen during my lifetime virtually all outstanding men, all men of abnormally lively perception, breaking out into licentiousness of opinion or behaviour. It is a miracle if you find one who is settled and civilized. We
are right to erect the strictest possible fences around the human mind. In the march of scholarship or anything else the mind must needs have its footsteps counted and regulated; you must supply artificial hedges and make it hunt only within them. [A1] We rein it in, neck and throat, with religions, laws, customs, precepts, rewards and punishments (both mortal and immortal), and we still find it escaping from all these bonds, with its garrulousness and laxity. It is an empty vessel: we can neither grasp it nor aim it; it is bizarre and misshapen and suffers no knot and no grapple.
[B] Certainly few souls are so powerful, so law-abiding and so well endowed that we can trust them to act on their own, allowing them liberty of judgement to sail responsibly and moderately beyond accepted opinion. It is more expedient to keep them under tutelage. What an outrageous sword [C] the mind is, even for its owner, [A] unless he knows how to arm himself ordinately and with discretion. [C] No beast more rightly needs blinkers to compel it to restrict its gaze to what lies before its feet, and to stop it from wandering about, this way and that, outside the ruts which custom and law have trodden out for it. [A] That is why it would be better for you to keep closely to your usual ways, whatever they may be, rather than to fly off like this with such frantic licence. Nevertheless, if one of those newfangled ‘doctors’ comes into your presence and starts acting clever, putting your spiritual health at risk as well as his own, you can, in the last resort, call on this remedy as a prophylactic against the deadly plague which is daily spreading through your courts: it will stop that poisonous contagion from infecting you and those about you.
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The freedom and vigour of minds in Antiquity created many Schools holding different opinions in philosophy and the humanities; before taking sides, each individual was responsible for judging and choosing for himself. But nowadays [C] men are all in step,
‘qui certis quibusdam destinatisque sententiis addicti et consecrati sunt, ut etiam quae non probant, cogantur defendere’
[bound by vows to certain definite opinions, so that they are forced to defend even those which have not won their assent];
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[A] our studies are accepted according to the decrees of civil authority, [C] with the result that our Schools have only one model, all having the same
circumscribed form of basic instruction and teaching; [A] we now no longer try and find out what weight and value such coins have: each of us in his turn accepts them at the going rate with the generally approved value. Nobody defends the alloy, only its currency. Every discipline becomes equally acceptable. Medicine is accepted as though it were as valid as geometry; jiggery-pokery, enchantments, magic spells producing impotence, communication with the spirits of the dead, prognostications, casting horoscopes and even that absurd hunt for the philosopher’s stone, all pass without contradiction. You merely have to know that the seat of Mars lies at the centre of the triangle of the palm, Venus in the thumbs and Mercury in your little finger; or know that, if the line of Fortune cuts across the protuberance of the forefinger, that is a sign of cruelty, but when it stops short at a point below the middle finger and the median line forming an angle with the line-of-life just below it, that is the sign of a pitiful death; in the case of a woman, if the line-of-nature is ‘open’ (not forming an angle with the line-of-life) that portends unchastity. Witness for yourself whether a mastery of this particular science does not win a man favour favour and respect in any company.
Theophrastus said that the human intellect, guided by the senses, could go only so far towards understanding natural causes; but when it reaches the original first causes it proves blunt and has to stop, either because of its own weakness or else because of the difficulty of the subject.
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That is a moderate and modest opinion which holds that our intellect is adequate enough to bring us to the knowledge of some things but that there are definite limits to its power, beyond which it is rash to use it.
It is a plausible opinion, set forth by conciliatory men (but it is difficult to fix boundaries for the human mind: it is avidly curious and sees no more reason for stopping after a mile than after fifty yards); it says: ‘The assays of experience have taught me that where one man fails another succeeds; that what is unknown to one century is clarified by the next; that the sciences and the arts are not just cast in a mould all at once, but have to be gradually shaped by repeated handling and polishing, just as the mother-bear takes time to lick her cub into shape; I may not be strong enough to uncover anything but I can still take soundings and make assays; by kneading and working the dough of this new subject-matter, by blending it and warming it through, I make it easier for my successor to enjoy it at leisure; I render it more pliable for him, more manageable.
ut hymettia sole
Cera remollescit, tractataque pollice, multas
Vertitur in facies, ipsoque fit utilis usu
.
[As wax from Mt Hymettos can be softened in the sun and kneaded with the thumb to form various shapes, becoming more useful with usage.]
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A second man will do the same for the third: that is why no difficulty should drive me to despair – nor should my own powerlessness, for it is merely my own; Man is capable of understanding everything as well as something.’
Yes; but if Man admits, like Theophrastus, that he has no knowledge of first causes and principles, then let him boldly give up all the rest of his knowledge; without foundations, his argument collapses; discussion and inquiry have only one aim: to establish first principles; if Man’s course is not stopped by his reaching that goal, he is thrown into boundless uncertainty. [C]
‘Non potest aliud alio magis minusve comprehendi, quoniam omnium rerum una est definitio comprehendedi’
[One thing cannot be better understood, or less understood, than another: ‘understanding’ anything always means the same].
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[A] It is probable that if the soul knew anything, she would first know herself; then, if she knew anything outside herself, she would first of all know her bodily sheath. Yet we can see the gods of the medical schools still quarrelling over human anatomy:
Mulciber in Trojam, pro Troja stabat Apollo
.
[Vulcan against Troy: Apollo for Troy.]
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Can we ever expect them to agree! We are closer to ourselves than to the whiteness of snow or the weight of a stone: if Man does not know himself, how can he know what his properties and powers are? Some true knowledge may perhaps find lodgings in us; if so, that is by chance, since error is received into the soul in the same way and in the same fashion; souls have no means of telling one from the other, no means of separating truth from falsehood.