Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 66

Habitum quemdam vitalem corporis esse, Harmoniam Graeci quam dic.u.n.t.

"A certain vital habit in man's frame, Which harmony the Grecian sages name."

Let us not forget Aristotle, who held the soul to be that which naturally causes the body to move, which he calls entelechia, with as cold an invention as any of the rest; for he neither speaks of the essence, nor of the original, nor of the nature of the soul, but only takes notice of the effect Lactantius, Seneca, and most of the Dogmatists, have confessed that it was a thing they did not understand; after all this enumeration of opinions, _Harum sententiarum quo vera sit, Deus aliquis viderit:_ "Of these opinions which is the true, let some G.o.d determine," says Cicero. "I know by myself," says St Bernard, "how incomprehensible G.o.d is, seeing I cannot comprehend the parts of my own being."

Herac.l.i.tus, who was of opinion that every being was full of souls and demons, did nevertheless maintain that no one could advance so far towards the knowledge of the soul as ever to arrive at it; so profound was the essence of it.

Neither is there less controversy and debate about seating of it.

Hippocrates and Hierophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain; Democritus and Aristotle throughout the whole body;--

Ut bona saepe valetudo c.u.m dicitur esse Corporis, et non est tamen haec pars ulla ralentis;

"As when the body's health they do it call, When of a sound man, that's no part at all."

Epicurus in the stomach;

Hic exsultat enim pavor ac metus; Haec loca circ.u.m Laet.i.tiae mulcent.

"For this the seat of horror is and fear, And joys in turn do likewise triumph here."

The Stoics, about and within the heart; Erasistratus, adjoining the membrane of the epicranium; Empedocles, in the blood; as also Moses, which was the reason why he interdicted eating the blood of beasts, because the soul is there seated; Galen thought that every part of the body had its soul; Strato has placed it betwixt the eyebrows; _Qua facie quidem sit animus, aut ubi habitet, ne quorendum quidem est:_ "What figure the soul is of, or what part it inhabits, is not to be inquired into," says Cicero. I very willingly deliver this author to you in his own words; for should I alter eloquence itself? Besides, it were but a poor prize to steal the matter of his inventions; they are neither very frequent, nor of any great weight, and sufficiently known. But the reason why Chrysippus argues it to be about the heart, as all the rest of that sect do, is not to be omitted; "It is," says he, "because when we would affirm any things we lay our hand upon our b.r.e.a.s.t.s; and when we would p.r.o.nounce eyu, which signifies I, we let the lower jaw fall towards the stomach." This place ought not to be pa.s.sed over without a remark upon the vanity of so great a man; for besides that these considerations are infinitely light in themselves, the last is only a proof to the Greeks that they have their souls lodged in that part. No human judgment is so sprightly and vigilant that it does not sometimes sleep. Why do we fear to say? The Stoics, the fathers of human prudence, think that the soul of a man, crushed under a ruin, long labours and strives to get out, like a mouse caught in a trap, before it can disengage itself from the burden. Some hold that the world was made to give bodies, by way of punishment, to the spirits fallen, by their own fault, from the purity wherein they had been created, the first creation having been incorporeal; and that, according as they are more or less depraved from their spirituality, so are they more or less jocundly or dully incorporated; and that thence proceeds all the variety of so much created matter. But the spirit that for his punishment was invested with the body of the sun must certainly have a very rare and particular measure of change.

The extremities of our perquisition do all fall into astonishment and blindness; as Plutarch says of the testimony of histories, that, according to charts and maps, the utmost bounds of known r countries are taken up with marshes, impenetrable forests, deserts, and uninhabitable places; this is the reason why the most gross and childish ravings were most found in those authors who treat of the most elevated subjects, and proceed the furthest in them, losing themselves in their own curiosity and presumption. The beginning and end of knowledge are equally foolish; observe to what a pitch Plato flies in his poetic clouds; do but take notice there of the gibberish of the G.o.ds; but what did he dream of when he defined a man to be "a two-legged animal without feathers: giving those who had a mind to deride him a pleasant occasion; for, having pulled a capon alive, they went about calling it the man of Plato."

And what did the Epicureans think of, out of what simplicity did they first imagine that their _atoms_ that they said were bodies having some weight, and a natural motion downwards, had made the world; till they were put in mind, by their adversaries, that, according to this description, it was impossible they should unite and join to one another, their fall being so direct and perpendicular, and making so many parallel lines throughout? Wherefore there was a necessity that they should since add a fortuitous and sideways motion, and that they should moreover accoutre their atoms with hooked tails, by which they might unite and cling to one another. And even then do not those that attack them upon this second consideration put them hardly to it? "If the atoms have by chance formed so many sorts of figures, why did it never fall out that they made a house or a shoe? Why at the same rate should we not believe that an infinite number of Greek letters, strewed all over a certain place, might fall into the contexture of the _Iliad?_"--"Whatever is capable of reason," says Zeno, "is better than that which is not capable; there is nothing better than the world; the world is therefore capable of reason." Cotta, by this way of argumentation, makes the world a mathematician; 'and tis also made a musician and an organist by this other argumentation of Zeno: "The whole is more than a part; we are capable of wisdom, and are part of the world; therefore the world is wise." There are infinite like examples, not only of arguments that are false in themselves, but silly ones, that do not hold in themselves, and that accuse their authors not so much of ignorance as imprudence, in the reproaches the philosophers dash one another in the teeth withal, upon their dissensions in their sects and opinions.

Whoever should bundle up a l.u.s.ty f.a.ggot of the fooleries of human wisdom would produce wonders. I willingly muster up these few for a pattern, by a certain meaning not less profitable to consider than the most sound and moderate instructions. Let us judge by these what opinion we are to have of man, of his sense and reason, when in these great persons that have raised human knowledge so high, so many gross mistakes and manifest errors are to be found.

For my part, I am apt to believe that they have treated of knowledge casually, and like a toy, with both hands; and have contended about reason as of a vain and frivolous instrument, setting on foot all sorts of fancies and inventions, sometimes more sinewy, and sometimes weaker.

This same Plato, who defines man as if he were a c.o.c.k, says elsewhere, after Socrates, "That he does not, in truth, know what man is, and that he is a member of the world the hardest to understand." By this variety and instability of opinions, they tacitly lead us, as it were by the hand, to this resolution of their irresolution. They profess not always to deliver their opinions barefaced and apparent to us; they have one while disguised them in the fabulous shadows of poetry, and at another in some other vizor; for our imperfection carries this also along with it, that crude meat is not always proper for our stomachs; we must dry, alter, and mix it; they do the same; they sometimes conceal their real opinions and judgments, and falsify them to accommodate themselves to the public use. They will not make an open profession of ignorance, and of the imbecility of human reason, that they may not fright children; but they sufficiently discover it to us under the appearance of a troubled and inconstant science.

I advised a person in Italy, who had a great mind to speak Italian, that provided he only had a desire to make himself understood, without being ambitious in any other respect to excel, that he should only make use of the first word that came to the tongue's end, whether Latin, French, Spanish, or Gascon, and that, by adding the Italian termination, he could not fail of hitting upon some idiom of the country, either Tuscan, Roman, Venetian, Piedmontese, or Neapolitan, and so fall in with some one of those many forms. I say the same of Philosophy; she has so many faces, so much variety, and has said so many things, that all our dreams and ravings are there to be found. Human fancy can conceive nothing good or bad that is not there: _Nihil tam absurde did potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum._ "Nothing can be said so absurd, that has not been said before by some of the philosophers." And I am the more willing to expose my whimsies to the public; forasmuch as, though they are spun out of myself, and without any pattern, I know they will be found related to some ancient humour, and some will not stick to say, "See whence he took it!" My manners are natural, I have not called in the a.s.sistance of any discipline to erect them; but, weak as they are, when it came into my head to lay them open to the world's view, and that to expose them to the light in a little more decent garb I went to adorn them with reasons and examples, it was a wonder to myself accidentally to find them conformable to so many philosophical discourses and examples. I never knew what regimen my life was of till it was near worn out and spent; a new figure--an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher.

But to return to the soul. Inasmuch as Plato has placed reason in the brain, anger in the heart, and concupiscence in the liver; 'tis likely that it was rather an interpretation of the movements of

the soul, than that he intended a division and separation of it, as of a body, into several members. And the most likely of their opinions is that 'tis always a soul, that by its faculty, reasons, remembers, comprehends, judges, desires, and exercises all its other operations by divers instruments of the body; as the pilot guides his s.h.i.+p according to his experience, one while straining or slacking the cordage, one while hoisting the mainyard, or removing the rudder, by one and the same power carrying on several effects; and that it is lodged in the brain; which appears in that the wounds and accidents that touch that part do immediately offend the faculties of the soul; and 'tis not incongruous that it should thence diffuse itself through the other parts of the body

Medium non deserit unquam Coeli Phoebus iter; radiis tamen omnia l.u.s.trat.

"Phoebus ne'er deviates from the zodiac's way; Yet all things doth ill.u.s.trate with his ray."

As the sun sheds from heaven its light and influence, and fills the world with them:--

Caetera pars animas, per totum dissita corpus, Paret, et ad numen mentis momenque movetur.

"The other part o' th' soul diffus'd all o'er The body, does obey the reason's lore."

Some have said that there was a general soul, as it were a great body, whence all the particular souls were extracted, and thither again return, always restoring themselves to that universal matter:--

Deum namque ire per omnes Terrasque, tractusque maris, columque profundum; Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum, Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas: Scilicet hue reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri Omnia; nec morti esse loc.u.m:

"For G.o.d goes forth, and spreads throughout the whole Heaven, earth, and sea, the universal soul; Each at its birth, from him all beings share, Both man and brute, the breath of vital air; To him return, and, loos'd from earthly chain, Fly whence they sprung, and rest in G.o.d again, Spurn at the grave, and, fearless of decay, Dwell in high heaven, and star th' ethereal way."

Others, that they only rejoined and reunited themselves to it; others, that they were produced from the divine substance; others, by the angels of fire and air; others, that they were from all antiquity; and some that they were created at the very point of time the bodies wanted them; others make them to descend from the orb of the moon, and return thither; the generality of the ancients believed that they were begotten from father to son, after a like manner, and produced with all other natural things; taking their argument from the likeness of children to their fathers;

Instillata patris virtus tibi; Fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;

"Thou hast thy father's virtues with his blood: For still the brave spring from the brave and good;"

and that we see descend from fathers to their children not only bodily marks, but moreover a resemblance of humours, complexions, and inclinations of the soul:--

Denique cur acris violentia triste leonum Seminium sequitur? dolus vulpibus, et fuga, cervis A patribus datur, et patrius pavor incitat artus?

Si non certa suo quia semine seminioque Vis animi pariter crescit c.u.m corpore toto.

"For why should rage from the fierce lion's seed, Or from the subtle fox's craft, proceed; Or why the tim'rous and flying hart His fear and trembling to his race impart; But that a certain force of mind does grow, And still increases as the bodies do?"

That thereupon the divine justice is grounded, punis.h.i.+ng in the children the faults of their fathers; forasmuch as the contagion of paternal vices is in some sort imprinted in the soul of children, and that the ill government of their will extends to them; moreover, that if souls had any other derivation than a natural consequence, and that they had been some other thins out of the body, they would retain some memory of their first being, the natural faculties that are proper to them of discoursing, reasoning, and remembering, being considered:--

Si in corpus nascentibus insinuatur, Cur super anteactam aetatem meminisse nequimus, Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus?

"For at our birth if it infused be, Why do we then retain no memory Of our foregoing life, and why no more Remember any thing we did before?"

for, to make the condition of our souls such as we would have it to be, we must suppose them all-knowing, even in their natural simplicity and purity; by these means they had been such, being free from the prison of the body, as well before they entered into it, as we hope they shall be after they are gone out of it; and from this knowledge it should follow that they should remember, being got in the body, as Plato said, "That what we learn is no other than a remembrance of what we knew before;" a thing which every one by experience may maintain to be false. Forasmuch, in the first place, as that we do not justly remember any thing but what we have been taught, and that if the memory did purely perform its office it would at least suggest to us something more than what we have learned. Secondly, that which she knew being in her purity, was a true knowledge, knowing things as they are by her divine intelligence; whereas here we make her receive falsehood and vice when we instruct her; wherein she cannot employ her reminiscence, that image and conception having never been planted in her. To say that the corporal prison does in such sort suffocate her natural faculties, that they are there utterly extinct, is first contrary to this other belief of acknowledging her power to be so great, and the operations of it that men sensibly perceive in this life so admirable, as to have thereby concluded that divinity and eternity past, and the immortality to come:--

Nam si tantopere est anirai mutata potestas, Omnia ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum, Non, ut opinor, ea ab letho jam longior errat.

"For if the mind be changed to that degree As of past things to lose all memory, So great a change as that, I must confess, Appears to me than death but little less."