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causes, such famous impressions commonly proceed! This it is that obstructs the information; for whilst we seek out the causes, and the great and weighty ends worthy of so great a name, we lose the true one; they escape our sight by their littleness; and, in truth, a prudent, diligent, and subtle inquisition, indifferent and not prepossessed, is required in such searches. To this very hour all these miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me. I have never

What Montaigne

seen a greater monster or miracle in the world thought the clear- than myself. A man grows familiar with all est of miracles. strange things by time and custom; but the more I frequent and the better I know myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, and the less I understand myself.

The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reserved to fortune. Riding the day before yesterday through a village, about two leagues from my house, I found the place yet hot with a miracle which had lately exploded there, wherewith the neighbourhood had been several months amused, so that the neighbouring provinces had begun to take up the excitement, and to run thither in great companies of all sorts of people. A young fellow of the town had one night counterfeited the voice of a spirit in his own house, without any other design at present, but only for sport; but this having succeeded with him a little better than he expected, to illustrate his farce with more actors, he took a stupid, silly country girl into the scene, and at last there were three of the same age and understanding; and from domestic lectures, proceeded to public preaching, hiding themselves under the altar of the church, never speaking but by night, and forbidding any light to be brought. From words which tended to the conversion of the world, and threatened the day of judgment (for these are subjects under the authority and reverence of which imposture most securely lurks), they proceeded to some visions and movements so simple and ridiculous, that nothing could hardly be so gross and contemptible

amongst little children. Yet had fortune never so little favoured the design, who knows to what height this juggling might have at last arrived? These poor devils are at present in prison, and are like to pay for the common folly, and I know not whether some judge may not make them smart for his share in it. We see clearly through this, which is discovered; but in many things of the like nature, that exceed our knowledge, I am of opinion that we ought to suspend our judgment, both as to rejecting, and as to receiving.

Many abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begotten, by our being afraid of acknowledging our ignorance, The foundation of and that we hold ourselves bound to accept all all imposture. things we are not able to refute; we speak of all things by precepts and resolution. The style at Rome was, that even that which a witness deposed to have seen with his own eyes, and that which a judge determined on his most certain knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: "It seems to me." 1 They make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me for infallible; I love these words which mollify and moderate the temerity of our propositions: "Perhaps, in some sort, 'tis said, I think," and the like; and had I had to train up children, I had so put this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring, and not resolutive: "What does this mean? I understand it not; it may be; is it true?" that they should rather have retained the form of pupils at threescore years old, than to go out doctors, as they now do, at ten. He who would cure ignorance, must

confess it.

Iris is the daughter of Thaumantis; 2 wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; inquiry the progress; ignorance the end. Ay, but there is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in

1 Cicero, Acad. ii. 47.

2 That is to say of wonder (avμa θαυματος). "Est enim pulcher (the rainbow, Iris) et ob eam causam, quia

honour and courage to knowl

speciem habet admirabilem, Thaumante
iii. 20.
dicitur esse natus." Cicero, de Nat. Deor.
Readers will see that in the text
of Montaigne they must read Thaumas,
not Thaumante

edge; a knowledge which to conceive requires no less knowledge than knowledge itself. I saw in my younger days a report of a process that Corras,1 a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print, of a strange accident of two men, who presented themselves the one for the other. I remember (and I hardly remember anything else), that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty so wonderful, and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. Let us take up some form of arrest that shall say: "The court understands nothing of the matter; more freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselves perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to appear again in a hundred years.2

As to witches.

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The witches of my neighbourhood run a hazard of their lives, upon the formation of every new author that will give a body to their dreams. To accommodate the examples that holy writ gives us of such things, most certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events, being we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another sort of wit than ours. It perhaps only belongs to that sole all-powerful testimony to tell us: "This is, and that is, and not that other." God ought to be believed; that certainly is good reason; but not one amongst us, who is astonished at his own narration (and he must of necessity be astonished, if he be not out of his wits), whether he employ it about other men's affairs, or against himself.

I am plain and dull, and stick to the main point, and that

1 Or rather Coras, a learned jurisconsult, born at Toulouse, 1513, and assassinated at the same place, with three other Protestants, on the 4th October, 1572, shortly after the St. Bartholomew. His works were published, in two volumes, folio, at Lyons, 1556, 1558, and afterwards reprinted at Wittemberg, 1603; and his life was written in Latin by James

Coras, the poet, a member of the same family. The trial of which Montaigne speaks is the celebrated affair of the false Martin Guerre, of which Coras_published the account referred to, Paris, 1565.

7.

2 Val. Max. viii. 1. Aulus Gellius, xii

which is likely, avoiding those ancient reproaches: Majorem fidem homines adhibent eis quæ non intelligunt.-Cupidine humani ingenii, libentius obscura creduntur.1 "Men are most apt to believe what they least understand. Through the lust of human wit, obscure things are more easily credited." I see very well that men are angry, and forbid me to doubt upon pain of insults and injuries; a new way of persuading! Mercy, for God's sake; I am not to be cuffed into belief. Let them be angry with those that accuse their opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and condemn the opposite affirmation equally with them, if not so imperiously. Who will establish his argument by overbearing and huffing, discovers his reason to be weak. For a verbal and scholastic altercation, let them have as much appearance as their contradictors: Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo; 2 "Let them suggest things as probable, but not affirm them;" but in the real consequence they draw from it, these have much the advantage. To kill men, a clear and shining light is required; and our life is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural and fantastic accidents.

As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my account; they are homicides, and of the worst sort; yet even in this, 'tis said, that we are not always to rely even upon the confessions of these people themselves; for they have sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who have afterwards been found living and well. In these other extravagant accusations, I should be apt to say that it is sufficient for a man, what recommendation soever he may have, to be believed in human things; but of what is beyond his conception and of supernatural effect, he ought then only to be believed when authorized by a supernatural approbation. The privilege it has pleased God to give to some of our witnesses, ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap. I have my ears battered with a thousand such

1 The second of these paragraphs is from Tacitus, Hist. i. 22. I know not whence Montaigne borrowed the other. 2 Cicero, Acad. ii. 27.

flim-flams as these: "Three saw him such a day in the east, three the next day in the west; at such an hour, in such a place, in such a habit;" in truth, I should not believe myself. How much more natural and likely do I find it that two men should lie, than that one man, in twelve hours' time, should fly with the wind from east to west! How much more natural, that our understanding should be carried from its place, by the volubility of our disordered minds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon a broomstick, flesh and bones as we are, up the funnel of a chimney! Let us not seek illusions from without and unknown, who are perpetually agitated with illusions domestic, and our own. Methinks a man is pardonable in disbelieving a miracle, as much at least as he can divert and elude the verification of it by ways other than marvellous; and I am of St. Augustin's opinion, "that 'tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance, in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe."

'Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a foreign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me the honour to let me see in his own presence and in private, ten or twelve prisoners of this kind; and amongst others an old hag, a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that profession. I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what insensible mark upon the miserable creature; I examined and talked with her, and the rest, as much and as long as I would, and made the best and soundest observations I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to be captivated by prepossession; and, in the end, should in conscience sooner have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock: Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis, similis visâ:1 "The thing was rather to be attributed to madness than malice;" justice has correction proper for such maladies. As to the oppositions and arguments that honest men have made me, both there, and often in other places, I have met with none that 1 Livy, viii. 18.

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