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 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.

As to witches.

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.

have convinced me, and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions. It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon experience and matter of fact, I do not go about to untie; neither have they any end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the gordian knot. After all, 'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price, to cause a man to be roasted alive upon them.

We are told by several examples (and particularly Prestantius of his father 1), that being more profoundly asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself to be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and what he fancied himself to be, he was.2 If sorcerers dream so materially, if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects of life, I cannot believe that therefore our will should be accountable to justice; which I say, as a man, who am neither judge nor privy councillor, nor think myself by many degrees worthy so to be, but a man of the common sort, born and vowed to the obedience of the public realm, both in words and acts. He that should record my idle talk, to the prejudice of the most paltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me too; for in what I say, I warrant no other certainty but that 'tis what I had then in my thought, a thought tumultuous and wavering. All I say is by way of discourse: Nec me pudet ut istos, fateri nescire quod nesciam: 8 "Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what I do not know :" I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed; and so I told a great man, who complained to me of the tartness and contention of my advice. Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I pro

1 St. Augustin, De Civit. Dei, xviii. 18. The holy father opines, that "in cases of this sort the devil presents to the spectators a visionary body which they take for a real animal, a horse, an ass, &c., and that the man who imagines himself to be that ass, or that horse, thinks he carries a real burden, as much as it was possible for him to fancy it in a dream; so that if such phantom of an

animal carries real bodies, they are the demons who carry them in order to deceive men, who then see real bodies on the back of a sumpter-horse, which is a mere phantom."

2 "Quod ita, ut narravirt, factum fuisse compertum est."-St. Aug. ut supra.

3 Cicero, Tusc. Quæs. i. 25.

pose to you the other, with all the care I can to clear your judgment, not to enforce it. God has your hearts in his hand, and will furnish you with choice. I am not so presumptuous as to desire that my opinions should so much as give an inclination in a thing of so great importance; my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevated conclusions. Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a great many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I had one. The truest are not always the most commodious to man; composition.

Lame people best at the sport of Venus.

he is of too wild a

Whether it be to the purpose or not, 'tis no great matter; 'tis a common proverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness, who has never lain with a lame mistress. Fortune, or some particular accident, has long ago put this saying into the mouths of the people; and the same is said of the men as well as of women; for the queen of the Amazons answered the Scythian, who courted her to love, ἄριστα χωλὸς οιφεῖ, lame men perform best. In this feminal republic, to evade the dominion of the males, they lamed them in their infancy, arms, legs, and other members that gave them advantage over them, and only made use of men in that wherein we in the other parts of the world make use of women. I should be apt to think that the irregular movement of the lame mistress added some new pleasure to the work, and some extraordinary titillation to those who were at the sport; but I have lately learnt that ancient philosophy has itself determined it;2 it says that the legs and thighs of lame women not receiving, by reason of their imperfection, their due aliment, it falls out that the genital parts above are fuller, and better supplied, and more vigorous; or else that this defect hindering exercise, they who are engaged in it less

1 Michael Apostolius, Proverb. Centur. 4, num. 43. It was doubtless this opinion that induced the ancients to assign

the lame Vulcan as the husband of Venus.

2 Aristotle, Problem. sect. 10, prob. 26.