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CHAPTER XII
AN APOLOGIE OF RAYMOND SEBOND
KNOWLEDGE is without all contradiction a most profitable
and chiefe ornament. Those who despise it
declare evidently their sottishnesse: Yet doe not I
value it at so excessive a rate as some have done;
namely, Herillus the Philosopher, who grounded his
chiefe felicitie upon it, and held that it lay in her
power to make us content and wise: which I cannot
beleeve, nor that which others have said, that Knowledge
is the mother of all vertue, and that all vice
proceedeth of ignorance. Which if it be it is subject
to a large interpretation. My house hath long since
ever stood open to men of understanding, and is very
well knowne to many of them: for my father, who
commanded the same fifty yeeres and upward, set on
fire by that new kinde of earnestnesse wherewith King
Francis the first unbraced Letters, and raised them
unto credit, did with great diligence and much cost
endevour to purchase the acquaintance of learned men;
receiving and entertaining them as holy persons, and
who had some particular inspiration of divine wisdome;
collecting their sentences and discourses as if they had
beene Oracles ; and with so much more reverence and
religious regard by how much lesse authority hee had
to judge of them : for hee had no knowledge of Letters
no more than his predecessors before him. As for
mee I love them indeed, but yet I worship them not.
Amongst others, Peter Bunel (a man in his time by
reason of his learning of high esteeme) having sojourned
a few daies at Montaigne with my father and others
of his coat being ready to depart thence, presented him