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154 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
Let us suppress this over-weening, the first foundation
of the tyrannie of the wicked spirit. Deus superbis
resistit: humilibus autem dat gratiam: 'God resisteth
the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.' Plato
saith ' that intelligence is in all the Gods, but little or
nothing at all in men.' Meanewhile it is a great
comfort unto a Christian man to see our mortall
implements and fading tooles so fitly sorted to our
holy and divine faith ; that when they are employed to
the mortal and fading subjects of their nature, they are
never more forcibly nor more joyntlie appropriated
unto them. Let us then see whether man hath any
other stronger reasons in his power then Sebondes, and
whether it lie in him, by argument or discourse, to
come to any certainty. For, St. Augustine, pleading
against these kind of men, because he would upbraid
them with their injustice, in that they hold the parts of
our beleefe to be false, and that our reason faileth
in establishing them : and to shew that many things
may be, and have beene, whereof our discourse can
never ground the nature and the causes : he proposeth
and setteth downe before them certaine knowen and
undoubted experiments, wherein man confesseth to see
nothing, which he doth as all things else, with a curious
and ingenious search. More must be done, and they
must be taught, that to convince the weaknesse of their
reason we need not go far to cull out rare examples.
And that it is so defective and blinde, as there is
no facility so clear that is clear enough unto her:
that easie and uncasie is all one to her; that all
subjects equally, and Nature in generall disavoweth
her jurisdiction and interposition. What preacheth
truth unto us, when it biddeth us flie and shun worldly
philosophy; when it so often telleth us ' that all our
wisdome is but folly before God; that of all vanities
man is the greatest; that man, who presumeth of his
knowledge, doth not yet know what knowledge is : and
that man, who is nothing, if he but thinke to be
something, seduceth and deceiveth himselfe ?' These
sentences of the Holy Ghost do so lively and manifestly