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170 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
it is safer to leave the reignes of our conduct unto
nature than unto ourselves. The vanitie of our presumption
maketh us rather to be beholding and as it
were endebted unto our owne strength, for our sufficiency,
than unto her liberalise ; and we enrich other
creatures with naturall gifts, and yeeld those unto
them, that so we may ennoble and honour our selves
with gifts purchased, as me thinketh, by a very simple
humour: for I would prize graces and value gifts that
were altogether mine owne, and naturall unto me, as
much as I would those I had begged, and with a long
prentiship, shifted for. It lyeth not in our power to
obtaine a greater commendation than to be favoured
both of God and Nature. By that reason, the fox,
which the inhabitants of Thrace use when they will
attempt to march upon the yce of some frozen river,
and to that end let her go loose afore them, should we
see her running alongst the river side, approch*her
eare close to the yce, to listen whether by any farre or
neere distance she may heare the noyse or roaring of
the water running under the same, and according as
she perceiveth the yce thereby to be thicke or thinne,
to goe either forward or backward ; might not we lawfully
judge that the same discourse possesseth her head
as in like case it would ours ? And that it is a kinde
of debating reason and consequence drawen from
naturall sense ? Whatsoever maketh a noyse moveth,
whatsoever moveth is not frozen, whatsoever is not
frozen is liquid, whatsoever is liquid yeelds under any
weight? tor to impute that only to a quicknesse of
the sense of hearing, without discourse or consequence,
is but a fond conceipt, and cannot enter into my imagination.
The like must be judged of so many wiles and
inventions wherewith beasts save themselves from the
snares and scape the baits we lay to entrap them. And
if we will take hold of any advantage tending to that
purpose, that it is in our power to seize upon them, to
employ them to our service, and to use them at our
pleasure; it is but the same oddes we have one upon
another. To which purpose we have our slaves or