214044_The_Essa ... rd_Of_Montaigne_Vol_II.pdf - OUDL Home

236 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
greatest number of Philosophers, affected difficulty,
unlesse it be to make the vanity of the subject to
prevaile, and to ammuse the curiosity of our minde,
seeking to feed it by gnawing so raw and bare a bone ?
Clytomachus affirmed that he could never understand
by the writings of Carneades, what opinion he was
of. Why hath Epicurus interdicted facility unto his
Sectaries? And wherefore hath Heraclitus beene
surnamed 'a darke mysty clowded fellow'?
Difficulty is a come that wise men make use of, as
juglers doe with passe and repasse, because they will
not display the vanity of their art, and wherewith
humane foolishnesse is easily apaid.
Clarus ob obscutam linguam, magis inter inanes,
Omnia enim stoltdi magis admirantur amantque.
Inversis quce sub verbis latitantia cernunt. 1
For his darke speech much prais'd, but of th' unwise;
For fooles doe all still more admire and prize
That under words turn'd topsie-turvie lies.
Cicero reproveth some of his friends because they
were wont to bestow more time about astrology, law,
logike, and geometry, than such arts could deserve;
and diverted them from the devoirs of their life, more
profitable and more honest. The Cyrenaike philosophers
equally contemned naturall philosophy and
logicke. Zeno in the beginning of his bookes of the
Commonwealth declared all the liberall sciences to be
unprofitable. Chrysippus said that which Plato and
Aristotle had written of logike, they had written the
same in jest and for exercise sake, and could not
beleeve that ever they spake in good earnest of so
vaine and idle a subject. Plutarke saith the same of
the metaphysikes: Epicurus would have said it of
rhetorike, of grammar, of poesie, of the mathematikes,
and (except naturall philosophy) of all other sciences:
and Socrates of all, but of the art of civill manners and
life. Whatsoever he was demanded of any man, he
would ever first enquire of him to give an accompt
of his life, both present and past, which he would
1 LUCR. 1. i. 636,