214044_The_Essa ... rd_Of_Montaigne_Vol_II.pdf - OUDL Home

THE SECOND BOOKE 247
Trust to your Philosophie, boast to have hit the naile
on the head; or to have found out the beane of this
cake, to see this coile and hurly-burly of so many
Philosophical wits. The trouble or confusion of worldly
shapes and formes hath gotten this of mee, that customes
and conceipts differing from mine doe not so
much dislike me as instruct me ; and at what time I
conferre or compare them together, they doe not so
much puffe me up with pride as humble me with lowlinesse.
And each other choyce, except that which
commeth from the expresse hand of God, seemeth to
me a choyce of small prerogative or consequence. The
worlds policies are no lesse contrarie one to another in
this subject than the schooles whereby we may learne
that Fortune herself is no more divers, changing, and
variable, than our reason, nor more blinde and inconsiderat.
Things most unknowne are fittest to be deified.
Wherefore to make Gods of our selves (as antiquitie
hath done), it exceeds the extreme weaknesse of discourse.
I would rather have followed those that worshipped
the Serpent, the Dogge, and the Ox, forsomuch
as their Nature and being is least knowne to us, and
we may more lawfully imagine what wo list of those
beasts, and ascribe extraordinarie faculties unto them.
But to have made Gods of our conditions, whose imperfections
we should know, and to have attributed desire,
choler, revenge, marriages, generation, alliances, love,
and jealousie, our limbs and our bones, our infirmities,
our pleasures, our deaths, and our sepulchres unto
them, hath of necessity proceeded from a meere and
egregious sottishness or drunkennesse of mans wit.
Quoe procul usque adeo divino ab numine distant,
Inque Deum numeto qua sint indigna vidert. 1
Which from Divinity so distant are,
To stand in ranke of Gods unworthy farre.
Forma, estates, vestitus ornatus noti sunt: genera, conjugia,
cognationes, omniaque traducta ad similitudinem
imbecittitatis humance: nam et perturbatis animis
¹ LUCR. 1, v. 123.