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260 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
where they have but one eye in their forehead, and
heads more like unto a dog than ours; where from the
navill downewards they are half fish and live in the
water; where women are brought a bed at five years
of age, and live but eight; where their heads and the
skin of their browes are so hard that no yron can pierce
them, but will rather turne edge; where men never
have beards. Other nations there are that never have
use of fire; others whose sperme is of a blacke colour.
What shall we speake of them who naturally change
themselves into woolves, into coults, and then into men
againe ? And if it bee (as Plutark saith) that in some
part of the Indiaes there are men without mouthes, and
who live only by the smell of certaine sweet odours;
how many of our descriptions be then false ? Hee is
no more risible, nor perhaps capable of reason and
societie. The direction and cause of our inward frame
should for the most part be to no purpose. Moreover,
how many things are there in our knowledge that
oppugne these goodly rules which we have allotted and
prescribed unto Nature ? And we undertake to joyne
God himselfe unto her. How many things doe we
name miraculous and against Nature r Each man and
every nation doth it according to the measure of his
ignorance. How many hidden proprieties and quintessences
doe we daily discover ? For us to go according
to Nature, is but to follow according to our understanding,
as far as it can follow, and as much as we can
perceive in it. Whatsoever is beyond it, is monstrous
and disordered. By this accompt all shall then be
monstrous, to the wisest and most sufficient; for even
to such humane reason hath perswaded that she had
neither ground nor footing, no not so much as to
warrant snow to be white: and Anaxagoras said it
was blacke. Whether there be anything or nothing;
whether there be knowledge or ignorance, which Metrodorus
Chius denied that any man might say; or whether
we live, as Euripides seemeth to doubt and call in question
; whether the life we live be a life or no, or whether
that which we call death be a life: