214044_The_Essa ... rd_Of_Montaigne_Vol_II.pdf - OUDL Home

THE SECOND BOOKE 281
metrician his proportions from the arithmetician ; the
metaphisikes take the conjectures of the physikes for a
ground, for every art hath her presupposed principles,
by which mans judgement is bridled on all parts. If
you come to the shocke or front of this barre, in which
consists the principall error, they immediately pronounce
this sentence: that there is no disputing against
such as deny principles. There can be no principles
in men, except divinitie hath revealed them unto them:
all the rest, both beginning, middle, and end, is but
a drcame and a vapor. Those that argue by presupposition,
we must presuppose against them the very
same axiome winch is disputed of. For, each humane
presupposition, and every invention, unlesse reason
make a difference of it, hath as much authoritie as
another. So must they all be equally balanced, and
first the generall and those that tyrannize us. A
perswasion of certaintie is a manifest testimonie of
foolishnesse, and of extreme uncertaintie. And nopeople
are lesse philosophers and more foolish than
Platoe's Philodoxes, or lovers of their owne opinions.
We must know whether fire be hot, whether snow be
white, whether, in our knowledge, there be anything
hard or soft. And touching the answers, whereof they
tell old tales, as to him who made a doubt of heat, to
whom one replied, that to trie he should caste himselfe
into the fire; to him that denied the yce to be cold,
that he should put some in his bosome; they are most
unworthy the profession of a philosopher. If they had
left us in our owne naturall estate, admitting of strange
apparences as they present themselves unto us by our
and had suffered us to follow our naturall
appetites, directed by the condition of our birth, they
should then have reason to speak so. But from them
it is that we have learnt to become judges of the world ;
it is from them we hold this conceit, that mans reason
is the generall controuler of all that is, both without
and within heavens-vault, which imbraceth all and can
doe all, by meanes whereof all things are knowne and
discerned. This answer were good among the canibals,