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300 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
I make use of.' Now the weaknes of human arguments
upon this subject is very manifestly knowne by
the fabulous circumstances they have added unto the
traine of this opinion, to finde out what condition this
our immortalitie was of. Let us omit the Stoickes.
Usuram nobis iargiuntur, tanquam cornicibus : diu mart'
euros aiunt animos, semper, negant:¹ ' They grant us
use of life, as is unto Ravens: they say our soules
shall long continue, but they deny they shall last ever/
Who gives unto soules a life beyond this but finite.
The most universall and received fantasie, and which
endureth to this day, hath beene that whereof Pythagoras
is made Author; not that he was the first inventor
of it, but because it received much force and credit by
the authoritie of his approbation ; which is, that soules
at their departure from us did but pass and roule from
one to another body, from a Lyon to a Horse, from a
Horse to a King, uncessantly wandring up and downe
from House to Mansion. And himselfe said that he
remembred to have been AEthalides, then Euphorbus,
afterward Hermotimus, at last from Pyrrhus to have
passed into Pythagoras; having memorie of himselfe
the space of two hundred and six years : some added
more, that the same soules doe sometimes ascend up to
heaven and come downe againe :
0 Pater anne aliquas ad caelum hinc ire putandum'est
Sublimes animas, interumque ad tarda reverti
Corpora ? Quoe lucis miseru tarn dira cupidot*
Mast we thinke (Father) some soules hence doe go,
Raised to heav'n, thence turnc to bodies slow ?
Whence doth so dyre desire of light on wretches grow?
Origen makes them eternally to go and come from a
good to a bad estate. The opinion that Varro reporteth
is, that in the revolution of foure hundred and forty
veares they reconjoyned themselves unto their first
bodies. Chrysippus, that that must come to passe after
a certaine space of time un knowne and not limited.
Plato (who saith that he holds this opinion from Pindarus
and from ancient Poesie) of infinite vicissitudes
¹ CIC. Tusc. Qu, 1. i. ² VIRG. AEn. 1. vi. 739.