214044_The_Essa ... rd_Of_Montaigne_Vol_II.pdf - OUDL Home

304 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
take their part that maintaine a woman may go eleven
months with childe. The worlde is framed of this
experience, there is no meane woman so simple that
cannot give her censure upon all these contestations,
although we could not agree. This is sufficient to
verifie that in the corporall part man is no more instructed
of himselfe than in the spirituall. We have
proposed himselfe to himselfe, and his reason to reason,
to see what shee shall tell us of it. Mee thinkes I
have sufficiently declared how little understanding shee
hath of herselfe. And hee who hath no understanding
of himselfe, what can he have understanding of?
Quasi vero mensuram ulhus ret possit agere qui sui
nesciat: 1 'As though he could take measure of any
thing that knowes not his owne measure.' Truely
Protagoras told us prettie tales, when hee makes a
man the measure of all things, who never knew so
much as his owne. If it be not hee, his dignitie will
never suffer any other creature to have this advantage
over him. Now he being so contrary in himselfe, and
one judgement so uncessantly subverting another, this
favorable proposition was but a jest, which induced us
necessarily to conclude the nullity of the Compasse and
the Compasser. When Thales judgeth the knowledge
of man very hard unto man, he teacheth him the knowledge
of all other things to be impossible unto him.
You for whom I have taken the paines to enlarge so
long a worke (against my custome) will not shun to
maintaine your Sebond with the ordinary forme of
arguing, whereof you are daily instructed, and will
therein exercise both your minde and study ; for this
last trick of sense must not be employed but as an
extreme remedy. It is a desperate thrust, gainst which
you must forsake your weapons, to force your adversary
to renounce his, and a secret slight, which must
seldome and very sparingly be put in practice. It is a
great fond hardnesse to lose our selfe for the losse of
another. A man must not be willing to die to revenge
himselfe, as Gobrias was : who being close by the eares
¹ PLIN, Nat. Hist. 1, ii. c. 1.