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308 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
a certaine measure, but being come to the extream and
first causes, it must necessarily stay, and be blunted or
abated, either by reason of its weaknesse or of the
things difficulty. It is an indifferent and pleasing kind
of opinion to thinke that our sufficiency may bring us
to the knowledge of some things, and hath certaine
measures of power beyond which it's temerity to employ
it This opinion is plausible and brought in by way of
composition : but it is hard to give our spirit any limits,
being very curious and greedy, and not tied to stay
'rather at a thousand then at fifty spaces. Having
found by experience that if one had mist to attaine
unto some one thing, another hath come unto it, and
that which one age never knew, the age succeeding
hath found out: and that Sciences and Arts are not
cast in a mold, but rather by little and little formed
and shaped by often handling and polishing them over :
even as beares fashion their yong whelps by often
licking them: what my strength cannot discover, I
cease not to sound and try: and in handling and
kneading this new matter, and with removing and
chasing it, I open some faculty for him that shall
follow me, that with more ease he may enjoy the
same, and make it more facile, more supple and more
pliable:
vt hymctha sole
Cera remollescit, tractataque pollicc, multas
Vettitur infacies, ipsoque fit vtilis vsu. 1
As the best Bees wax melteth by the Sun,
And handling, into many formes doth run,
And is made aptly fit
For use by using it.
As much will the second do for the third, which is a
cause that difficulty doth not make me despaire, much
lesse my unability : for it is but mine owne. Man is
as well capable of all things as of some. And if (as
Theophrastus saith) he avow the ignorance of the first
causes and beginnings, let him boldly quit all the rest
of his knowledge. If his foundation faile him, his
¹ OVID. Metam. 1. x. 284.