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322 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
Inque dies magxs appetitur,floretque repertum
Laudibus, et miro est mot tales inter honored
So age to be past-over alters times of things:
What earst was most esteem'd,
At last nought-worth is deem'd:
Another then succeeds, and from contempt upsprings,
Is daily more desir'd, flowreth as found but then
With praise and wondrous honor amongst mortall men.
So when any new doctrine is represented unto us,
we have great cause to suspect it, and to consider how,
before it was invented, the contrary unto it was in
credit; and as that hath beene reversed by this latter,
a third invention may peradventure succeed in afterages,
which in like sort shall front the second. Before
the principles which Aristotle found out were in credit,
other principles contented mans reason as his doe now
content us. What learning have these men, what particular
priviledge, that the course of our invention
should rely only upon them, and that the possession of
our beliefe shall for ever hereafter belong to them?
They are no more exempted from being rejected than
were their fore-fathers. If any man urge me with a
new argument, it is in me to imagine that, if I cannot
answere it, another can. For, to believe all apparences
which we cannot resolve, is meere simplicitie. It
would then follow that all the common sort (whereof
we are all part) should have his beliefe turning and
winding like a weather-cocke : for, his soule being soft
and without resistance, should uncessantly be enforced
to receive new and admit other impressions: the latter
ever defacing the precedents trace. He that percei veth
himselfe weake, ought to answer, according to law
termes, that he will conferre with his learned counsel,
or else referre himselfe to the wisest, from whom he
hath had his prentiseship. How long is it since physicke
came first into the world ? It is reported that a new
start-up fellow, whom they call Paracelsus, changeth
and subverteth all the order of ancient and so long
received rules, and maintaineth that untill this day it
¹ LUCR. 1, v. 1286.