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324 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
beene to Pyrrhonize a thousand yeares agoe, had any
man gone about to make a question of the art of cosmography
: and the opinions that have beene received
thereof, of all men in generall: it had beene flat heresie
to avouch that there were Antipodes. See how in our
age an infinite greatnesse of firme land hath beene
discovered, not an iland onely, nor one particular
country, but a part in greatnesse very neere equall
unto that which we knew. Our moderne geographers
cease not to affirme that now all is found, and all is
discovered:
Nam quod adest proesto, placet, et pollere videtur,¹
For what is present here,
Seemes strong, is held most deare.
The question is now, if Ptolomey was heretofore deceived
in the grounds of his reason, whether it were
not folly in me to trust what these late fellowes say of
it, and whether it be not more likely that this huge
body which we terme the world is another manner of
thing than we judge it. Plato saith that it often
changeth his countenance, that the heaven, the starres,
and the sunne do sometimes re-enverse the motion we
perceive in them, changing the east into the west.
The AEgyptian priests told Herodotus that since their
first king, which was eleaven thousand and odde yeares
(when they made him see the pictures of all their
former kings, drawne to the life in statues) the sun
had changed his course foure times: that the sea and
the earth doe enterchangeably change one into another;
that the worlds birth is undetermined: the like said
Aristotle and Cicero. And some one amongst us
averreth that it is altogether eternall, mortal, and
new reviving againe, by many vicissitudes, calling
Solomon and Esay to witnesse: to avoid these oppositions,
that God hath sometimes been a Creator
without a creature; that he hath beene idle ; that he
bath unsaid his idlenesse by setting his hand to this
¹ LUCR. 1. v. 1422.