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336 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
and honest lost their qualities, and remained but vaine
and idle names of indifferent things. Thrasymachus,
in Plato, thinkes there is no other right but the commoditie
of the superiour. There is nothing wherein
the world differeth so much as in customes and lawes.
•Some things are here accompted abominable, which in
another place are esteemed commendable ; as in Lacedemonia,
the slight and subtlety in stealing marriages
in proximity of blood are amongst us forbidden as
capitally elsewhere they are allowed and esteemed;
gentes esseferuntur,
In quibus et nato genitnx, et nata parenti
Iungitur, et pietas gcmmato crescit amore. 1
There are some people where the mother weddeth
Her sonne, the daughter her owne father heddeth,
And so by doubling love, their kindnesse spreddeih.
The murthering of children and of parents ; the communication
with women; traffic of robbing and stealing
; free licence to all manner of sensuality; to conclude,
there is nothing so extreme and horrible, but is found
to be received and allowed by the custome of some
nation. It is credible that there be naturall lawes, as
may be seene in other creatures, but in us they are
lost: this goodly humane reason engrafting it self
among all men, to sway and command, confounding
and topsi-turving the visage of all things according to
her inconstant vanitie and vaine inconstancy. Nihil
itaque amplius nostrum est, quod nostrum dico, artis est:
i Therefore nothing more is ours ; all that I call ours
belongs to art.' Subjects have divers lustres, and
several! considerations, whence the diversity of opinion
is chiefly engendred. One nation vieweth a subject
with one visage, and thereon it staies; an other with
an other. Nothing can be imagined so horrible as for
one to eate and devour his owne father. Those people
which anciently kept this custome hold it neverthelesse
for a testimonie of pietie and good affection ; seeking by
that meane to give their fathers the worthiest and most
1 OVID, Metam. 1, x. 331.