214044_The_Essa ... rd_Of_Montaigne_Vol_II.pdf - OUDL Home

THE SECOND BOOKE 857
understanding, themselves receive it in their turnes.
Our mind doth likewise take revenge of it, they lie,
they cog, and deceive one another a vie. What we see
and heare, being passionately transported by anger, we
neither see nor heare it as it is.
Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas. 1
That two Sunnes doe appeare,
And double Thebes are there.
The object which we love seemeth much more fairer
unto us then it is :
Multimodis igitur pravos turpesque videmus
Esse in delitus, summoque in honore vigere:²
We therefore see that those, who many waies are bad,
And fowle, are yet belov'd, and in chiefe honour had ;
and that much fowler which we loath. To a pensive
and heart-grieved man a cleare day seemes gloomie and
duskie. Our senses are not onely altered, but many
times dulled, by the passions of the mind. How many
things see we, which we perceive not, if our mind be
either busied or distracted elsewhere ?
in rebus quoque apertis noscere possis,
Si non adveitas anwium, promde esse, quasi omni
Tempore semotasfuet mt, longeque remote. 3
Ev'n in things manifest it may be seene,
If you marke not, they are, as they had beene
At all times sever'd farre, remooved cleane.
The soule seemeth to retire her selfe into the inmost
parts, and ammuseth the senses faculties: so that both
the inward and outward parts of man are full of weaknes
and falshood. Those which have compared our life unto
a dreame, have happily had more reason so to doe then
they were aware. When we dreame, our soule liveth,
worketh and exerciseth all her faculties, even and as
much as when it waketh; and if more softly and
obscurely, yet verily not so, as that it may admit so
1 VIRG. AEn. 1. iv. 470.
² LUCR. 1. iv. 1147. ³ lb. 808.