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368 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
great a difference as there is betweene a dark night
and a cleare day; yea as betweene a night and a
shadow: there it sleepeth, here it slnmbreth : more
or lesse they are ever darknesses, yea Cimmerian darknesses.
We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. In my
sleep I see not so cleare; yet can I never find my
waking cleare enough, or without dimnesse. Sleepe
also, in his deepest rest, doth sometimes bring dreames
asleepe: but our waking is never so vigilant as it may
clearely purge and dissipate the ravings or idle phantasies
which are the dreames of the waking, and worse
then dreames. Our reason and soule, receiving the
phantasies and opinions, which sleeping seize on them,
and authorising our dreames actions, with like approbation,
as it doth the daies, why make we not a doubt
whether our thinking and our working be another
dreaming, and our waking some kind of sleeping ? If
the senses be our first judges, it is not ours that must
only be called to counsell: for, in this facultie, beasts
have as much (or more) right as we. It is most certaine
that some have their hearing more sharpe than man;
others their sight; others their smelling ; others their
feeling, or taste. Democritus said that Gods and
beasts had the sensitive faculties much more perfect
than man. Now, betweene the effects of their senses
and ours the difference is extreame. Our spettle
cleanseth and drieth our sores, and killeth serpents.
Tantaque in his rebus dlstantia differitasque est,
Ut quod alus cibus est, ahtsfuat acie venerium,
Soepe etenim serpens, hominis contacta saliva,
Disperit, ac sese mandendo conjicit ipsa, 1
There is such distance, and such difference in these things,
As what to one is meate, t'another poison brings.
For oft a Serpent toucht with spettle of a man
Doth die, and gnaw it selfe with fretting all he can.
What qualitie shall we give unto spettle, either
according to us or according to the serpent ? by which
two senses shall we verine its true essence, which we
1 LUCK. 1. iv. 640.