214044_The_Essa ... rd_Of_Montaigne_Vol_II.pdf - OUDL Home

THE SECOND BOOKE 599
respects fall often in use with us: as if in wooll,
wherewith we wont to cloth our selves, some secret
exsiccating or drying quality have by accident beene
found, that cureth kibes and chilblaines in the heeles ;
and if in reddishes, we eat for nourishment, some
opening or aperitive operation have beene discovered.
Galen reporteth that a leprous man chanced to be
cured by meanes of a cuppe of wine he had drunke,
forsomuch as a viper was by fortune fallen into the
wine caske. In which example we finde the meane
and a very likely directory to this experience. As also*
in those to which physitians affirme to have beene
addressed by the examples of some beasts. But in
most of other experiences to which they say they came
by fortune, and had no other guide but hazard, I
finde the progresse of this information incredible. I
imagine man needfully viewing about him the infinite
number of things, creatures, plants and mettals. I
wot not where to make him beginne his essay; and
suppose he cast his first fantasie upon an elkes-horne,
to which an easie and gentle credulity must be given;
he will be as farre to seeke, and as much troubled in
his second operation: so, many diseases and severall
circumstances are proposed unto him, that before he
come to the certainty of this point, unto which the
perfection of his experience should arrive, mans wit
shall be to seeke, and not know where to turne
himselfe; and before (amiddest this infinity of things)
he finde out what this home is: amongst the numberlesse
diseases that are, what an epilepsie is; the
sundry and manifolde complexions in a melancholy
man; so many seasons in winter: so diverse nations
amongst Frenchmen ; so many ages in age; so diverse
celestiall changes and alterations in the conjunction of
Venus and Saturne: so severall and many partes in a
mans body, nay in one of his fingers. To all which
being neither guided by argument, nor by conjecture,
nor by example or divine inspiration, but by the onely
motion of fortune, it were most necessary it should be
by a perfectly artificially well-ordred, and methodicall