Oscula dat, reddique putat, sequiturque, tenetque,
Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris,
Et metuit pressos veniat ne livor in artus.
He kisses, and thinks kisses come again,
He sues, pursues, and holds, believes in vain,
His fingers sink where he doth touch the place,
And fears lest black-and-blue touched limbs deface. [144]
Let a philosopher be put in a cage made of small and thin-set iron wire and hanged on the top of our Lady’s church steeple in Paris. [145] He shall, by evident reason, perceive that it is impossible he should fall down out of it, yet can he not choose (except he have been brought up to the trade of tilers or thatchers [146]) but the sight of that exceeding height must needs dazzle his sight and amaze or turn his senses. For we have much ado to warrant ourselves in the walks or battlements of a high tower or steeple, if they be battlemented and wrought with pillars and somewhat wide one from another, although of stone and never so strong. Nay, some there are that can scarcely think or hear of such heights. Let a beam or plank be laid across from one of those two steeples to the other as big, as thick, as strong, and as broad as would suffice any man to walk safely upon it: there is no philosophical wisdom of so great resolution and constancy that is able to encourage and persuade us to march upon it as we would were it below on the ground.
I have sometimes made trial of it upon our mountains on this side of Italy, yet am I one of those that will not easily be affrighted with such things, and I could not without horror to my mind and trembling of legs and thighs endure to look on those infinite precipices and steepy down-falls, though I were not near the brim nor any danger within my length and more. And unless I had willingly gone to the peril, I could not possibly have fallen. Where I also noted that how deep soever the bottom were if but a tree, a shrub, or any out-butting crag of a rock presented itself unto our eyes upon those steepy and high alps, somewhat to uphold the sight and divide the same, it doth somewhat ease and assure us from fear, as if it were a thing which in our fall might either help or uphold us. And that we cannot without some dread and giddiness in the head so much as abide to look upon one of those even and down-right precipices: Ut despici sine vertigine simul oculorum animique non possit. So as they cannot look down without giddiness both of eyes and minds; [147] which is an evident deception of the sight.
Therefore was it that a worthy philosopher pulled out his eyes that so he might discharge his soul of the debauching and diverting he received by them and the better and more freely apply himself unto philosophy. But by this account he should also have stopped his ears, which (as Theophrastus said) are the most dangerous instruments we have to receive violent and sudden impressions to trouble and alter us and should, in the end, have deprived himself of all his other senses, that is to say both of his being and life. For they have the power to command our discourse and sway our mind: Fit etiam sæpe specie quadam, sæpe vocum gravitate et cantibus, ut pellantur animi vehementius: sæpe etiam cura et timore. It comes to pass that many times our minds are much moved with some shadow, many times with deep-sounding or singing voices, many times with care and fear. [148]
Physicians hold that there are certain complexions, which by some sounds and instruments, are agitated even unto fury. I have seen some who, without infringing their patience, could not well hear a bone gnawed under their table. And we see few men but are much troubled at that sharp, harsh, and teeth-edging noise that smiths make in filing of brass or scraping of iron and steel together; others will be offended if they but hear one chew his meat somewhat aloud; nay, some will be angry with, or hate, a man that either speaks in the nose or rattles in the throat. That piping prompter of Graccus who mollified, raised, and wound [149] his master’s voice whilst he was making orations at Rome, what good did he, if the motion and quality of the sound had not the force to move and efficacy to alter the auditory’s judgement? Verily, there is great cause to make so much ado and keep such a coyle [150] about the constancy and firmness of this goodly piece [151] which suffers itself to be handled, changed, and turned by the motion and accident of so light a wind.
The very same cheating and cozening that senses bring to our understanding themselves receive it in their turns. Our mind doth likewise take revenge of it; they lie, they cog, and deceive one another avie. [152] What we see and hear, being passionately transported by anger, we neither see nor hear it as it is.
Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas.
That two suns do appear,
And double Thebes are there. [153]
The object which we love seemeth much more fairer unto us than it is—
Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus
Esse in delitiis, summoque in honore vigere.
We therefore see that those, who many ways are bad,
And foul, are yet belov’d, and in chief honour had. [154]
—and that much fouler which we loth. To a pensive and heart-grieved man, a clear day seems gloomy and dusky. Our senses are not only 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 advertas animum, proinde esse, quasi omni
Tempore semotæ fuerint, longeque remotæ.
Ev’n in things manifest it may be seen,
If you mark not, they are, as they had been
At all times sever’d far, removed clean. [155]
The soul seemeth to retire herself into the inmost parts and amuseth [156] the senses’ faculties, so that both the inward and outward parts of man are full of weakness and falsehood.
Those which have compared our life unto a dream have happily had more reason so to do than they were aware. When we dream, our soul 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 great a difference as there is between a dark night and a clear day; yea, as between a night and a shadow. There it sleepeth, here it slumbereth. More or less, they are ever darknesses, yea Cimmerian [157] darknesses.
We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. In my sleep I see not so clear, yet can I never find my waking clear enough or without dimness. Sleep also in his deepest rest doth sometimes bring dreams asleep. But our waking is never so vigilant as it may clearly purge and dissipate the ravings or idle fantasies, which are the dreams of the waking, and worse than dreams.
Our reason and soul receiving the fantasies and opinions which sleeping seize on them, and authorising our dreams’ actions with like approbation as it doth the day’s, 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 counsel, for in this faculty beasts have as much (or more) right as we. It is most certain that some have their hearing more sharp 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 between the effects of their senses and ours, the difference is extreme. Our spittle [158] cleanseth and drieth our sores and killeth serpents.
Tantaque in his rebus distantia differitasque est,
Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum.
Sæpe etenim serpens, hominis contacta saliva,
Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa.
There is such distance, and such difference in these things,
As what to one is meat t’another poison brings.
For oft a serpent touched with spittle of a man
Doth die, and gnaw itself with fretting all he can. [159]
What quality shall we give unto spittle, either according to us or according to the serpent? By which two senses shall we verify its true essence, which we seek for? Pliny sayeth that there a
re certain sea-hares in India that to us are poison and we bane to them, so that we die if we but touch them. Now, whether is man or the hare poison? Whom shall we believe, either the fish of man, or the man of fish?
Some quality of the air infecteth man, which nothing at all hurteth the ox; some other the ox, and not man. Which of the two is either, in truth or in nature, the pestilent quality?
Such as are troubled with the yellow jandise [160] deem all things they look upon to be yellowish which seem more pale and wan to them than to us.
Lurida præterea fiunt quæcunque tuentur
Arquati.
And all that jaundis’d men behold,
They yellow straight or palish hold. [161]
Those which are sick of the disease which physicians call Hyposphragma, which is a suffusion of blood under the skin, imagine that all things they see are bloody and red. Those humors that so change the sight’s operation, what know we whether they are predominant and ordinary in beasts? For we see some whose eyes are as yellow as theirs that have the jaundice; others that have them all bloodshot with redness. It is likely that the objects’ colour they look upon seemeth otherwise to them than to us. Which of the two judgements shall be true? For it is not said that the essence of things hath reference to man alone. Hardness, whiteness, depth, and sharpness touch the service and concern the knowledge of beasts as well as ours. Nature hath given the use of them to them as well as to us.
When we wink a little with our eye, we perceive the bodies we look upon to seem longer and outstretched. Many beasts have their eye as winking as we. This length is then happily the true form of that body and not that which our eyes give it, being in their ordinary seat. If we close our eye above, things seeme double unto us.
Bina lucernarum florentia lumina flammis,
Et duplices hominum facies, et corpora bina.
The lights of candles double flaming then;
And faces twain, and bodies twain of men. [162]
If our ears chance to be hindered by anything, or that the passage of our hearing be stopped, we receive the sound otherwise than we were ordinarily wont. Such beasts as have hairy ears, or that in lieu of an ear have but a little hole, do not by consequence hear what we hear, and receive the sound other than it is. [163] We see at solemn shows or in theaters that, opposing any coloured glass between our eyes and the torch’s light, whatsoever is in the room seems green or yellow or red unto us, according to the colour of the glass:
Et vulgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela,
Et ferriginea, cum magnis intenta theatris
Per malos volgata trabesque trementia pendent:
Namque ibi consessum caveai subter, et omnem
Scenai speciem, patrum matrumque deorumque
Inficiunt, coguntque suo volitare colore.
And yellow, russet, rusty curtains work this feat
In common sights abroad, wherever scaffolds great
Stretched on masts, spread over beams, they hang still waving.
All the seats circuit there, and all the stage’s braving,
Of fathers, mothers, gods, and all the circled show
They double-dyed, and in their colours make to flow. [164]
It is likely that those beasts’ eyes, which we see to be of diverse colours, produce the appearances of those bodies they look upon to be like their eyes.
To judge the senses’ operation, it were then necessary we were first agreed with beasts and then between ourselves. Which we are not, but ever-and-anon disputing about that one seeth, heareth, or tasteth something to be other than indeed it is and contend as much as about anything else of the diversity of those images our senses reporte unto us. A young child heareth, seeth, and tasteth otherwise, by nature’s ordinary rule, than a man of thirty years, and he otherwise than another of threescore.
The senses are to some more obscure and dim, and to some more open and quick. We receive things differently, according as they are and seem unto us. Things being then so uncertain and full of controversy, it is no longer a wonder if it be told us that we may avouch snow to seem white unto us but to affirm that it is in essence and in truth, we cannot warrant ourselves; which foundation being so shaken, all the science in the world must necessarily go to wrack.
What, do our senses themselves hinder one another? To the sight a picture seemeth to be raised aloft and in the handling flat. Shall we say that musk is pleasing or no, which comforteth our smelling and offendeth our taste? There are herbs and ointments which to some parts of the body are good and to othersome hurtful. Honey is pleasing to the taste but unpleasing to the sight. Those jewels wrought and fashioned like feathers or sprigs which in impreses [165] are called feathers without ends, no eye can discern the breadth of them, and no man warrant himself from this deception that on the one end or side it groweth not broader and broader, sharper and sharper, and on the other more and more narrow, especially being rolled about one’s finger; when notwithstanding in handling it seemeth equal in breadth and everywhere alike.
Those who to increase and aid their luxury [166] were anciently wont to use perspective or looking glasses, fit to make the object they represented appear very big and great, that so the members [167] they were to use might by that ocular increase please them the more: to whether of the two senses yielded they, either to the sight presenting those members as big and great as they wished them, or to the feeling that presented them little and to be disdained?
Is it our senses that lend these diverse conditions unto subjects, when for all that, the subjects have but one? As we see in the bread we eat: it is but bread, but one using it maketh bones, blood, flesh, hair, and nails thereof:
Ut cibus in membra atque artus cum diditur omnet
Disperit, atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se.
As meat distributed into the members dies,
Another nature yet it perishing supplies. [168]
The moistness which the root of a tree sucks becomes a trunk, a leaf, and a fruit. And the air, being but one, applied unto a trumpet becometh diverse in a thousand sorts of sounds. Is it our senses (say I) who likewise fashion of diverse qualities those subjects, or whether they have them so and such? And upon this doubt, what may we conclude of their true essence?
Moreover, since the accidents of sickness, of madness, or of sleep make things appear other unto us than they seem unto the healthy, unto the wise, and to the waking, is it not likely that our right seat and natural humours have also wherewith to give a being unto things, having reference unto their condition, and to appropriate them to itself, as do inordinate humours? And our health, as capable to give them his visage as sickness? Why hath not the temperate man some form of the objects relative unto himself as the intemperate, and shall not he likewise imprint his character in them? The distasted [169] impute wallowishness [170] unto wine; the healthy, good taste; and the thirsty, briskness, relish, and delicacy.
Now our condition appropriating things unto itself and transforming them to its own humour, we know no more how things are in sooth and truth. For nothing comes unto us but falsified and altered by our senses. Either the compass, the quadrant, or the ruler are crooked: all proportions drawn by them, and all the buildings erected by their measure, are also necessarily defective and imperfect. The uncertainty of our senses yields whatever they produce also uncertain.
Denique ut in fabrica, si prava est regula prima,
Normaque si fallax rectis regionibus exit,
Et libella aliqua si ex parte claudicat hilum,
Omnia mendose fieri, atque obstipa necessum est,
Prava, cubantia, prona, supina, atque absona tecta,
Iam ruere ut quædam videantur velle, ruantque
Prodita iudiciis fallacibus omnia primis.
Hic igitur ratio tibi rerum prava necesse est,
Falsaque sit falsis quæcunque a sensibus orta est.
As in building if the first rule be to blame,
And the deceitful squire err from right forms and frame,
If any instrument want any jot of weight,
All must needs faulty be, and stooping in their height,
The building naught, absurd, upward and downward bended,
As if they meant to fall, and fall as they intended;
And all this as betrayed by judgements foremost laid.
Of things the reason therefore needs must faulty be
And false, which from false senses drawes its pedigree. [171]
As for the rest, who shall be a competent judge in these differences? As we said in controversies of religion that we must have a judge inclined to neither party and free from partiality or affection, which is hardly to be had among Christians, so happeneth it in this. For if he be old, he cannot judge of age’s sense, himself being a party in this controversy. And so if he be young, healthy, sick, sleeping, or waking, it is all one. We had need of somebody void and exempted from all these qualities that without any preoccupation of judgement might judge of these propositions as indifferent unto him; by which account we should have a judge that were no man.
To judge of the appearances that we receive of subjects, [172] we had need have a judicatory instrument; to verify this instrument, we should have demonstration; and to approve demonstration, an instrument: thus are we ever turning round. Since the senses cannot determine our disputation, themselves being so full of uncertainty, it must then be reason. And no reason can be established without another reason: then are we ever going back unto infinity.
Our fantasy [173] doth not apply itself to strange things but is rather conceived by the interposition of senses; and senses cannot comprehend a strange subject, nay, not so much as their own passions. And so, nor the fantasy nor the appearance is the subject’s but rather the passions only, and sufferance of the sense; which passion and subject are diverse things. Therefore, who judgeth by appearances judgeth by a thing different from the subject.
Shakespeare's Montaigne Page 23