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206. Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xxxii, 90; also Tusc. disput., I, xxvi, 65, apud Augustine, City of God, IV, xxvi.
207. Plato, Gorgias, 524a; Repub., 614E; Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le ronde de la lune, 626 CD. For the implications of this passage for Montaigne’s conception of the afterlife, see Montaigne and Melancholy, pp. 131–2, and note 1.
208. ’88: has justly clung to him… (From Antiquity onwards we find the term Divinus Plato: in the Renaissance it acknowledges Plato’s inspiration and sometimes his preoccupation with the world of the soul.)
209. ’88: a vile creature like man… our languishing grasp… or that our taste was firm enough to do so?
210. ’88: hope for or can do, we know the weakness and inadequacy of her forces: that…
211. ’88: within mortal, finite…
212. I Corinthians II:9, adapted. (The text for Pauline ecstasy; see Erasmus: Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly, pp. 174–9; Montaigne and Melancholy, p. 131.)
213. Ovid, Tristia, III, 11, 27; Lucretius, III, 756–7 (Lambin, p. 241).
214. Porphyry in St Augustine, City of God, X, xxx.
215. Lucretius, III, 846 (Lambin, pp. 247–51); III, 563–4 (Lambin, pp. 227–8); III, 860 (Lambin, pp. 251–4); III, 845 (Lambin, pp. 247–50).
216. ’88: our vicious deeds… brought us forth… prevent our failure?
217. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Pourquoy la justice divine diffère quelquefois ses malefices, 259 C.
218. Livy, XLI, 16; XLV, 33; Arrian, Alexander, VI, 19. ’88 (in place of [C]): flowers: once with the pleasure of a blood-drenched vengeance – witness that widely received notion of sacrifices: and that God took pleasure in murder, and in the torture of things made, preserved and created by him, and that he can rejoice in the blood of innocent souls, not only of animals, which are powerless, but of men…
219. Julius Caesar, De bello gallico, VI, xvi; Virgil, Aeneid, X, 517.
220. Herodotus, IV, 94; VII, 114; Plutarch, tr. Amyot, De la superstition, 124 A; Lucretius, I, 102 (Lambin, pp. 13–15). The reference to Themistitan is untraced.
221. Plutarch, De la superstition, 123 G–124 A; Les Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 227 EF; Lucretius, I, 98; Cicero, De nat. deorum, III, vi, 15. ’88: to requite divine justice with our torment and our suffering; the Spartans…
222. Much from St Augustine, City of God, VI, 10 (citing a lost book of Seneca’s Against Superstition). Also, Lucretius, I, 82 (Lambin, pp. 12–15).
223. I Corinthians I:25, a central text for Christian Folly since Augustine, not least for Erasmus.
224. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Stilpon, II, 117.
225. For Platonizing thinkers the fool’s soul (being divine in origin) remains rational; the knave reasons incorrectly about what is good but is not irrational (cf. n. 2). With what follows, cf. Ronsard, Remonstrance, 119 f.
226. Lucretius, VI, 678 (Lambin, pp. 508–10, reading sint not sunt). A lesson against homocentricity, inscribed in Montaigne’s library. Platonic-Christian arguments are marshalled against Aristotle’s denial of a creation ex nihilo. Allusions follow to biblical miracles: Elijah’s rapture to heaven (II Kings 2:11) and/or to Christ’s bodily Ascension; the halting of the Sun in Joshua 10:12; the Flood in Genesis 6–9 (cf. Genesis 1:9, 7:4); Psalm 104 (103):6–9; Christ’s walking on the water (Matthew 14:25); Christ’s appearing in an enclosed room (John 20:19 ff.); Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:22–7). The final miracle is the Real Presence of Christ’s risen body in Heaven and in each Eucharist. In the background is the Platonic doctrine of the great chain of being (God created all possible forms). With the cave Montaigne exploits the central Platonic myth: man, living as it were in a cave, mistakes shadows on the wall for the reality outside his cave which casts those shadows.
227. ’80: the most famous and noble minds… movements make more credible. Now, if there are several worlds, as Plato, Epicurus… Lucretius, II, 1085 f., 1077 f., 1064 f. (Lambin pp. 180–2). Montaigne echoes the commentary (‘There is no verisimilitude in this world’s having been created alone’ etc.) and the commentary on pp. 178–79 (allusions to Democritus after Cicero, De fin., and Acad.: Lucullus). In the Timaeus (31 AB; 55DE) Plato defends (against the atomists) the essential unity of the Universe but believes in a world-soul, as did the Christian Origen (St Augustine, City of God, XI, 23). Augustine (XIII, 16 and 17) did not reject Plato’s contention (Timaeus 41D-42A) that the stars had souls and could be rendered immortal. Echoes in Montaigne of Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Des Opinions des Philosophes, 446A-F.
228. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Democritus, IX, 45; cf. Epicurus, IX, 85.
229. What follows derives from Pliny, Hist. Nat., VI, 2; VIII, 22; Herodotus, III, 101; IV, 191. Pliny’s ‘errors’ and Herodotus’ ‘lies’ were often evoked in the Renaissance.
230. Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune, 623 F (producing amused laughter from the hearers).
231. The standard definitions of Man, as a thinking, laughing or ‘political’ animal, could not apply to men without brains in their heads or mouths to laugh with or cities to live in (as political animals).
232. A miracle is, for Christians, an event ‘against the whole order of Nature’. To recognize such an event by natural reason requires, therefore, a true knowledge of the limits of Nature.
233. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxi, 100, cf. xxxiii, 105–8; the verses from Euripides were inscribed in Montaigne’s library; they are cited by Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, 229, but in a different form; Montaigne’s version derives from Stobaeus, Sermo 119, but there are minor variations in many editions of this text.
234. Plato, Theaetetus, 180E–183E; Seneca, Epist., LXXXVIII, 43–6; Plato, Parmenides, 138.’88 (In place of [C]): I do not know whether Ecclesiastical teaching judges otherwise – and I submit myself, in all things everywhere to its ordinance, but it has always seemed to me…
235. Matthew 26:26. Disputes over the eucharistic formula ‘This (Hoc) is my body’ are central to Christian controversy. Cf. H. C. Agrippa, On the Vanity of all Learning, III.
236. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, xxix, 95.
237. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Pyrrho, IX, 76 (for ‘rhubarb’ the text gives medicamenta).
238. In 1576 (doubtless under the influence of Pyrrho), Montaigne struck a medal with a Balance, poised, bearing the device Que sçay-ie?
239. ’88: that scoffer Pliny exploited… (Pliny, Hist. Nat., II, 7; the two following quotations are from Horace, Odes, III, 29, 43; Pliny, ibid., II, 23.)
240. Seneca, Epist., XCII, 275. The Stoics ‘subject God to destiny’: the Christians who are alleged to do so are doubtless, for Montaigne, Calvinists – cf. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, 29.
241. Tertullian, apparently, while still a Catholic; he became a Montanist.
242. Cicero, De nat. deorum, II, lxvi, 167; III, xxxv, 86; St Augustine, City of God, XI, 22; Cicero, Acad., II, xxviii, 121.
243. Epicurus’ principle of isonomia (Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xix, 50) and the contentions of Cicero’s brother in De divinat. I, lvii, 129, are here countered by Romans 1:22–23.
244. Lucan, Pharsalia, I, 486. (For ancient deifications and medals, cf. G. du Choul, De la religion des anciens Romains, 1556, p. 75, etc.; also Joachim Du Bellay, Regrets, TLF, Songe XI and illustration.) Seneca, Epist., XXIV, 13; St Augustine, City of God, VIII, 23–4.
245. Plutarch, Les Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 210 GH; Hermes Trismegistus, Asclepius, 37, apud St Augustine, City of God, VIII, 24; Lucan, Pharsalia, I, 452 (adapted).
246. Several Stoic commonplaces and major borrowings from Cicero (De nat. deorum, II, vi, 16-VIII, 22) and others (cf. Pontus de Tyard, Second Curieux in Discours philosophiques, 1587, 310); Horace’s fable of the puffed-up frog (Satires, II, iii, 319); finally St Augustine, City of God, XII, 18.
247. Commonplace deriving from Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XVIII, 4 (but in the temple of Anubis not Serapis).
248. Varro apud St Augustine, City of God, VI, 7; tale current since Antiquity.
249. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Plato, III, ii, 185.
250. Guillaume Postel, Des Histoires Orientales (De la République des Turcs), 1575, 919 r.°
251. Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xxvii, 76–78.
252. Eusebius Pamphilus, Preparatio evangelka, XIII, 13, perhaps via Ph. Duplessis–Mornay, De la Verité de la religion chrestienne, chapters. I(end), 4 (beginning).
253. Developments inspired by Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xxvii, 78: ‘Suppose animals possessed reason: would they not attribute superiority to their own kind?’ Latin quotation: ibid., 77.
254. Horace, Odes, II, 12, 6; Virgil, Aeneid, II, 610; Herodotus, I, 172. (For the gods of grapes and garlic, cf. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, On the Loss of Grace and the State of Sin, book X, chapter ix, ‘An enumeration of the maladies and wounds of the human mind’, § 6, in Opera, 1593, 487B.)
255. Livy, XXVII, xxiii; Virgil, Aeneid, I, 16; Anon., cited Cicero, De divinatione, II, Ivi, 115; Ovid, Fasti, III, 81 and I, 294.
256. Echoes of St Augustine, City of God, IV, 8; VI, 5 and 7; III, 12 etc.; quotation from Ovid, Metam., I, 194 in Vivès’s commentary (ibid., Ill, 12); Plutarch, Contre les Stoïques, 583A (cf. Rabelais, Quart Livre, TLF, XXVII, p. 135); Ovid, ibid., VIII, 99.
257. St Augustine, City of God, IV, xxxi and xxxvii.
258. Phaëton was the son of Helios and Clymene. Seeking to reach the heavens he was drowned: the symbol of hubris. (The ‘forms’, or ‘Ideas’, exist in the heavenly regions; Man only knows those which God makes accessible to him: to try and discover more is to court disaster.)
259. Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, vii, 2; Cicero, De nat. deorum, II, xxii, 57–58; for Archimedes and the compelling power of geometry, Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxvii, 116–17 (influenced by a reading of S. Bodin, De la démonomanie des sorciers); Guy de Brués, Dialogues, p. 90.
260. Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, vii, 7.
261. Ibid., IV, vii 7; Socrates’ verdict was proverbial (Erasmus, Adages, Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos).
262. Plato, Timaeus, 40 DE (not evidently ironical in Ficino’s Latin rendering, p. 710).
263. Ovid, Metam., II, 107.
264. Plato, Republic, X, xii, 616.
265. Varro: known only from Probus’ commentary on Virgil, Eclogue, VI.
266. ’88: principles (ressorts) for moiens (means).
267. Plato, Alcibiades, II, 147: ‘For poetry as a whole is inclined to be enigmatic’; Ficino’s Latin rendering (p. 47) is ambiguous, giving rise to Montaigne’s rendering, also found (for example) in Cognatus’ adage, ‘Multa novit, sed male novit omnia’ (cf. Adagia, id est proverbiorum… omnium, Wechel, 1643, index rerum s.v. natura) 268. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 122.
268. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 122.’95: disjointed poet. All superhuman sciences bedeck themselves in the style of poetry. When their natural… (Timon of Athens’ insult, repeated by Montaigne in II, 16, ‘On glory’; Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Plato, III, xxvi, 119.)
269. Astronomy, for example, was concerned to ‘save the appearances’ – that is, to account for observed phenomena; it did not claim to be describing fact but ‘appearances’ (phenomena), which may or may not really be true.
270. Plato, Timaeus, 72D (Ficino, p. 724).
271. ’88: monstrous (monstrueuse) for abnormal (enormale).
272. Plato, Critias, 107, CD (adapted) (Ficino, p. 107).
273. Erasmus, Adages: Ad pedes (but the servant-girl did not trip him up: he fell); Cicero, De div., II, xiii, 30 (a verse from the Iphigeneia of Ennius); Plato, Theaetetus, 174B (Ficino, p. 149).
274. Horace, Epistles, I, xii, 16.
275. Pliny, Hist. nat., II, xxxvii; St Augustine, City of God, XXI, 10.
276. Criticism of Aristotle’s doctrine of the creative force of privation was current: e.g. in Ramus and in Guy de Brués, Dialogues, 161. Cf. also Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxvii (118–19); De nat. deorum, I, X, xi.
277. H. C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, III (ad fin.). The axiom cited above was not Pythagorean: cf. Cognatus’ adage, ‘Peritis in sua arte credendum’.
278. Plato, Republic, V. 480 A. (For what follows, cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Diogenes, L: when Zeno was proving ‘by most acute arguments that there is no such thing as motion’, Diogenes got up and walked away. ‘What are you doing, Diogenes?’ asked Zeno in surprise. ‘I am confuting your arguments,’ he replied.)
279. Lucretius, I, 112 (Lambin, p. 16). The following list of opinions combines commonplaces from Sextus Empiricus, Cicero and, especially, H. C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, II. But one of the most influential studies of the soul in the Renaissance was Melanchthon’s De anima. Some of the matter of the following pages can be found there or may derive from there.
280. Virgil, Aeneid, IX, 349 and VI, 730. Both cited in Melanchthon, De anima (Opera, 1541, III, 9); Lucretius, III, 99 (Lambin, pp. 198–9).
281. For entelechy (actuality or activity) as principle of soul, see Aristotle, De anima, 2, I and Metaph., 8. 3; discussed, similarly, in Melanchthon, De anima, II ff. (cf. Tertullian, De anima, 32); Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xi; St Bernard, De anima seu meditationes devotissimae, I, in princ; Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Heraclitus, IX, vii. What follows may be influenced by H. C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, LII; for Renaissance scholarship, see Melanchthon, De anima, 17 ff. (Quid est organum?).
282. Lucretius, III, 102; 142 (Lambin, pp. 198–99, 201–204) = where stomach a breast.
283. A basic interdict of the Law of Moses, e.g. Leviticus 7:26–27; but it is the anima (life) not animus (mind) which is ‘in the blood’: ibid., 17:11. Cf. Melanchthon, De anima, 16.
284. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxvii, 67. Montaigne used Cicero as a source, but he was impatient with his wordiness and credited him with no originality as a thinker.
285. Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Piatonis, II, ii; Stoics, rejected by Seneca, Epist., LVII, 7–8. In the original French, Montaigne confusingly uses estomach in both its Latin sense (stomach) and its Greek sense (breast).
286. Platonists, including Origen (criticized by St Augustine, City of God, XI, 23).
287. Plutarch, Life of Theseus, I, 1.
288. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Diogenes, VI, 40.’80: sleep. And then Plato defined man…
289. Cicero, De fin., I, v, 13–vi, 21; De nat. deorum, II, xxxvi, 93–4 (adapted); III, ix, 20–3. Cotta is mocking Zeno.
290. ’88: find many similar examples…; (in place of [C], below): schools, as you can see in the infinite examples in Plutarch, against the Epicureans and Stoics: and in Seneca against the Peripatetics. We…
291. Plato, Alcibiades, I, 129 A.
292. Cicero, De divinat., II, lviii, 119.
293. ’88: souls, (for I have chosen this one example as being the most convenient for witnessing to our feebleness and vanity) Plato…(Cf. Melanchthon, De anima, 29 f.)
294. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Plato, III, lxvii, 224 apud Guy de Brués, p. 79 f.
295. Claudian, cited in the Politici of Justus Lipsius, IV, ix; then Lucretius, III, 143 (Lambin, pp. 201–2). Montaigne misreads momen (impulse) as nomen (name, authority) despite Lambin’s explanation.
296. Aristotelian opinions, backed by Virgil, Georgics, IV, 221.
297. This doctrine (traducianism) is discussed by Melanchthon, De anima, along with other notions mentioned by Montaigne.
298. First line, anon., second, Horace, Odes, IV, iv, 29.
299. Lucretius, III, 741 (Lambin, 241–2). Cf. Andreas Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, VII, 1–4. It was accepted that sensitive and vegetative souls could be transmitted in semen: the human rational soul was individually created (Melanchthon, De anima, 15).
300. Lucretius, III, 671 (Lambin, p. 235: criticism of Pythagoreans, citing Aristotle). There follows criticism of the Platonic doctrine that all learning is recollection of knowledge pre-dating the imprisonment of the soul in the body (Phaedo, XVIII, 73E). Similar refutations are found elsewhere (e.g. in L. Joubert’s Erreurs populaires, 1578 (Preface), exploited above, note 66, on natural language). Christianity avoids the problem of rewards and punishments in the afterlife by making them depend on the presence or absence of imputed merits (Christ’s not Man’s).
301. Lucretius, III, 674 (Lambin, pp. 265–7, reading longior for longiter).
302. Plato, Republic, X, 615. Origen and the Universalists held that, eventually, Hell would be empty and all would be saved. Montaigne may also be alluding to misconceptions of Purgatory (as a modification of Hell, rather than of Heaven).
303. A series of sustained borrowings from Lucretius, III, 445 f.; 510 f.; 175 f.; 499–501; 492 f.; 463 f.; 800 f.; 458; 110 f. Throughout, the comments of Lambin are relevant (pp. 190–272). For a Christian answer in the dedication of Book III of Lucretius, see the Introduction, p. xxxvii.
304. Ignorant medical deformation of hydrophobia.
305. Cicero, De divinat., II, lviii, 119. Montaigne takes some of these arguments up again in III, 13, ‘On experience’.
306. The last of this series of borrowings from Sextus Empiricus; then Aristotle, Metaphysics, II, I, 993 b (a bat not an owl).
307. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xvi.
308. Seneca, Epist., CII, 2 (a major treatment of the theme of immortality, influencing the following argument).
309. Plato, Laws, X, 907.
310. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxviii, 121 (citing Democritus).
311. Nembroth (Nimrod) was King of Babel; the Tower of Babel, sometimes portrayed as pyramidal, sought to ‘reach unto heaven’; God overthrew it and confounded men’s language, ‘that they may not understand another’s speech’: Genesis 10:9–11:9; then I Corinthians 1:19; St Augustine, City of God, XI, 22.
312. Points made in Lambin’s dedication of Book III of Lucretius to ‘Germano Valenti Pimpuntio’: no human arguments assure us of immortality, not even Plato’s: only Christ does. Cf. Introduction, p. 25 xxiv ff.
313. Seneca, Epist., CXVII, 6.
314. Cicero, Tusc. disp., I, xxxi; cf. Rabelais, Quart Livre, XXVII, ad fin.
315. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Diogenes, VIII, 526.’88 (in place of [C]): another. Socrates, Plato and virtually all those who wished to believe in the immortality of souls, allowed themselves to be convinced by that discovery, as well as whole nations, our own among them. But… (Cf. Caesar, De bello gallico, VI, 18.)
316. Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 719 (cf. St Augustine, City of God, XIV, 5). Platonic teachings: cf. Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune, 626 C–H (the ‘orchard of Dis’).
317. St Augustine, City of God, XXI, 16–17; XXII, 28 (including note by Vivès).
318. Plato, Meno, 82 (Ficino, p. 19).
319. Plato, Timaeus, 42. E D (Ficino, p. 710).
320. Lucretius, III, 776 f. (Lambin, pp. 243–5). The following passage draws on III, 712–40 (Lambin, pp. 237–41).
321. Plutarch, Life of Romulus, XIV, ad. fin.
322. In Amyot’s Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune, 614–27, and Du Demon ou esprit familier de Socrates (636–49). (This is a reminder of a revolution in thought; the generation of Rabelais still sought mystical religious truths in these treatises.)
323. Discussion of the body, and of the various theories of human reproduction form a major element in Melanchthon’s De anima (cf. 39 ff.). Since the human egg had yet to be discovered, all theories of generation turned on the nature of semen and of the womb. Rival schools, especially those of Hippocrates and Galen, clashed from Antiquity (cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, TLF, VIII; XXXIII; and notes). Montaigne draws on H.C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, LXXXII, and Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Des opinions des philosophes, 456 G–459 D. Cf. also Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, XV, 10–11.
324. The duration of pregnancies was a question of great actuality: in general doctors accepted as legitimate children born after eleven (or even thirteen) months; some lawyers denied the possibility. Cf. Rabelais, Gargantua, TLF, III and notes. Also discussed in Melanchthon. Montaigne was born after a prolonged pregnancy of eleven months.
325. Pliny, II, I.
326. For Protagoras, the arch-Sceptic and agnostic who introduced total relativism by making each individual man the measure of all things, see Plato, Theaetetus, 152 A–C: 166D; 174 A–B; Aristotle, Metaph., XV, v, 6, (1062 b). Later, Montaigne draws on these pages as well as on Sextus, Hypotyposes, I, XXXII, 216 ff.
327. Thales (Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Thales, I, XXXV, 36), as cited by Erasmus in his Socratic adage Nosce teipsum. (For Justus Lipsius, Montaigne was ‘our Thales’.)
328. See above, p. 529. Montaigne undermines the case of deriving knowledge from sense-data – a central contention of Pyrrhonism.
329. Herodotus, III, 73, cited by Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’amy, 41 B–C.
330. Cf. S. Goulart, Hist. du Portugal, XII, xxiii, 366r°; similar but not identical account.’95: gunpowder, which were in the place where they were kept. Here we have now…
331. Petrarch, Canzoniere, XXII, 48. ’88: effectively and who would have used, in piling up his case, other authors besides our Plutarch. When… (Cf. Erasmus’ adages Ne quid nimis and Medium sequere.)
332. Epicurus, cf. p. 543; Plato, Laws, 874 (tr. Ficino, p. 862).
333. R. Sebond is a prophylactic against the ‘poison’ of Lutheranism (see p. 490 ff). The rest of the Apology uses scepticism as the ultimate defence of Catholicism. ’88: a dangerous sword…
334. Cicero, Tusc. disput. II, ii.
335. Cf. H. C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, I.
336. Ovid, Metam., X, 284.
337. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xli, 128 (adapted).
338. Ovid, Tristia, I, ii, 5.
339. ’88: more true and more firm. For…
340. St Augustine advanced such arguments against Academic theories of probability (Contra academicos, e.g., II, 7); they had long been current.
341. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxviii, 90.
342. From here Montaigne takes on Lucretius, the defender of the senses as true guides. Cf. Introduction, p. xxxv ff. He relies mainly on his own experience, in sickness and in health, against which he judges the established Classical authorities.
343. Lucretius, V, 1414 (Lambin, pp. 462–3 – explained with Montaigne’s sense).
344. Plutarch, Les Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 218 C; also a general influence of Pyrrhonism (Hypotyposes, I, xxxii, 217–19 etc.). Chagrin was a technical word for melancholic depression.
345. Homer, Odyssey, XVIII, 135, translated by Cicero, apud St Augustine, City of God, V, 8. (Montaigne has already cited this in II, I, ‘On the inconstancy of our actions’.)
346. Horace, Odes, I, xxvi, 3.
347. ’88: does not always get better, but floats and rolls about… (Catullus, XXV, 12.)
348. Cf. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, De la Vertu Morale, 37 F–G.
349. Cicero, Tusc., disput., IV, xxiii; the rest of [C] follows closely ibid., xix. For the role of passion and anger in bravery, cf. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, III, 15–19, 1229a.
350. ‘80 (in place of [B]): stimulus to liberality and justice…
351. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, vi. ’88 (in place of [C]): actions? At least we know only too well that the passions produce innumerable and ceaseless changes in our soul and tyrannize over it wondrously; is the judgement of an angry man or a fearful one the same judgement as he will have later when he has calmed down? What varied…
352. The ideal of tranquillity of mind is indeed, for Platonizing philosophers, subordinated to visions, dreams and philosophical ecstasy; cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, TLF, XIIII and XXXVII.
353. That is, philosophical ecstasy cannot claim to reveal infallible truth. Montaigne proceeds to emphasize the ‘asinine’ aspect of his own melancholy complexion (an antidote to all melancholic ecstasies).
354. Virgil, Aeneid, XI, 624.
355. Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune, 615 E; Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 123 (reading Nicetas for Hicetas). Montaigne’s three thousand years means from the Creation (dated about 4000 BC) to the time of Cleanthes and Nicetas.
356. The theory of Copernicus ‘saved the appearances’ as did that of Ptolemy: but Galileo later claimed to describe reality.
357. Lucretius, V, 1276 (Lambin, pp. 454–5).
358. Paracelsus (1493–1541). His works appeared posthumously (1575–88). He scorned traditional medicine absolutely.
359. Peletier, a poet and mathematician, doubtless explained the conic hyperbola and asymptotes (lines which draw ever nearer to a given curve but do not meet it within a finite distance). He was actively opposed to the renewal of Pyrrhonism.
360. Cicero suspended judgement over the Antipodes (Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 123); St Augustine rejected the idea (City of God, XVI, 9); but it never was heretical to believe in them.
361. Lucretius, V, 1412, (Lambin, pp. 462–3).
362. ’88 (in place of [C]): saying now? Aristotle says that all human opinions have existed in the past and will do so in the future an infinite number of other times: Plato, that they are to be renewed and come back into being after thirty-six thousand years. Epicurus… (Taken from Varchi, L’Hercolano. Montaigne replaced this with authorities taken from St Augustine or thought of because of him.)
363. Plato, Politicus, XIII, 270 AC; cf. St Augustine, City of God, XII, 14.
364. Herodotus, II, 142–3 (cf. St Augustine, City of God, XII, 13; J. Bodin, Methodus ad Hist. cognit., 1595, p. 293).
365. Origen, De Princ, 3, 5, 3; cf. St Augustine, City of God, XII, 14 (citing Solomon and Ecclesiastes; Isaiah is in the notes of Vivès), and XI, 23. The doctrine of a Creator who had not yet created was rejected by Neo-Platonists such as Proclus.
366. Plato, in the Timaeus, 33D–41E.
367. Texts cited after St Augustine, City of God, VIII, 5; XII, 10, 11, including the notes of Vivès.
368. Plutarch, Des oracles qui ont cessé, 342 D.
369. All the above compiled from Lopez de Gomara, L’Histoire générale des Indes.
370. A regular theme for reflection. Cf. J. Bodin, Methodus, V.
371. Vegetius, I, ii, apud Justus Lipsius, Politicorum, V, 10.
372. Cicero, De fato, IV, 7.
373. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Les Dicts notables des Anciens Roys… 188E; Herodotus, IX, 121. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, Cyrus Major, II.
374. Juvenal, Sat., X. 4.
375. Xenophon, Memorabilia, II, iii, 2: Plato, Alcibiades, II, 148 B–C. ’88: That is why the Christian, wiser and more humble and more aware of what he is, refers himself to his Creator to choose and command what he needs. Conjugium…
376. Juvenal, Sat., X, 352. Then [B]: he says… done’ and may chance not to…
377. The Lord’s Prayer (‘Thy will be done’) glossed with Ovid, Metam., XI, 128.
378. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xlvii.
379. Psalm 23 (22): 4; Juvenal, Sat., X, 346.
380. Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, iii, 2.
381. St Augustine, City of God, XIX, I – also exploited in the following paragraphs. (ibid., 1–4).
382. Cicero, De fin., V, v, 14.
383. Horace, Ep., II, ii, 61.
384. Cicero, De fin., V, v, 14, citing Hieronymus, the pupil of Aristotle.
385. Horace, Ep., I, vi, I.
386. Greatness of Soul is the subject of Nicomachaean Ethics, IV, iii, and of Eudemian Ethics, III, v (1232a f.).
387. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxxiii, 223–34 (for Archesilas), I, iv, 8; vi, 12; xii, 25–30 (for Ataraxia).
388. Justus Lipsius, the neo-Stoic moralist (1547–1606) was read by Montaigne and admired by him. After a period of conforming to Protestantism he became a Roman Catholic fundamentalist. For Turnebus, see pp. 157 and 491.
389. ’88: country, as Socrates’ oracle had taught him, that to do punctiliously one’s duty of piety according to the uses of one’s nation is equivalent to serving God. But…
390. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, V, vii, 1–3. Cf. La Boëtie on p. 219.
391. Allusion to religious settlements by Parliaments under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I.
392. Allusions to changing alliances and legitimacies in the French Wars of Religion.
393. Apollo (n. 389 above); Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, iii, I.
394. The conviction of Lambin also; cf. Introduction, p. xxxv ff.
395. Cf. Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace (Opera, 1703–1706, IV, 628 DE).
396. Aristotle’s doctrine of Natural Law came in for increased criticism as new peoples were discovered, but also because of inner inconsistencies; cf. Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, 1660, p. 221.
397. Protagoras was allegedly banished for atheistic impiety: Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xxiii, 63; Ariston of Chios was a Stoic inclined to cynicism; Thrasimacus, in Plato, Republic, 338 (Ficino, p. 535).
398. Ovid. Metam., X, 331, in Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, VII, 38. For context cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, xxiv, 203–17.
399. Cicero: De fin., V, xxi, 60 (now parsed differently).
400. Cf. ‘On habit: and on never easily changing a traditional law’, I, 23, after Herodotus, III, xii, etc.
401. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, xxiv, 204.
402. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, Aristippus V and I.
403. Virgil, Aeneid, III, 539.
404. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Solon, I, lxiii, 53; Erasmus, Apophthegmata: Socratica LIII. ’88 (in place of [C]):From this diversity of aspects there arises the fact that judgements are variously applied to the choice of objects.
405. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, xxiv, 200–203.
406. Juvenal, Sat., XV, 36.
407. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Les Regies et preceptes de Santd, 295 DE (condemning all vicious sexuality).
408. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xxxiii, 94; De fin., III, xx, 68; Seneca, Epist. CXXIII, 15 (condemning Stoic indiscretions); Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xxxiv, 71. Dicaearchus reproached Plato for his Symposium and Phaedrus; Montaigne takes all these quotations as allusions to irregular affaires; Marie de Gournay translates amores sanctos by amours illicites (‘illicit love-affaires’) which is, I think, the sense. ‘95 ‘98, etc.: for Dicaearchus, ‘Diogarchus’.
409. ’88: rejected. Everyone had heard tell of the shameless way of life of the Cynic philosophers. Chrysippus…
410. Cf. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Contredicts des philosophes Stoïques, 569 B (‘In the VIIth Book of his Offices he goes further, saying he will do a somersault three times, provided he be given a talent.’). ’88 (in place of [C]): breeches off. And that ‘honesty’ and ‘reverence’, as we call them, which make us hasten to hide some of our natural and rightful actions, not to dare to call things by their name or to fear to mention things we are allowed to do, could they not be said to be a guileful wantonness, invented in Venus’ own chambers so as to give more value and stimulus to her games? Is it not an allurement, a bait and a stimulus to voluptuousness? For usage makes us evidently feel that ceremony, modesty and difficulties are means of sharpening and inflaming such fevers as those. That is why some say…
411. Herodotus, VI, cxxix; Aelian, Var. hist., XII, 24.
412. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Crates Thebananus Cynicus, XVII.
413. Martial, III, lxx.
414. Martial, I, lxxiv, cited Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, XVI, II.
415. Source unknown.’88: planting cabbages. Solon is said to have been the first to give women freedom in his Laws to profit publicly from their bodies. And the philosophical school which most honoured Virtue did not in short impose any bridle on the practising of lust of all sorts except moderation… (Transferred by Montaigne to III, 5, ‘On some lines of Virgil’.)
416. St Augustine, City of God, XIV, 20 (defending the notion that shame is natural); Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Diogenes, VI, lxix and lviii (cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Diogenes Cynicus, XLVII) and Lives, Hipparchia, VI, cxvi. The same associations, with additional material, are found in Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, XV, 159.
417. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxix, 210–11; xxxii, 218; Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, vi, 79. (The refraction of a ‘bent oar’ was a major argument for sceptics.) Cf. I, 14, note 71.
418. Cf. Rabelais, Gargantua, TLF, Prologue, 87 f.’88 (in place of [C]): like. Homer is as great as you wish, but it is not possible that he intended to represent as many ideas as people attribute to him. Law-givers have divined in him instructions without number for their own concerns; so have military men; so have those who treat of the arts. Anyone on the…
419. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxx, 213–14. What follows is from Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxiv, 76; xlvi, 142.
420. Plato, cited Cicero (note 419), and Theaetetus, 186: knowledge is not in sensation but in reasoning upon sensation. Truth is ‘perceived’, not apprehended; it is not attainable from ‘opinion’.
421. Lucretius, V, 102 (Lambin, p. 382).
422. Lucretius, IV, 478, 482 (Lambin, pp. 308–11). This section of Lucretius is aimed at anyone who dares to think that ‘nothing is known’ (nil sciri); Lucretius, 469 ff. This fact lends piquancy to what follows: Montaigne, like Carneades, is about to use his opponent’s weapons against him.
423. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxvii, 87 and Plutarch, Contredicts des philosophes Stoïques, 562H–563A.
424. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 96–7. The whole of this section (36–163) forms the background to these pages.
425. Lucretius, IV, 486, 490.
426. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 95–6.
427. These’qualities were classified as ‘sympathies’ and ‘antipathies’ within nature and were fundamental to Renaissance science; cf. G. Fracastoro, De sympathia et antipathia rerum, 1554. For the magnet, cf. Rabelais, Quart Livre, TLF, LXII; for animals recognizing medical simples, ibid., LXII (drawing on Plutarch and Celio Calcagnini).
428. Seneca, Epist., CXXI, 19.
429. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxix, 210–11.
430. Lucretius, V, 577 (of the Moon, not the Sun; but the section starts (564) ‘Nec nimio solis major rota’ [The wheel of the Sun cannot be much larger than as perceived by our senses]). Lambin (p. 410) classes as ‘the most stolid and silly of the opinions of Epicurus that the Sun, Moon and Stars have the size they appear to have.’ He cites Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 124 (cf. Introduction, p. xli and Cicero, ibid., xxvi, 82).
431. Lucretius, IV, 379;386. (Lambin, pp. 300–2, explains: ‘Lucretius says that, if we are deceived in our seeing things, that is a defect of our minds, not of our eyes… For Epicurus wished the senses to be certain and true; see Cicero [Acad.] Lucullus, II [142 f.]; later we add material from Lucretius himself.’)
432. Cicero, Acad., Lucullus, II, xxv, 79–80; for the importance of the contention, cf. Aristotle, Metaph., XI, vi, 7 (1063a), a criticism of ‘Man as measure’ which, if accepted, would imply the truth of the notions for which Lucretius is to be cited – with disapproval.
433. Lucretius, IV, 499 (Lambin, pp. 300–2).
434. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxii, 101.
435. Lucretius, IV, 397; 389; 421 (Lambin, pp. 300–2; but in 390 reading praeter as propter); ‘defects of the mind are not defects of the senses’.
436. ’88: of religious reverence…
437. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Zeno, XXIV.
438. Attributed by Diogenes Laertius to Arcesilas (Lives, IV, xxxvi, 270).
439. Ovid, Remedia amoris, 343. (‘From the ocean’: that is, from pulverized sea–shells, used as face ‘powder’.)
440. Ovid, Metam, III, 424; X, 256.
441. Livy, XLIV, 6.
442. Democritus (whom Montaigne already mentions in I, 14: ‘That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them’, and I, 39: ‘On solitude’). Cf. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, X, xvii; Cicero, De fin., V, xxix, 87 (hesitating to believe it).
443. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Comment il fault oh, 24H–25A.
444. Cicero, De divinat, XXXVI, 80.
445. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Comment il fault refrener la colere, 57H–58A.
446. Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 470.
447. Lucretius, IV, 1155 (Lambin, pp. 358–9).
448. Lucretius, IV, 811 (Lambin, pp. 331–3, citing Cicero, Tusc. disput., in support).
449. Cf. Rabelais, Quart Livre, TLF, LXIV, derived from Celio Calcagnini.
450. Lucretius, IV, 636 (Lambin, p. 619)
451. Pliny, Hist. Nat…, XXXII, I.
452. Lucretius, IV, 333 (Lambin, pp. 296–7).
453. Medical deformation of hyposphagma; cited after Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 45. The following is from ibid., 45–7.
454. Lucretius, IV, 450 (Lambin, pp. 305–7, who alludes to Aristotle, Problemata, 3, for the explanation); Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, 47; Plato, Theatetus, 153b–154a.
455. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 50–1.
456. Lucretius, IV, 74 (Lambin, pp. 278–81) reading volitare for fluitare.
457. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 78–9; 106.
458. Ibid., I, xiii, 33–34.’88: acute. Sick people lend a bitter taste to sweet things; from which it transpires that we do not receive things as they are but, like this or that… (From Aristotle, Metaph., IV, v, 27 – dropped as a repetition).
459. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiii, 91–2.
460. Ibid., I, xiv, 48–9; Seneca, Quaest. Nat., I, xvi.
461. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 33; Lucretius, III, 703 (Lambin, pp. 237–8).
462. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 100–4. ’88: Waking man: Since that particular state, by endowing objects with a being different from the one they have, and since a jaundiced humour changes everything to yellow, is it not likely… (Then, for rightful state, ordinary state.)
463. Ibid., xiv, 102.
464. Lucretius, IV, 513 (Lambin, pp. 309–11).
465. Both sides in the religious wars claim to be the one true Church, so no Christian anywhere can remain impartial.
466. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 104–6.
467. Ibid., 115–17.
468. Ibid., II, vii, 89.
469. Ibid., II, vii, 72–5. A similar argument appealed to St Augustine (Contra academicos, II, 7); cf. also Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, II, 58–9.
470. Ibid., II, ix, 88–9: the climax to Sextus’ denial that appearances can be judged as probable, let alone true. It rules out dialectic as a means of telling truth from error (ibid., 94) and continues suspension of judgement (95).
471. This Platonic assertion forces man to go beyond the transient flux of things and to seek the unchanging Reality lying behind it. From now to the last paragraph Montaigne transcribes, with minor adaptations, a very large borrowing from Amyot’s translation of Plutarch: Que signifioit ce mot E’i (456H-357E); this is indicated here by continuous quotation marks: in the original no indication of any kind shows that this is a borrowing. (Even Marie de Gournay did not recognize it as such.) Departures from the original version by Amyot are indicated below. (Amyot’s French version differs markedly from modern interpretations of the original Greek of Plutarch.)
472. Plutarch, 356H: with true Being…
473. Plato, Theaetetus, 180E.
474. Not Pythagoras but Protagoras: cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxxii, 217.
475. Plutarch, Des communes conceptions contre les Stoïques, 586B—C. For Heraclitus, see Aristotle, Metaph., IV, v, 1010a.
476. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Pourquoi la justice divine differe quelquefois la punition des malefices, 264. (Some small changes to Amyot’s French here, to accommodate the interpolations; grammar and clarity suffer.)
477. Lucretius, V, 828 (Lambin, p. 426).
478. Five words of Amyot omitted and a phrase adapted (357B).
479. Small omission from Amyot (357B).
480. Omission: Amyot, 357C (‘like a sinking ship in which are contained generation and corruption’).
481. Montaigne adds the words ‘or born’ (ou nées) and omits, ‘intermingled with Time’ (357D).
482. The long borrowing from Plutarch ends here. The concluding words of the treatise On the E’i at Delphi emphasize its connection with Montaigne’s themes of self-knowledge and the abasement of Man: ‘And meanwhile it seems that this word E’i is somewhat opposed to the precept Know Thyself and also in some ways accordant and agreeable to it: the one is a kind of verbal astonishment and adoration before God, as being Eternal and Ever in Being, while the other is a warning and reminder to mortal man of the weakness and debility of his nature’ (358C).
483. Seneca, Quaest. nat., I (Preface), cited by Sebond, tr. Montaigne, 186r°.
’88: humanity.’ There is in all his Stoic school no saying truer than that one: but to make…
484. ’88: pulled up by divine grace: but not otherwise. (The closing words of the Apology until [C].)
485. Metamorphose may imply ‘transfiguration’: it certainly implies ‘transformation’ – the theme of the final pages of the last chapter (III, 13, ‘On experience’).