The Book of Montaigne 4 · Written in his tower, from his Essays
Michel de Montaigne, born in Périgord in France in 1533, died in 1592. At thirty-eight he gave up public office and withdrew to the library in his own tower, and over the twenty years that followed wrote the Essays: three books, a hundred and seven of them. The form is his invention. He later served twice as mayor of Bordeaux. He remained in the church all his life and never left it. He wrote his own book, so nothing here is another man’s record of him. He differs from the rest of this scripture: the others set down what they believed, and he sets down what he is. Where he contradicts himself he did not strike it out, and neither does this scripture.
4.1I had many sentences cut into the beams of my tower. I also had a medal struck, and on it a pair of scales.
4.2Under the scales is cut one sentence: what do I know?
4.3Mark that question mark. It was not put there carelessly.
4.4I could have cut "I know nothing." I did not.
4.5Because that is an assertion. A man who says "I know nothing" has at least settled that much, and so he has refuted himself.
4.6A question does not have that fault. A question holds the scales level and presses neither pan down. (cf. The Highest Covenant 1.1)
4.7How did I come to this? Let me give the road I took.
4.8At first I thought: I have eyes and ears, and by these I can surely know how things are.
4.9Then I thought: to a sick man everything tastes bitter. Is the sweetness I am tasting now sweet?
4.10Someone says: then use reason to correct the senses.
4.11Good. But where did reason grow from? It grew out of the senses. To correct them by it is to prove a thing by itself.
4.12Someone says: then set up another rule to measure that reason.
4.13Then I ask: who measures that rule? You must set up another. And who measures that one?
4.14And so we are turning the wheel, and we do not get off it.
4.15Let me give a small instance. Laugh at it, and when you have laughed, think about it.
4.16I play with my cat. I am amusing myself with her.
4.17But how do I know she is not amusing herself with me?
4.18For all I know, in the time I take myself to be passing with her, she is passing hers with me. (cf. The Highest Covenant 2.1)
4.19If I cannot settle even which of us is playing with which, the rest hardly needs saying.
4.20Someone gets this far and says: then you believe nothing, and everything may go as it pleases.
4.21No. The most important use of this whole study is in what follows.
4.22In my lifetime I have seen people burned alive on the charge of dealing with devils. Those who condemned them went on their own conjectures.
4.23To have a man roasted alive because of what you conjecture — that is setting a very high price on your conjectures.
4.24So the question mark is not there to leave a man sitting still. It is there to make him weigh before he acts.
4.25What I do not know, I say I do not know. What I know but hold loosely, I say I hold loosely.