We ought to have some re the brute beasts. tion, and I am ready to resign that imaginary royalty which is ascribed to us over the other creatures. Be all this as it will, there is, nevertheless, a certain kind of respect, and a general obligation of hugard for manity, which attaches us, not only to the beasts that have life and a sense of feeling, but also to trees and plants. We owe justice to men, and favour and good usage to other creatures that are susceptible of it: there is a certain correspondence, and a mutual obligation between them and us. I am not ashamed to confess, that such is the tenderness of my nature, that I cannot well refuse to play with my dog when he caresses me, or desires it, though it be out of stances of season, Remark- The Turks have alms-houses and hospitals for able in- beasts. The Romans made public provision for the this sort of nourishment of geese, after the watchfulness of one respect. of them had saved their Capitol. The Athenians made a decree, that the mules* which had been employed in the building of the temple, called Heca, tompedon, should be free, and allowed to graze any where without molestation. It was the common practice of the Agrigentinest to give solemn interment to their favourite beasts, as horses of some rare qualities, dogs, and birds, which they made a profit of, and even such as had served for the diversion of their children: and the magnificence which they commonly displayed in all other things, appeared particularly in the number of costly monuments erected to this very purpose, which remained for a show several ages after. The Egyptians‡ interred wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, and cats in sacred places, embalmed their bodies, and wore mourning at their death. CimonS gavell an honourable burial to the mares with which he had won three prizes at the * Plutarch, in the Life of Cato the Censor, ch. 3. + Ibid. Father of Miltiades, Herodot. lib, vi. p. 419. Olympic races. Old Xanthippus* caused his dog to be buried on a promontory near the sea side, which has, ever since, retained its name. And Plutarch|| says, that he made conscience of selling and sending to the shambles, for a small profit, an ox that had served him a good while. CHAPTER III. its useful An Apology for Raimond de Sebonde. LEARNING is, in truth, a possession of very Learning. great importance and utility, and they who despise it, plainly discover their stupidity; yet I do not prize it at that excessive rate as some men do, particularly Herillus the philosopher, who therein placed the sovereign good, and maintained, that it was alone sufficient to make us wise and happy; which I do not believe, nor what has been said by others, that learning is the mother of all virtue, and that all vice is produced from ignorance. If this be true, it is a point liable to a tedious discussion. My house has been a long time open to men of learning, and is very well known by them; for my father, who was the master of it fifty years, and more, being warmed with that zeal with which king Francis I. had newly embraced literature, and brought it into esteem, spared no pains nor expense to get an acquaintance with men of learning, treating them, at his house, as persons sacred, who had divine wisdom by some special inspiration, collecting their sentences and sayings as so many oracles, and with the more veneration and religion, as he was the less qualified to judge of them; for he had no knowledge of letters any more than his predecessors. For my part, of Rai mond de Sebonde, 66 I love them very well, but do not adore them. Amongst others, Peter Bunel, a man of great reputation for learning, in his time, having, with others of his class, spent some days at Montaigne with my father, presented him, at his departure, with a book, The work entitled, Theologia Naturalis, sive Liber Creaturarum Magistri Raimondi de Sebonde: i. e. "Natural Theology, or a Treatise on the Animal Creation, by Master Raimond de Sebonde." As both the Italian and Spanish languages were familiar to my father, and the book was written in Spanish, larded with Latin terminations, M. Bunel hoped that, with a very little assistance, my father would make it turn out to his account; and he recommended it to him as a very useful book, and proper for the juncture of time in which he gave it to him, which was when the innovations of Luther began to be in vogue, and in many places to stagger our ancient faith. Herein he judged very right, forseeing plainly, by the dictates of reason, that, as the distemper appeared at its breaking out, it would easily turn into execrable atheism for the vulgar, not being qualified to judge of things as they are in themselves, but being governed by accidents and appearances, after they have been once inspired with the boldness to contemn and controul those opinions which they held before in extreme reverence, particularly such as concern their salvation, and, after any of the articles of their religion are brought into question, are soon apt to reject all the other articles of their belief, as equally uncertain, and shake off the impressions they had received from the authority of the laws, or the reve rence of ancient custom, as a tyrannical yoke: Nam cupidè conculcatur nimis antè metutum.* resolving to admit nothing, for the future, without *Lucret. lib. v. ver. 1139. the interposition of their own decree and particular consent. from the French, by Montaigne. My father, a few days before his death, happening Translated to meet with this book under a heap of other papers Spanish that were laid by, commanded me to translate it for into him into French. It is good to translate such authors as this, wherein there is scarce any thing to represent, except the matter; but as for those books wherein the grace and elegancy of language are mainly affected, they are dangerous to undertake, for fear of translating them into a weaker idiom. It was an undertaking new, and quite strange to me; but happening, at that time, to have leisure, and not being able to resist the command of the best father. that ever was, I did it as well as I could, and so much to his satisfaction, that he ordered it to be printed, which also, after his death, was performed.* I was charmed with the author's fine imagination, the regular contexture of his work, and the extraordinary piety of his design. Because many people take a pleasure in reading it, particularly the ladies, to whom we owe most service, I have often been ready to assist them, in defeating two main objections to this their favourite author. His design is bold; for he undertakes to establish and verify all the articles of the Christian religion, against the *Montaigne, speaking of this first edition of it in the first edition of his Essays, at Bourdeaux, in 1580, and that of 1588, in quarto, says, it appears to have been carelessly printed, by reason of the infinite number of errors of the press, committed by the printer, who had the sole care of it. This translation was reprinted, and, no doubt, more correctly, because Montaigne has purged it of the printer's errors in the former. I have an edition printed at Paris in 1611, and said to be translated by Michael Seignour de Montaigne, knight of the king's orders, and a gentleman of his chamber in ordinary; the last edition revised and corrected. And, indeed, this is a very correct edition. There is such a perspicuity, spirit, and natural vivacity in this translation, that it has all the air of an original. Montaigne has added nothing of his own to it, but a short dedication of it to his father, wherein he owns, that he undertook this work by his order. The reader will find this dedication at the end of the third volume of this edition of the Essays. swer. atheists, from reasons that are human and natural; wherein, to say the truth, he is so successful, that Í do not think it possible to do better upon the subject, and believe that he has been equalled by none.* This work seeming to me too sublime and too elegant for an author whose name is so little known, and of whom all that we learn, is that he was a Spaniard, who professed physic at Thoulouse about two hundred years ago, I once asked Adrian Turnebus, a man of universal knowledge, what he thought of this treatise. The answer he made to me was, that he believed it to be some extract from Thomas Aquinas; for that, in truth, none but a genius like his, accompanied with infinite learning, and wonderful subtlety, was capable of such ideas. So it is, that, be the author and inventor who he will (though without greater reason than has yet appeared, it would not be right to strip Sebonde of this title), he was a man of great sufficiency, and of very fine parts. The objec- The first fault they find with his work is his asserttion made "That Christians are in the wrong to endeato the book; ing, and Mon-vour to make human reasoning the basis of their taigne's an- belief, since the object of it is only conceived by "faith, and by a special inspiration of the divine grace." In this objection there seems to be a pious zeal, and, for this reason, it is absolutely necessary that we should endeavour, with the greatest mildness and respect, to satisfy those who have advanced it. This were a task more proper for a man well versed in divinity, than for me who know nothing of it. Nevertheless, this is my judgment, that, in a point of so divine and sublime a nature, and so far transcending human understanding, as this truth, with which it has pleased the divine goodness to enlighten us, there is great need that he should also Grotius's treatise of the Truth of the Christian Religion was not yet published, wherein that great man expressly says, that this subject had been before treated by Raimond de Sebonde, Philosophica Subtilitate. |