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Neque gratiâ neque irá teneri poteft, quòd quæ talia essent imbecilla effent omnia.

From whence

comes our

Knowledge of

The Share we have in the Knowledge of Truth, whatever it be, is not acquired by our own Strength. This is what God has plainly given us to understand by the Witneffes he has chosen out of the common People, fimple and Truth. ignorant Men, to inform us of his wonderful Secrets.. Our Faith is not of our own acquiring, but purely the Gift of another's Bounty. 'Tis not by Reasoning, or by Virtue of our Understanding, that we have acquired our Religion, but by foreign Authority and Command; and the Weaknefs of our Judgment is of more Affistance to us in it, than the Strength of it; and our Blindnefs more than the Clearnefs of our Sight. 'Tis more Owing to our Ignorance, than to our Knowledge, that we know any Thing of Divine Wisdom. 'Tis no Wonder if our natural and terreftrial Faculties cannot conceive this fupernatural and celestial Knowledge. We can only bring, on our Part, Obedience and Submiffion: For

it is written, I will deftroy the Wisdom of the Wife, and will bring to nothing the Understanding of the • Prudent. Where is the Wife? Where is the Scribe? Where is the Difputer of this World? Hath not God made foolish the Wisdom of this World? For, after that, in the Wisdom of God, the World knew not God, it pleased God by the Foolishness of Preaching to fave them that believe." "

Finally, were I to examine, whether it be in the Power of Man to find out that which he seeks, and Whether 'tis in if that Search, wherein he has bufied him- Man's Power felf fo many Ages, has inriched him with to find out any new Ability, and any folid Truth, I be- Truth. lieve he will confefs to me, if he speaks from his Confcience, that all he has got by fo long a Difquifition, is only to have learned to know his own Weaknefs. We have only by long Study confirmed and verified the Ignorance we were in by Nature. The fame has happened to Men who are truly wife, which befals Ears of Corn: Q 2

1 Cor. i. 19, &c.

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They shoot up and raise their Heads ftraight and lofty, whilft they are empty; but, when they are full, and fwelled with Grain in Maturity, begin to flag and droop. So Men, having tried and founded all Things, and not having found, in that Mafs of Knowledge and Provision of fuch Variety, any Thing folid and firm, nor any Thing but Vanity, have quitted their Presumption, and acknowledged their State by Nature. 'Tis what Velleius reproaches Cotta and Cicero withal, That they had learned from Philo, that they had learned nothing. Pherecides, one of the seven Wife Men, writing from his DeathBed to Thales, faid, I have ordered my People after my Interment to carry my Writings to thee. If they please thee, and the other Sages, publish; if not, fupprefs them. They contain no Certainty with which I myself am fatisfied: Neither do I pretend to know the Truth, or to attain to it: I rather open than discover Things.' The wifeft Man' that ever was, being asked, What he knew, made Anfwer, That he knew this, that he knew nothing. By this he verified the Affertion, that the greatefl Part of what we know is the leaft of what we do not know, that is to fay, that even that which we think we know is but a Portion, and a very fmall Portion of our Ignorance. We know Things in Dreams, fays Plato, and are ignorant of them in Reality. Omnes pene veteres nihil cognofci, nihil percipi, nihil fciri poffe dixerunt: anguftos fenfus, imbecilles animos, brevia curricula vitæ, i, e. Almost all the Ancients have declared, that there is nothing to be known, nothing to be perceived nor underftood: That the Senfes are too limited, Minds too weak, and the Time of Life too fhort. And of Cicero himself, whose Merit was all owing to his Learning, Valerius fays, that in his old Age he began to defpife Letters, and that, when he applied to Study, it was without Dependence

• Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. i. c. 17.

S

P Cicero was one that attended the Lectures of this Philo, who was an Academic Philofopher.

Diog. Laert. lib. i. at the End of the Life of the Pherecides, fe&t. 122.
Socrates. Cic. Acad. Quæft. Lib. i. c. 4.

• Cic. Acad. Quæft. lib. i. c. 12.

pendence upon any one Sect, following what he thought probable, now in one Sect, then in another, evermore wavering under the Doubts of the Academy. Dicendum eft, fed ita ut nihil affirmem; quæram omnia, dubitans plerumque, et nihil diffidens. i. e. Something I muft fay (as he told his Brother) but without affirming any Thing; I inquire into all Things, but am generally doubting and diffident of myself. I should have too much of the best of the Argument, were I to confider Man in his common Way of Living, and in the Grofs; and yet I might do it by his own Rule, who judges of Truth, not by the Weight, but by the Number of Votes. There we will leave the Vulgar,

"Qui vigilans ftertit,

Mortua cui vita eft propè jam vivo átque videntiTM.

i. e.

Who when awake, his Soul but nods at best,
Life is little more than Death,

Whose very

More than one Half by lazy Sleep poffeft.

who neither feel nor judge themselves, and let most of their natural Faculties lie idle.

I will take Man in his fublimeft State. Let us view him in that fmall Number of excellent and

ledge to which the greatest Geniuffes have attained by

Of the Know

Study and Art.

felect Men, who, having been endowed with a curious and particular natural Talent, have moreover hardened and whetted it by Care, Study, and Art, and raised it to the highest Pitch of Wisdom to which it can poffibly arrive. They have adjusted their Souls to all Senfes and all Biaffes, have propped and fupported them with all the foreign Affiftance proper for them, and inriched and adorned them with all that they could borrow for their Advantage, both from within and without the World. Those are they in whom refides human Nature, to the utmost Degree of Perfection. They have regulated the World with Polity and Laws. They have inftructed it Q3

Cic. de Div. lib. ii. c. 3.

Lucret. lib. iii. v. 1061, ibid. v. 1059.

in

"Montaigne has tranfpofed thefe two Verfes of Lucretius to adapt them the more nicely to his Subject.

230 in the Arts and Sciences, and alfo by the Example of their admirable Manners. I fhall bring to my Account thofe Men only, their Teftimony and Experience. Let us fee how far they have proceeded, and on what they depended. The Maladies and Defects, that we fhall find amongst these Men, the World may boldly declare to be purely their own.

Whoever enters upon the Search of any Thing, comes at laft to this Point: He either fays, that All Philofophy he has found it, or that it is not to be found, divided into or that he is ftill in queft of it. The whole ihree Kinds. of Philofophy is divided into these three Kinds. Its Defign is to feek out Truth, Knowledge, and Certainty. The Periapatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, and others have thought they have found it. These established the Sciences which we have, and have treated of them as of Certainties. Clitomachus, Carneades, and the Academics defpaired in their Search, and were of Opinion, that Truth could not be conceived by our Understandings. These place all to the Account of human Frailty and Ignorance. This Sect has had the most numerous and the most noble Followers.

What was the
Profeffion of the
Pyrrhonians.

Pyrrho, and other Sceptics or Doubters, whose Doctrines were held by many of the Ancients, as deduced from Homer, the feven Wife Men, Archilochus, Euripides, Zeno, Democritus, and Xenophon, fay, that they are ftill in the Search of Truth. Thefe judge that they, who think they have found it, are vaftly deceived; and that it is alfo too daring a Vanity in the fecond Sort to affirm, that 'tis not in the Power of Man to attain to it. For this establishing the Measure of our Strength, to know and judge of the Difficulty of Things, is a great and extreme Degree

of

In this very Stile, does Sextus Empiricus, the famous Pyrrhonian, from whom Montaigne has taken many Things, begin his Treatife of the Pyrrhonian Hypothefis; and infers, as Montaigne does, that there are three general Methods of philofophizing, the one Dogmatic, the other Academic, and the other Sceptic. Some affirm they have found the Truth, others declare it to be above our Comprehenfion, and others, are still in queft of it,

3

of Knowledge, of which they doubt, whether Man is capable.

quoque nefcit,

• Nil fciri quifquis putat, id
An fciri poffit, quo fe nil fcire fatetur.

i. e.

He that fays nothing can be known, o'erthrows
His own Opinion, for he nothing knows,

So knows not that.

The Ignorance that knows itself, that judges and condemns itself, is not total Ignorance, which to be, it must be ignorant of itself. So that the Profeffion of the Pyrrbonians is to waver, doubt, and inquire, to be fure of no. thing, and to be anfwerable for nothing. Of the three Operations of the Soul, the Imagination, the Appetite, and the Confent, they admit of the two first, but, as for the laft, they support and maintain it ambiguously, without Inclination or Approbation either of one Thing or another, 'tis fo trivial. Zeno defcribed the State of his Imagination, according to this Divifion of the Faculties of the Mind. The Hand, extended and open, indicated Appearance; the Hand half fhut, and the Fingers a little crooked, fhewed Confent; the Right Fift clinched, Comprehenfion; and, when with the Left-Hand he yet preffed the Fist closer, Knowledge'.

The Advan

tage of Pyrrho

Now this upright and inflexible State of the Opinion of the Pyrrhonians, receiving all Objects, without Application or Confent, leads them to their Ataraxy, which is a peaceable State of Life, compofed and exempt from the Agitations which we receive by the Impreffion of that Opinion and Knowledge which we think we have of Things; from whence arife Fear, Avarice, Envy, immoderate Defires, Ambition, Pride, Superftition, the Love of Novelty, Rebellion, Difobedience, Obftinacy, and most of the bodily Evils. Nay, and by that they exempt themselves from the Jealousy of their Discipline. For they debate after a very gentle Manner, and in their DifQ 4 putes

Lucret. Lib. iv. v. 471.

Cic. Acad. Quæft. Lib. iv. c. 47.

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