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491 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1982
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October 21, 2022“There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly, and no knowledge so arduous as how to live this life well and naturally; and the most barbarous of our maladies is to despise our being.”, p.356 in “Of Experience”
January 18, 2017
O.K. -- Montaigne is a combination of a Stoic and a (philosophical) Pragmatist, and he quotes Lucretius and Cicero extensively: I like him very much; what a surprise. Five stars.
See also:
A CRITIC AT LARGE
JANUARY 16, 2017 ISSUE - The New Yorker
MONTAIGNE ON TRIAL
What do we really know about the philosopher who invented liberalism?
By Adam Gopnik
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
"The humanism that has to exist before liberalism can even begin is what Montaigne is there to show us still."
The third book I have finished this year. The thirty-ninth of seventy-eight titles in Jan's "great books" collection that I am sworn to read in retirement.
"On the Disadvantage of Greatness" is perhaps my favorite essay. It is unfortunate that President-elect Trump (apparently) does not read Montaigne.
Montaigne does make the typical Christian error (p. 139) on free will. The Christian God gives us the autonomy to, within sublunary constraints, purse what we want. We do not have the free will to chose what we want. More on this below.
He does not necessarily see the lack of "free will" negatively: p. 331. Besides, it is more honorable, and closer to divinity, to be guided and obliged to act lawfully by a natural and inevitable condition, than to act lawfully by accidental and fortuitous liberty; and safer to lead the reins of our conduct to nature than to ourselves.
Montaigne ' description (p. 141 - 142) of Mohammedans suggests that while the current prevalence of terrorist acts is new, the compatibility with at least some branches of Islam is not new. See also p. 390 on paradise.
I have not captured the far too many examples of rebarbative misogyny (p. 59 - 60, 70 - 71, etc. capture the ubiquity of misogynistic thought in the classics). We know better now. Engage in retrodiction. Eschew presentism. See also p. 248 on marriage and love.
To his considerable credit (p. 299) - I say that males and females are cast in the same mold, except for education and custom, . . . . The pot calls the kettle black.
The treatment of nobility (p. 249) shows this to be a medieval work: the Middle Ages were not over yet. Yet on p. 414 Montaigne shows his intellectual modernity, signaling the beginning of the end.
Please remind me to look on p. 236 - 237 (on spectacles of gladiators) the next time I am declaiming against professional football and need a quote or two.
There is a splendid rant on size and sexual appetite p. 258 - 259. See also Lucretius on "positions" p. 342.
Introduction
p. xi. If one had to characterize his philosophy of life, one would be inclined to describe his though as a strange mixture of stoicism and pragmatism.
To the Reader
On Man
Of Liars
p. 10. Old men especially are dangerous, whose memory of things past remains, but who have lost memory of their repetitions.
p.12. Pythagoreans make out the good to be certain and finite, evil infinite and uncertain.
p. 21. However, if we are to believe a Church Father, "Death is not an evil, unless what follows it is" (Saint Augustine).
p. 27. And when Thales is asked why he does not marry, he answers that he does not like to leave any descendants.
p.32. Happy is the man who has regulated his needs in such just measure that his wealth can satisfy them without his care and trouble and without the spending or acquiring of it interrupting his pursuit of other occupations better suited to him, more tranquil, and more congenial.
That Our Happiness Must Not Be Judged Until After Our Death
p. 39. Our law courts often send criminals to be executed at the place where the crime was committed. On the way, take them past beautiful houses, give them as good a time as you like --
One Man's Profit Is Another Man's Harm
p. 55. Whenever anything is changed and leaves its bounds,
Instantly this brings death to that which was before.
Lucretius
Of Friendship
p. 55. . . . . , nor could the admonitions and corrections, which are one of the chief duties of friendship, . . . .
p.61. . . . . ; which corresponds pretty well to the Stoic definition of love: "Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty" (Cicero).
p. 63. If, in the friendship I speak of, it would be the one who received the benefit who would oblige his friend. . . . .
p. 73. This idea has some relation to that other very ancient one, which consists in thinking that we gratify heaven and nature by committing massacre and homicide, a belief universally embraced in all religions.
On the Uncertainty of Our Judgment
p. 75. "The man prepared to die will not be beaten cheaply." -- Lucan
So we are learning.
Of Age
p. 83. As for me, I hold it as certain that age my mind and my body have rather shrunk than grown, and gone backward rather than forward.
p.87. Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.
Of Books
p. 91. And so the opinion I give of them is to declare the measure of my sight, not the meaning of things.
See Protagoras!
p. 96. As for Cicero, I am of the common opinion, that except for learning there was not much excellence in his soul. He was a good citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat jesting men, such as they are, are apt to be; but of softness and ambitious vanity he had in truth a great deal.
See also p. 145 and 418.
p. 107. To this theme could be joined the opinion of an ancient, that punishments rather whet vices, than dull their edge; that they do not engender a concern to do well -- that is the work of reason and discipline -- but only a concern not to be caught doing evil.
p. 111. What a satisfaction it would be to hear someone tell me, in this way, of the habits, the face, the expression, the favorite remarks, and the fortunes of my ancestors!
p.125 - 126. Socrates says that the young should get instruction; that grown men should practise doing good; and that old men should withdraw from all civil and military occupations and live at their own discretion, without being tied down to any fixed office.
p. 129. We must hold on, tooth and nail, to our enjoyment of the pleasures of life, which our years tear, one after the other, from our hands:
p.132. The princes of the Ottoman race, the first race in the world in the fortunes of war, have warmly embraced this opinion.
p. 139. Among our other disputes, that of Fatum has come in. And to attach things to come and even our will to a certain and inevitable necessity, people still use the argument of bygone days; "Since God forces that all things are to happen thus, as undoubtedly He does, it is therefore necessary that they happen thus."
Jim - Yes! To be consistent with Christian doctrine, it is necessary that they happen thus. Time does not pass for the Christian God. The Christian God exists outside time. The Christian God sees the entire space-time continuum, as It created it, in a single glance.
"The Freedom of the Will," by Jonathan Edwards, p. 144. . . . . yet there is no such thing as before or after in God, . . . . .
To which our masters reply that to see something happen, as we do, and as God likewise (for, all things being present to him, He sees rather than He sees rather than foresees), is not to force it to happen; indeed, we see because things happen, and things do not happened because we see. The event causes the knowledge, not the knowledge the event.
Jim - Montaigne makes the fatal mistake of anthropomorphizing God. The analogy to creatures such as we, for whom (at least the illusion of) time passes is not applicable to a Being who sees all of eternity in a single glance.
Jim - Again, time does not pass for the Christian God, so things either exist in the space-time continuum or they do not. See John 8:58; "Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am." In his Confessions, Augustine is repeatedly pellucid that time does pass for the Christian God. (See also Kant's "pure intuitions of space and time.") Edwards does much better on:
"The Freedom of the Will," by Jonathan Edwards, p. 328. . . . .all things are perfectly and equally in his view from eternity, hence it will follow that his designs or purpose are not things formed anew, founded on any new views or appearance, but are all eternal purposes.
What we see happen, happens; but it could have happened otherwise.
Jim - In this Montaigne falls into a Wittgenstein "language confusion." He is making the entirely unsupported assumption that people could choose differently than they do. Yet there never has been, and, never will, be an example of someone choosing differently than they did.
And God, in the roll book of the causes of events which He has in His foreknowledge, has also those which are called fortuitous, and the voluntary ones, which depend on the freedom He has given to our will; and He knows that we shall err, because we shall have willed to err.
Jim - According the Christian doctrine God (who can only be good and just) and Christ (who had to be without sin for His atonement to be valid for us) must act in accordance with their nature. We act in accordance with our God-give (genotype and phenotype) nature. Yes - we can exercise the opportunity to do as we please. No we cannot, anymore than God or Christ can, change what pleases us. Does Montaigne think I have greater free will than God or Christ?
"The Freedom of the Will," by Jonathan Edwards, p. 325. . . .the Calvinistic doctrine of the total depravity and corruption of man's nature, whereby his heart is wholly under the power of sin, and he is utterly unable, without the interposition of sovereign grace savingly to love God, believe in Christ, or do any thing that is truly good and acceptable in God's sight.
"The Freedom of the Will," by Jonathan Edwards, p. 12 - 13 . . . . the particular temper which the mind has by nature, or that has been introduced and established by education, example, custom, or some other means, or the frame of state that the mind is in on a particular occasion.
Jim - Yes. My genotype and phenotype are determined by the God who made me. I have the autonomy to pursue what I want, I do not have the freedom of will to change what I want.
Jim - I could design a small vehicle with a processor and software, so that it could move through an environment, recharge itself when "hungry," etc. For a well defined environment I would be omniscient and able to predict its behavior. What would be very strange indeed is if I subsequently decided to "burn" it for operating as I had programed it to. This would not give the vehicle, or Job, justification to complain about their fates: creations owe their existence to their creators. Still - it would be strange.
On Principle
Of Custom, and Not Easily Changing an Accepted Law
p. 155. Habit is the most effective teacher of all things. (Pliny)
Jim - See also Aristotle: We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence, then, is not an act but rather a habit.
p. 158. Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from the essence of nature.
The Education of Children
p. 177. Only the fools are certain and assured.
p. 182. But let my guide remember the object of his task, and let him not impress on his pupil so much the date of the destruction of Carthage as the characters of Hannibal and Scipio, not so much where Marcellus dies, as why his death there showed him unworthy of his duty. Let him be taught not so much there histories as how to judge them.
Teach the student character and critical thinking? What a concept?
It Is Folly to Measure the True and False by Our Own Capacity
p. 206. We must judge with more reverence the infinite power of nature, and with more consciousness of our ignorance and weakness.
p. 207. We must either submit completely to the authority of our ecclesiastical government, or do without it completely. It is not for us to decide what portion of obedience we owe it.
Of Cannibals
p. 209. . . . so many personages greater than ourselves having been mistaken about this one.
Jim - The discovery of the New World displayed the fallibility of "The Ancients" on geography, and along with discoveries through dissection, lead to the passing of Scholastic Philosophy as the dominant school of the High Middle Ages.
p. 218. Nor did those four sister victories, the fairest that the sun ever sent eyes on - Salamis, Plateau, Mycale, and Sicily - ever dare match all their combined glory against the glory of the annihilation of King Leonidas and his men at the pass of Thermopylae.
On the Custom of Wearing Clothes
On Sumptuary Laws
Of Ancient Customs
On Evil Means Employed to a Good End
p. 237. The early Romans used criminal for such examples; but later they used innocent slaves, and even freemen who sold themselves of this purpose; finally Roman senators and knights, and even women:
On Some Verses of Virgil
Jim - Excellent on old age.
p. 251. For not only inconvenient things, but anything at all, however ugly and vicious and repulsive, can become acceptable through some condition or circumstance: so inane is our human posture.
p. 252. There is a destiny that rules
The parts your clothes conceal; for if the stars abhor you,
Unheard-of length of member will do nothing for you
Juvenal
p. 258. What is the point of the show we make even now of the shape of our pieces under our galligaskins, and what is far worse, often by falsehood and imposture beyond their natural size?
p. 277 - 287. Now then, leaving books aside and speaking more materially and simply, I find that all love is nothing else but the thirst for sexual enjoyment in a desired object, and Venus nothing else but the pleasure of discharging our vessels - a pleasure that becomes vicious either by immoderation or by indiscretion.
p. 287. that action involves more effort than submission; and that consequently they are always able to satisfy our needs, whereas it may be otherwise when it is up to us to satisfy theirs.
p. 294. May we not say that there is nothing in us during this earthly imprisonment that is purely either corporeal or spiritual, . . . .
Of the Disadvantage of Greatness
Perhaps my favorite essay by Montaigne. It is too bad that President-elect Trump (apparently) does not read Montaigne.
On Knowledge and Pride
Apology for Raymond Second
p. 311. The first criticism that they make of is work is that Christians do themselves harm in trying to support their belief by human reasons, since it is conceived only by faith and by a particular inspiration of divine grace.
p. 317. And it is not credible that this whole machine should not have on it some marks imprinted by the hand of this great architect, and that there should not be some picture in the things of this world that somewhat represents the workman who has built and formed them.
Yes. This is a great statement of the two tenets of Positive Deism. Atheism is intellectually incoherent.
p. 322. This too is fated, that I write of fate; Manilius
p. 341. . . . To chose out of a number of puppies the one that you should save as the best, all you need is to put the mother in position to chose him herself;
p. 362. As long as he thinks he has some resources and power by himself, never will man recognize what he owes to his master;
p. 371. It is for God alone to know himself and to interpret His works.
Positive Deism! Also p. 384 - 385.
p. 386. Thales, who first inquired into this matter, thought God a spirit who made all things of water.
I doubt that it was Montaigne intended, but the second half of p. 396 is a fine statement of the first tenet of Critical Deism.
p. 402. When we say that the infinity of the centuries both past and to come is to God but an instant, that His goodness, wisdom, power, are the same thing as His essence -- out tongues say it, but our intelligence does not apprehend it.
More support for Critical Deism.
p. 411. Plato is but a disconnected poet.
p. 414. We do not ask whether this is true, but whether it has beenough understood this way or that.
The beginning of the end of the Middle Ages.
p. 417. For the soul's nature is unknown on earth,
Whether 'tis born, or enters in at birth,
Whether, by death destroyed, with us it dies,
Or 'mid vast caves and shades of Orcus flies,
Or, by divine decree, slips into beasts.
Lucretius
p. 419 alludes to Gnosisticism.
p. 425. . . . generation of the soul . . . . born at the moment the body was capable of receiving it;
p. 440. This great and holy image could not be in so mean a domicile, unless God prepares it for that purpose, unless God reforms and fortifies it by His particular and supernatural grace and favor.
Copercinus on p. 447.
p. 462. . . . Diogenes, practicing masturbation in public, . . . .
p.464. Protagoras thought that "what seemed to each man was true for each man."
p. 465. Now all knowledge makes its way into us through our senses;
p. 481. For which reason it would be a sin to say of God, Who is the only One that is that He was or will be.
See the last page for the last word on Protagoras and Christian Faith.
See also:
A CRITIC AT LARGE
JANUARY 16, 2017 ISSUE - The New Yorker
MONTAIGNE ON TRIAL
What do we really know about the philosopher who invented liberalism?
By Adam Gopnik
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
"The humanism that has to exist before liberalism can even begin is what Montaigne is there to show us still."
The third book I have finished this year. The thirty-ninth of seventy-eight titles in Jan's "great books" collection that I am sworn to read in retirement.
"On the Disadvantage of Greatness" is perhaps my favorite essay. It is unfortunate that President-elect Trump (apparently) does not read Montaigne.
Montaigne does make the typical Christian error (p. 139) on free will. The Christian God gives us the autonomy to, within sublunary constraints, purse what we want. We do not have the free will to chose what we want. More on this below.
He does not necessarily see the lack of "free will" negatively: p. 331. Besides, it is more honorable, and closer to divinity, to be guided and obliged to act lawfully by a natural and inevitable condition, than to act lawfully by accidental and fortuitous liberty; and safer to lead the reins of our conduct to nature than to ourselves.
Montaigne ' description (p. 141 - 142) of Mohammedans suggests that while the current prevalence of terrorist acts is new, the compatibility with at least some branches of Islam is not new. See also p. 390 on paradise.
I have not captured the far too many examples of rebarbative misogyny (p. 59 - 60, 70 - 71, etc. capture the ubiquity of misogynistic thought in the classics). We know better now. Engage in retrodiction. Eschew presentism. See also p. 248 on marriage and love.
To his considerable credit (p. 299) - I say that males and females are cast in the same mold, except for education and custom, . . . . The pot calls the kettle black.
The treatment of nobility (p. 249) shows this to be a medieval work: the Middle Ages were not over yet. Yet on p. 414 Montaigne shows his intellectual modernity, signaling the beginning of the end.
Please remind me to look on p. 236 - 237 (on spectacles of gladiators) the next time I am declaiming against professional football and need a quote or two.
There is a splendid rant on size and sexual appetite p. 258 - 259. See also Lucretius on "positions" p. 342.
Introduction
p. xi. If one had to characterize his philosophy of life, one would be inclined to describe his though as a strange mixture of stoicism and pragmatism.
To the Reader
On Man
Of Liars
p. 10. Old men especially are dangerous, whose memory of things past remains, but who have lost memory of their repetitions.
p.12. Pythagoreans make out the good to be certain and finite, evil infinite and uncertain.
p. 21. However, if we are to believe a Church Father, "Death is not an evil, unless what follows it is" (Saint Augustine).
p. 27. And when Thales is asked why he does not marry, he answers that he does not like to leave any descendants.
p.32. Happy is the man who has regulated his needs in such just measure that his wealth can satisfy them without his care and trouble and without the spending or acquiring of it interrupting his pursuit of other occupations better suited to him, more tranquil, and more congenial.
That Our Happiness Must Not Be Judged Until After Our Death
p. 39. Our law courts often send criminals to be executed at the place where the crime was committed. On the way, take them past beautiful houses, give them as good a time as you like --
One Man's Profit Is Another Man's Harm
p. 55. Whenever anything is changed and leaves its bounds,
Instantly this brings death to that which was before.
Lucretius
Of Friendship
p. 55. . . . . , nor could the admonitions and corrections, which are one of the chief duties of friendship, . . . .
p.61. . . . . ; which corresponds pretty well to the Stoic definition of love: "Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty" (Cicero).
p. 63. If, in the friendship I speak of, it would be the one who received the benefit who would oblige his friend. . . . .
p. 73. This idea has some relation to that other very ancient one, which consists in thinking that we gratify heaven and nature by committing massacre and homicide, a belief universally embraced in all religions.
On the Uncertainty of Our Judgment
p. 75. "The man prepared to die will not be beaten cheaply." -- Lucan
So we are learning.
Of Age
p. 83. As for me, I hold it as certain that age my mind and my body have rather shrunk than grown, and gone backward rather than forward.
p.87. Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.
Of Books
p. 91. And so the opinion I give of them is to declare the measure of my sight, not the meaning of things.
See Protagoras!
p. 96. As for Cicero, I am of the common opinion, that except for learning there was not much excellence in his soul. He was a good citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat jesting men, such as they are, are apt to be; but of softness and ambitious vanity he had in truth a great deal.
See also p. 145 and 418.
p. 107. To this theme could be joined the opinion of an ancient, that punishments rather whet vices, than dull their edge; that they do not engender a concern to do well -- that is the work of reason and discipline -- but only a concern not to be caught doing evil.
p. 111. What a satisfaction it would be to hear someone tell me, in this way, of the habits, the face, the expression, the favorite remarks, and the fortunes of my ancestors!
p.125 - 126. Socrates says that the young should get instruction; that grown men should practise doing good; and that old men should withdraw from all civil and military occupations and live at their own discretion, without being tied down to any fixed office.
p. 129. We must hold on, tooth and nail, to our enjoyment of the pleasures of life, which our years tear, one after the other, from our hands:
p.132. The princes of the Ottoman race, the first race in the world in the fortunes of war, have warmly embraced this opinion.
p. 139. Among our other disputes, that of Fatum has come in. And to attach things to come and even our will to a certain and inevitable necessity, people still use the argument of bygone days; "Since God forces that all things are to happen thus, as undoubtedly He does, it is therefore necessary that they happen thus."
Jim - Yes! To be consistent with Christian doctrine, it is necessary that they happen thus. Time does not pass for the Christian God. The Christian God exists outside time. The Christian God sees the entire space-time continuum, as It created it, in a single glance.
"The Freedom of the Will," by Jonathan Edwards, p. 144. . . . . yet there is no such thing as before or after in God, . . . . .
To which our masters reply that to see something happen, as we do, and as God likewise (for, all things being present to him, He sees rather than He sees rather than foresees), is not to force it to happen; indeed, we see because things happen, and things do not happened because we see. The event causes the knowledge, not the knowledge the event.
Jim - Montaigne makes the fatal mistake of anthropomorphizing God. The analogy to creatures such as we, for whom (at least the illusion of) time passes is not applicable to a Being who sees all of eternity in a single glance.
Jim - Again, time does not pass for the Christian God, so things either exist in the space-time continuum or they do not. See John 8:58; "Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am." In his Confessions, Augustine is repeatedly pellucid that time does pass for the Christian God. (See also Kant's "pure intuitions of space and time.") Edwards does much better on:
"The Freedom of the Will," by Jonathan Edwards, p. 328. . . . .all things are perfectly and equally in his view from eternity, hence it will follow that his designs or purpose are not things formed anew, founded on any new views or appearance, but are all eternal purposes.
What we see happen, happens; but it could have happened otherwise.
Jim - In this Montaigne falls into a Wittgenstein "language confusion." He is making the entirely unsupported assumption that people could choose differently than they do. Yet there never has been, and, never will, be an example of someone choosing differently than they did.
And God, in the roll book of the causes of events which He has in His foreknowledge, has also those which are called fortuitous, and the voluntary ones, which depend on the freedom He has given to our will; and He knows that we shall err, because we shall have willed to err.
Jim - According the Christian doctrine God (who can only be good and just) and Christ (who had to be without sin for His atonement to be valid for us) must act in accordance with their nature. We act in accordance with our God-give (genotype and phenotype) nature. Yes - we can exercise the opportunity to do as we please. No we cannot, anymore than God or Christ can, change what pleases us. Does Montaigne think I have greater free will than God or Christ?
"The Freedom of the Will," by Jonathan Edwards, p. 325. . . .the Calvinistic doctrine of the total depravity and corruption of man's nature, whereby his heart is wholly under the power of sin, and he is utterly unable, without the interposition of sovereign grace savingly to love God, believe in Christ, or do any thing that is truly good and acceptable in God's sight.
"The Freedom of the Will," by Jonathan Edwards, p. 12 - 13 . . . . the particular temper which the mind has by nature, or that has been introduced and established by education, example, custom, or some other means, or the frame of state that the mind is in on a particular occasion.
Jim - Yes. My genotype and phenotype are determined by the God who made me. I have the autonomy to pursue what I want, I do not have the freedom of will to change what I want.
Jim - I could design a small vehicle with a processor and software, so that it could move through an environment, recharge itself when "hungry," etc. For a well defined environment I would be omniscient and able to predict its behavior. What would be very strange indeed is if I subsequently decided to "burn" it for operating as I had programed it to. This would not give the vehicle, or Job, justification to complain about their fates: creations owe their existence to their creators. Still - it would be strange.
On Principle
Of Custom, and Not Easily Changing an Accepted Law
p. 155. Habit is the most effective teacher of all things. (Pliny)
Jim - See also Aristotle: We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence, then, is not an act but rather a habit.
p. 158. Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from the essence of nature.
The Education of Children
p. 177. Only the fools are certain and assured.
p. 182. But let my guide remember the object of his task, and let him not impress on his pupil so much the date of the destruction of Carthage as the characters of Hannibal and Scipio, not so much where Marcellus dies, as why his death there showed him unworthy of his duty. Let him be taught not so much there histories as how to judge them.
Teach the student character and critical thinking? What a concept?
It Is Folly to Measure the True and False by Our Own Capacity
p. 206. We must judge with more reverence the infinite power of nature, and with more consciousness of our ignorance and weakness.
p. 207. We must either submit completely to the authority of our ecclesiastical government, or do without it completely. It is not for us to decide what portion of obedience we owe it.
Of Cannibals
p. 209. . . . so many personages greater than ourselves having been mistaken about this one.
Jim - The discovery of the New World displayed the fallibility of "The Ancients" on geography, and along with discoveries through dissection, lead to the passing of Scholastic Philosophy as the dominant school of the High Middle Ages.
p. 218. Nor did those four sister victories, the fairest that the sun ever sent eyes on - Salamis, Plateau, Mycale, and Sicily - ever dare match all their combined glory against the glory of the annihilation of King Leonidas and his men at the pass of Thermopylae.
On the Custom of Wearing Clothes
On Sumptuary Laws
Of Ancient Customs
On Evil Means Employed to a Good End
p. 237. The early Romans used criminal for such examples; but later they used innocent slaves, and even freemen who sold themselves of this purpose; finally Roman senators and knights, and even women:
On Some Verses of Virgil
Jim - Excellent on old age.
p. 251. For not only inconvenient things, but anything at all, however ugly and vicious and repulsive, can become acceptable through some condition or circumstance: so inane is our human posture.
p. 252. There is a destiny that rules
The parts your clothes conceal; for if the stars abhor you,
Unheard-of length of member will do nothing for you
Juvenal
p. 258. What is the point of the show we make even now of the shape of our pieces under our galligaskins, and what is far worse, often by falsehood and imposture beyond their natural size?
p. 277 - 287. Now then, leaving books aside and speaking more materially and simply, I find that all love is nothing else but the thirst for sexual enjoyment in a desired object, and Venus nothing else but the pleasure of discharging our vessels - a pleasure that becomes vicious either by immoderation or by indiscretion.
p. 287. that action involves more effort than submission; and that consequently they are always able to satisfy our needs, whereas it may be otherwise when it is up to us to satisfy theirs.
p. 294. May we not say that there is nothing in us during this earthly imprisonment that is purely either corporeal or spiritual, . . . .
Of the Disadvantage of Greatness
Perhaps my favorite essay by Montaigne. It is too bad that President-elect Trump (apparently) does not read Montaigne.
On Knowledge and Pride
Apology for Raymond Second
p. 311. The first criticism that they make of is work is that Christians do themselves harm in trying to support their belief by human reasons, since it is conceived only by faith and by a particular inspiration of divine grace.
p. 317. And it is not credible that this whole machine should not have on it some marks imprinted by the hand of this great architect, and that there should not be some picture in the things of this world that somewhat represents the workman who has built and formed them.
Yes. This is a great statement of the two tenets of Positive Deism. Atheism is intellectually incoherent.
p. 322. This too is fated, that I write of fate; Manilius
p. 341. . . . To chose out of a number of puppies the one that you should save as the best, all you need is to put the mother in position to chose him herself;
p. 362. As long as he thinks he has some resources and power by himself, never will man recognize what he owes to his master;
p. 371. It is for God alone to know himself and to interpret His works.
Positive Deism! Also p. 384 - 385.
p. 386. Thales, who first inquired into this matter, thought God a spirit who made all things of water.
I doubt that it was Montaigne intended, but the second half of p. 396 is a fine statement of the first tenet of Critical Deism.
p. 402. When we say that the infinity of the centuries both past and to come is to God but an instant, that His goodness, wisdom, power, are the same thing as His essence -- out tongues say it, but our intelligence does not apprehend it.
More support for Critical Deism.
p. 411. Plato is but a disconnected poet.
p. 414. We do not ask whether this is true, but whether it has beenough understood this way or that.
The beginning of the end of the Middle Ages.
p. 417. For the soul's nature is unknown on earth,
Whether 'tis born, or enters in at birth,
Whether, by death destroyed, with us it dies,
Or 'mid vast caves and shades of Orcus flies,
Or, by divine decree, slips into beasts.
Lucretius
p. 419 alludes to Gnosisticism.
p. 425. . . . generation of the soul . . . . born at the moment the body was capable of receiving it;
p. 440. This great and holy image could not be in so mean a domicile, unless God prepares it for that purpose, unless God reforms and fortifies it by His particular and supernatural grace and favor.
Copercinus on p. 447.
p. 462. . . . Diogenes, practicing masturbation in public, . . . .
p.464. Protagoras thought that "what seemed to each man was true for each man."
p. 465. Now all knowledge makes its way into us through our senses;
p. 481. For which reason it would be a sin to say of God, Who is the only One that is that He was or will be.
See the last page for the last word on Protagoras and Christian Faith.
June 21, 2023
I got almost nothing out of this. Not for me.
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