
24 Oct Man has no knowledge (Michel de Montaigne) | Part A’
Finally, should I examine whether it be in the power of man to find out that which he seeks and if that quest, wherein he has busied himself so many ages, has enriched him with any new force, or any solid truth;
I believe he will confess, if he speaks from his conscience, that all he has got by so long inquiry is only to have learned to know his own weakness. We have only by a long study confirmed and verified the natural ignorance we were in before. The same has fallen out to men truly wise, which befalls the ears of corn; they shoot and raise their heads high and pert, whilst empty; but when full and swelled with grain in maturity, begin to flag and droop.
(Plutarch)
So men, having tried and sounded all things, and having found in that mass of knowledge, and provision of so many various things, nothing solid and firm, and nothing but vanity, have quitted their presumption, and acknowledged their natural condition.
‘Tis what Velleius reproaches Cotta withal and Cicero, “that they had learned of Philo, that they had learned nothing.”
Pherecydes, one of the seven sages, writing to Thales upon his death-bed; “I have,” said he, “given order to my people, after my interment, to carry my writings to thee. If they please thee and the other sages, publish; if not, suppress them. They contain no certainty with which I myself am satisfied. Neither do I pretend to know the truth, or to attain to it. I rather open than discover things.”
(Pherecydes)
The wisest man that ever was, being asked what he knew, made answer, “He knew this, that he knew nothing.”
By which he verified what has been said, that the greatest part of what we know is the least of what we do not; that is to say, that even what we think we know is but a piece, and a very little one, of our
ignorance. We know things in dreams, says Plato, and are ignorant of them in truth.
“Almost all the ancients have declared that there is nothing to be known, nothing to be perceived or understood; the senses are too limited, men’s minds too weak, and the course of life too short.”
(Cicero)
And of Cicero himself, who stood indebted to his learning for all he was worth, Valerius says, “That he began to disrelish letters in his old age; and when at his studies, it was with great independency upon any one party; following what he thought probable, now in one sect, and then in another, evermore wavering under the doubts of the academy.” “Something I must say, but so as to affirm nothing; I inquire into all things, but for the most part in doubt and distrust of myself.”
(Cicero)
I should have too fair a game should I consider man in his common way of living and in gross; yet I might do it by his own rule, who judges truth not by weight, but by the number of votes. Let us set the people aside,
“Half of his life by lazy sleep’s possess’d,
And when awake his soul but nods at best;”
“(Loucretius)
who neither feel nor judge, and let most of their natural faculties lie idle; I will take man in his highest ground. Let us consider him in that little number of men, excellent and culled out from the rest, who,
having been endowed with a remarkable and particular natural force, have moreover hardened and whetted it by care, study, and art, and raised it to the highest pitch of wisdom to which it can possibly arrive. They have adjusted their souls to all ways and all biases; have propped and supported them with all foreign helps proper for them, and enriched and adorned them with all they could borrow for their advantage, both within and without the world; ‘tis in these is placed the utmost and most supreme height to which human nature can attain. They have regulated the world with policies and laws. They have instructed it with arts and sciences, and by the example of their admirable manners. I shall make account of none but such men as these, their testimony and experience. Let us examine how far they have proceeded, and where they stopped. The errors and defects that we shall find amongst these men the world may boldly avow as their own.
Part B’: http://www.lecturesbureau.gr/1/man-has-no-knowledge-part-b-1193/?lang=en
The Essays of Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
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