The Complete Essays (105 page)

I will not go into the sense of touch. Its effects are immediate, lively and concrete; many a time, as a result of the pain which it causes the body, it overthrows all those fine Stoic axioms. It takes a man who has resolutely
made up his mind that colic paroxysms are a thing indifferent (like any other pain or disease) and that they have no power to affect the blessed state of supreme felicity in which the Sage has been lodged by his Stoic Virtue – and makes him yell about his belly.

No heart is so flabby that the sounds of our drums and trumpets do not set it ablaze, nor so hard that sweet music does not tickle it and enliven it; no soul is so sour that it does not feel touched by some feeling of reverence
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when it contemplates the sombre vastness of our Churches, the great variety of their decorations and our ordered liturgy, or when it hears the enchantment of the organ and the poised religious harmony of men’s voices. Even those who come to scoff are brought to distrust their opinion by a shiver in their heart and a sense of dread.

[B] As for me, I do not think I would be strong enough to remain unmoved even by verses of Horace or Catullus, if well sung by a good voice coming from a fair young mouth! [C] Zeno was right to claim that the voice is Beauty’s flower.
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Some people have even tried to make me believe that a famous man known to all Frenchmen had impressed me unduly with a recital of some of his verses, which seem very different seen on paper than heard in the air, and that my eyes would contradict my ears, so great is the power of eloquent delivery to endow any work which accepts its sway with value and style.

While on the topic, Philoxenus’ reaction was not without charm: he heard a piece he had composed being sung badly, so he jumped on some of the singer’s tiles and smashed them. ‘I spoil your things,’ (he said) ‘you despoil mine!’
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[A] Why did even those who had firmly decided to die avert their gaze from the very blow which they ordered to be struck? Why do those who have freely agreed to cauterizations and incisions for the sake of their health find that they cannot stand the sight of all the preparations, of the surgical instruments or of the actual operation? Sight does not share in the pain.

Are not these appropriate examples for demonstrating the authority of our senses over our powers of reason? – Even though we know that a lady’s tresses are borrowed from a page or a lackey; that her rosy colour comes from Spain and her smooth whiteness from the ocean, we still find
her person more attractive and agreeable – quite unreasonably, though, for in all that nothing is her own:

Auferimur cultu; gemmis auroque teguntur
Crimina: pars minima est ipsa puella sui.
Saepe ubi sit quod ames inter tam multa requiras:
Decipit hac oculos Aegide, dives amor
.

[We are carried away by clothing; ugliness is hidden behind gems and gold; the smallest part of herself is the actual girl! You can often look in vain for the girl you love under all these gewgaws. This is the shield with which the rich deceive a lover’s eyes.]
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What great power our poets attribute to the senses, when they make Narcissus enamoured of his own reflection:

Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse;
Se cupit imprudens; et qui probat, ipse probatur;
Dumque petit, petitur; pariterque accendit et ardet
.

[He is enchanted by his own enchantments; unawares, he loves himself; he both praises and is praised; he yearns and is yearned for; the passion he kindles enflames himself]

Similarly, Pygmalion’s mind was disturbed by the visual impact of his ivory statue: he fell in love with it and sighed for it:

Oscula dat reddique putat, sequiturque tenetque,
Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris;
Et metuit pressos veniat ne livor in artus
.

[He kisses her, and believes his kisses are returned; he waits on her, embraces her; he believes her limbs respond to the touch of his fingers; he fears that in his ardour he may bruise her.]
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Take a philosopher, put him in a cage made from thin wires set wide apart; hang him from one of the towers of Notre Dame de Paris. It is evident to his reason that he cannot fall; yet (unless he were trained as a steeplejack) when he looks down from that height he is bound to be terrified and beside himself. It is hard enough to feel safe at the top of a church tower, even behind open-work ramparts of stone: some people cannot even bear thinking about it.

Take a beam wide enough to walk along: suspend it between two towers: there is no philosophical wisdom, however firm, which could make us walk along it just as we would if we were on the ground.

I am not particularly afraid of heights, but when I was on the French side of the Italian Alps I made an assay and found that I could not suffer the sight of those boundless depths without a shiver of horror; I was at least my own height away from the edge and could not have fallen over unless I deliberately exposed myself to danger: yet my knees and thighs were trembling. I also noticed that, whatever the height, it was comforting and reassuring if there happened to be some tree or rock jutting out on the slope which could hold our gaze and interrupt our vision: it was as though they could have helped us if we fell. But when the precipices were sheer and smooth we could not even look at them without feeling giddy, [C]
‘ut despici sine vertigine simul oculorum animique non possit’
[such that no one could look down without vertigo in eyes and mind].
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Which shows how sight can deceive us.

One fine philosopher even poked out his eyes so as to free his mind from visual debauchery; he could then go on philosophizing in freedom. But by the same standard he ought to have blocked up his ears
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– [B] which Theophrastus says are the most dangerous of all our organs when it comes to receiving violent impressions capable of changing and disturbing us.
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[A] Eventually he would have to deprive himself of every other sense (tantamount to life and being), for all the senses can have this dominant power over our reason and our soul: [C]
‘Fit etiam saepe specie quadam, saepe vocum gravitate et cantibus, ut pellantur animi vehementius; saepe etiam cura et timore’
[Some visual feature, some grave voice or incantations may often strike the mind most vehemently: worry and care may often do that too].
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[A] Doctors maintain that people with some complexions can be driven mad by certain sounds or instruments. I have known people who could not even hear a bone being gnawed under their table without losing control; and there is hardly a person who is not upset by the sharp rasping
sound of a file against iron. Some people are moved to anger or even hatred by hearing somebody chewing nearby or talking with some obstruction of their throat or nose.

Gracchus had a prompter who was a flautist; he conducted the voice of his master, softening it or making it firm:
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what use was he if the rhythm and quality of the sounds did not have the power of moving and swaying the judgement of the listeners? We have good enough reason to make a fuss about this judgement of ours: it lets itself be affected and managed by the modulations and properties of so light a breath of wind!

The senses deceive our intellect; it deceives them in their turn. Our soul sometimes gets her own back: [C] they both vie with each other in lying and deceiving. [A] When we are moved to anger, we do not hear things as they are:

Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas
.
[We see twin suns: two Thebes.]
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Love someone and she appears more beautiful than she is:

[B]
Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus
Esse in delitiis, summoque in honore vigere
.

[Many ugly and deformed women are deeply loved, enjoying, as we see, the highest favour.]
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[A] And anyone we dislike appears more ugly. When a man is in pain and affliction, the very light of day seems sombre and dark. Our senses are not only changed for the worse, they are knocked quite stupid by the passions of the soul. How many things do we see which we do not even notice when our minds are preoccupied with other matters?

In rebus quoque apertis noscere possis,
Si non advertas animum, proinde esse, quasi omni
Tenmpore semotaefuerint, longeque remotae
.

[Even in the case of things which are clearly visible, you know that if you do not turn your mind to them, it is as though they had never been there or were far away.]
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It seems, then, that the soul draws the powers of the senses right into herself and makes them waste their time.

And so, both within and without, man is full of weakness and of lies.

[B] Those who have compared our lives to a dream are right – perhaps more right than they realized. When we are dreaming our soul lives, acts and exercises all her faculties neither more nor less than when she is awake, but she does it much more slackly and darkly; the difference is definitely not so great as between night and the living day: more like that between night and twilight. In one case the soul is sleeping, in the other more or less slumbering; but there is always darkness, perpetual Cimmerian darkness.

[C] We wake asleep: we sleep awake. When I am asleep I do see things less clearly but I never find my waking pure enough or cloudless. Deep sleep can sometimes even put dreams to sleep; but our waking is never so wide awake that it can cure and purge those raving lunacies, those waking dreams that are worse than the real ones.

Our rational souls accept notions and opinions produced during sleep, conferring on activities in our dreams the same approbation and authority as on our waking dreams: why should we therefore not doubt whether our thinking and acting are but another dream; our waking, some other species of sleep?

[A] If the senses are our basic judges, we should not merely call upon our own for counsel: where this faculty is concerned, the animals have as much right as we do, or even more. Some certainly have better hearing, sight, smell, touch or taste. Democritus said that the gods and the beasts have faculties of sense far more perfect than Man does.

Now there are extreme differences between the action of their senses and ours: our saliva cleanses and dries up our wounds: it kills snakes.
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Tantaque in his rebus distantia differitasque est,
Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum.
Saepe etenim serpens, hominis contacta saliva,
Disperit, ac sese mandendo confict ipsa
.

[There are so many differences and variations: one man’s food is another man’s bitter poison. Indeed if a snake comes into contact with human saliva, it begins to bite its own tail and dies.]
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So what quality are we to give to saliva? Do we follow our own senses or the snake’s? We are trying to discover the truth about its true essence:
which of the two will tell us? Pliny says that there are certain ‘sea-hares’ in the Indies which are poison to us and we to them: a touch kills them.
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Which is truly poisonous, the fish or the man? Which should we believe: the effect of the fish on the man or the man on the fish? [B] The quality of one kind of air is infectious to Man but not to cattle; another has the quality of being infectious to cattle but harmless to men. Which of the two has truly and naturally the quality of being infectious? [A] Sufferers from jaundice see everything paler and yellower than we do:

[B]
Lurida praeterea fiunt quaecunque tuentur Arquati
.

[Those ill from ‘rainbow-yellow’ see everything in sallow colours.]
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[A] There is a suffusion of blood under the skin around the eye which doctors call
Hyposphragma –
those who suffer from it see everything blood-red.
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How do we know that these humours, which can affect the workings of Man’s eyesight, are not the dominant norm among beasts? Some animals, as we know, have yellow eyes exactly like sufferers from jaundice and others have eyes which are blood-red. It is probable that the colours of objects appear different to them and to us. Who judges them right? Nobody claims that the essence of anything relates only to its effect on Man. Hardness, whiteness, depth, bitterness – such qualities are of service to animals and are known to them as to ourselves: Nature has granted that they be useful to animals as well as to us men.

If we squeeze one of our eyes, the objects we look at appear thinner and elongated: many beasts have eyes which are always squeezed up like that. For all we know, that elongated form is the true one, not what our eyes see in their normal state. [B] If we press up our eyes from the bottom, we see double: