The Complete Essays (99 page)

The Academic philosophers accepted that our balance of judgement may be swayed one way or the other; they found it too crude to say that it is no
more likely that snow be white than black, or that we no more understand the movement of a stone thrown by our own hand than the movement of the Eighth Sphere. These are bizarre difficulties and our intellect can hardly find room for them (even though they had established that we are incapable of knowing anything and that Truth is swallowed up in deep abysses where Man’s vision cannot penetrate); to avoid them they admitted that some things are more likely than others and concede to judgement the power to incline towards one probability rather than another. They grant it this propensity, but they deny it conclusions.

The Pyrrhonists’ idea is bolder, yet, at the same time, more true-seeming.
³³⁹
For what is this Platonic
inclination
, this
propensity
towards one proposition rather than another, than the recognition of there being more apparent truth in this than in that? But if our minds could grasp the form, lineaments, stance and face of Truth, then they would see whole truths as easily as partial truths, nascent and imperfect. Take that apparent verisimilitude which makes the scales incline to the left rather than to the right – then increase it; take that ounce of verisimilitude which turns the scales: multiply it a hundredfold or a thousandfold; in the end the balance will come down definitely on one side, deciding on one choice, on one whole truth.

But how can they bring themselves to yield to verisimilitude if they cannot recognize verity? How can they know there to be a resemblance to something the essence of which they do not know? We judge entirely, or entirely not. If our intellectual faculties and our senses have no foundation to stand on but only float about in the wind, then it is pointless to allow our judgement to be influenced by their operation, no matter what ‘probabilities’ it seems to present us with;
³⁴⁰
and so the surest position for our intellect to adopt, and the happiest, would be the one where it could remain still, straight, inflexible, without motion or disturbance. [C]
‘Inter visa vera aut falsa ad animi assensum nihil interest’
[Where the assent of the mind is concerned, there is no difference between true impressions and false ones].
³⁴¹

[A] Things do not lodge in us with their form and their essence; they do not come in by the force of their own authority: we can see that clearly; if they did, we would all react to them in the same way: wine would taste
the same in the mouth of a sick man and a healthy one; a man whose hands were calloused or benumbed would find the same hardness in the timber or iron he was handling as anyone else. External objects therefore throw themselves on our mercy; we decide how we accept them.
³⁴²

Now, if we, for our part, could receive anything without changing it, if our human grasp were firm and capable of seizing hold of truth by our own means, then truth could be passed on from hand to hand, from person to person, since those means are common to all men. Among so many concepts we could find at least one which all would believe with universal assent. But the fact that there is no single proposition which is not subject to debate or controversy among us, or which cannot be so, proves that our natural judgement does not grasp very clearly even what it does grasp, since my judgement cannot bring a fellow-man’s judgement to accept it, which is a sure sign that I did not myself reach it by means of a natural power common to myself and to all men.

Let us leave aside that infinite confusion of opinions which we can see among the philosophers themselves and that endless, world-wide debate about knowledge. It really is the truest of presuppositions that men – I mean the most learned, the best-endowed and the cleverest of men – never agree about anything, not even that the sky is above our heads. Those who doubt everything doubt that too. Those who deny that we can ever know anything say we cannot know whether the sky is above our heads or not. Those two opinions are by far the strongest, numerically.

Apart from this infinite diversity and disagreement, we can easily see that the foundations of our powers of judgement are insecure from the worry it personally causes us and from the lack of certainty each man feels within himself. How our judgements vary! How frequently we change our ideas! What I hold and believe today, I hold and believe with the totality of my belief. All my faculties, all my resources hold tight to that opinion and vouch for it with all their might. It would be impossible for me to embrace and maintain any truth more strongly. I am wholly for it, truly for it. But – not once, not a hundred times, not a thousand times, but every day – have I not embraced something else with the same resources and under the same circumstances, only to be convinced later that it was wrong? At least we should acquire wisdom at our own expense! If this appearance has once deceived me, if my touchstone regularly proves unreliable and my scales
wrong and out of true, why should I trust them this time, rather than all the others? Is it not stupid to let oneself be deceived so often by the same guide? Fortune may shift us five hundred times, may treat our powers of belief like a pot to be endlessly emptied and filled with ever-differing opinions: nevertheless, the present one, the last one, is always sure and infallible! For this last one we must abandon goods, honour, life, health, everything.

posterior res illa reperta,
Perdit, et immutat sensus ad pristina quaeque
.

[When we find something new, the recent destroys the older and makes us change our taste for it.]
³⁴³

[B] Whatever people preach to us and whatever we may learn from them, never forget that the giver is a man and so is the taker; a mortal hand presents it to us: a mortal hand takes it from him. Only such things as come to us from Heaven have the right and the authority to carry conviction; they alone bear the mark of Truth; but even they cannot be seen with our human eyes, nor do we obtain them by our own means: so great and so holy an Image could never dwell in so wretched a dwelling, unless God first makes it ready for that purpose, unless he forms it anew and fortifies it by his special grace and supernatural favour.

[A] Our condition is subject to error: that ought, at very least, to lead us to be more moderate and restrained in making changes. We ought to admit that, no matter what we allow into our understanding, it often includes falsehoods which enter by means of the same tools which have often proved contradictory and misleading.

It is not surprising that they should prove contradictory, since they are so easily biased and twisted by the lightest of occurrences. It is certain that our conceptions, our judgement and our mental faculties in general are all affected by the changes and alterations of the body. Those alterations are ceaseless. Are our minds not more alert, our memory more ready, our reasoning powers more lively when we are well rather than ill? Does not everything present a different aspect to our minds under the influence of joy and gaiety or of chagrin and melancholy? Do you think that the poems of Catullus or Sappho delight a miserable old miser as they do a vigorous and ardent youth? [B] Cleomenes the son of Anaxandridas being ill, his friends reproached him with having new and unaccustomed humours and ideas. ‘I am not surprised,’ he replied; ‘I am not the same
person when I am well: being different, my opinions and ideas are different too.’
³⁴⁴

[A] There is a saying current in the legal chicanery of our law-courts applied to a criminal who comes before judges who happen to be in a good, gentle, generous mood:
GAUDEAT DE BONA FORTUNA
‘Let him enjoy this good luck’: for it is certain that we sometimes come across minds whose judgement is prickly, sharp and poised to condemn and which, at other times, are less difficult, more affable, more given to finding excuses. A judge may leave home suffering from the gout, jealous, or incensed by a thieving valet: his entire soul is coloured and drunk with anger: we cannot doubt that his judgement is biased towards wrath. [B] The august Senate of the Areopagus held their sessions at night, lest the sight of the plaintiff should influence their justice. [A] The very air and calm weather have power to change us – as that Greek poem says which Cicero cited:

Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse
Juppiter auctifera lustravit lampade terras
.

[The minds of men are such as Father Jupiter wills them to be, as he bathes the earth in fruitful light.]
³⁴⁵

It is not only fevers, potions and great events which upset our judgement: the lightest thing can send it spinning. If a continual fever lays our minds prostrate, you can be sure that a three day fever will have a proportionately bad effect on them, even though we are not aware of it. If apoplexy can dim and totally snuff out our mental vision, you can be sure that even a cold will confuse it. Consequently, there can hardly be found a single hour in an entire lifetime when our powers of judgement are settled in their proper place; our bodies are subject to so many sustained changes and are composed of so many kinds of principles that there is always one pulling the wrong way –I trust the doctors over that!

This malady, moreover, is not so easy to detect unless it is extreme and past all cure; Reason always hobbles, limps and walks askew, in falsehood as in truth, so that it is hard to detect when she is mistaken or unhinged.

By
reason
I always mean that appearance of rationality which each of us
constructs for himself – the kind of reason which can characteristically have a thousand contrary reactions to the same subject and is like a tool of malleable lead or wax: it can be stretched, bent or adapted to any size or to any bias; if you are clever, you can learn to mould it.

Take a judge; however well-intentioned he may be, he must watch himself carefully (and not many people spend much time doing that), otherwise some inclination toward friend, relation, beauty or revenge (or even something far less weighty, such as that chance impulse which leads us to favour one thing rather than another, or which enables us to choose, without any sanction of reason, between two identical objects – or even some more shadowy cause, equally vain) will encourage some sneaking sympathy or hostility toward one of the parties to slip, unnoticed, into his judgement and tip the balance.

I spy closely on myself and keep my eyes constantly directed on myself alone – I do not have much else to do:

        
quis sub Arcto
Rex gelidae metuatur orae,
Quid Tyridatem terreat, unice
Securus

[Quite indifferent to what ruler of the frozen North inspires great fear, or what dangers frighten Tiridates]
³⁴⁶
–

yet even I hardly dare to tell of the vanity and the weakness which I find in myself. I have such wobbly legs, I am so unsteady on my feet, I totter about so and cannot even trust my eyesight, with the result that I feel quite a different person before and after a meal; when good health and a fine sunny day smile at me, I am quite debonair; give me an ingrowing toe-nail, and I am touchy, bad-tempered and unapproachable. [B] My horse’s gait seems sometimes rough, sometimes gentle; the very same road, now short, now much longer, and the same form of action more agreeable or less so. [A] Now, I am ready to do anything; later, ready to do nothing; what is nice now can be nasty later on. [A1] A thousand chance emotions, unbidden, are in turmoil within me; sometimes a melancholic humour gets hold of me; at others, a choleric one; sometimes grief or joy dominate me, for reasons of their own. [A] I pick up some books: I may have discovered outstanding beauties in a particular passage which really struck home: another time I happen upon the same passage and it remains an unknown, shapeless lump for me, however much I twist it, and pat it and bend it or turn it. [B] Even in the case of my own
writings I cannot always recover the flavour of my original meaning; I do not know what I wanted to say and burn my fingers making corrections and giving it some new meaning for want of recovering the original one – which was better. I go backwards and forwards: my judgement does not always march straight ahead, but floats and bobs about,

velut minuta magno
Deprensa navis in mari vesaniente vento
.

[Like a tiny boat buffeted on the ocean by a raging tempest.]
³⁴⁷

Many’s the time I have taken an opinion contrary to my own and (as I am fond of doing) tried defending it for the fun of the exercise: then, once my mind has really applied itself to that other side, I get so firmly attached to it that I forget why I held the first opinion and give it up. Almost any inclination, no matter which, takes me with it and carries me along by my own weight. Almost anybody could say much the same of himself if he watched himself [C] as I do. [B] Preachers know that the emotion which comes upon them as they speak moves them towards belief; and we know that when we are in a temper we devote ourselves to defending an assertion, impressing it upon ourselves and embracing it with furious approbation, far more than we ever do in cold-blooded calm.

You give your lawyer a simple statement of your case; he replies, hesitantly, doubtfully: you feel that he is quite indifferent which side he is to defend. But if you offer him a good fee to get stuck into it and all worked up about it, does he not begin to take a real interest and, once his will is inflamed, do not his arguments and forensic skills become inflamed as well? A clear and indubitable truth comes and presents itself to his understanding. He finds that your case sheds quite a new light: he really believes in it and convinces himself accordingly. I even wonder whether ardour, born of despite and of obstinacy, when confronted by pressure from a magistrate or by violent threats – [C] (or even simply a concern for reputation) – [B] has not brought some men to be burned in defence of an opinion for which, when at liberty among friends, they would never even have burned their finger-tips.