Project Gutenberg's The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 4, by Michel de Montaigne

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Title: The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 4

Author: Michel de Montaigne

Release Date: September 17, 2006 [EBook #3584]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE, VOLUME 4 ***

Produced by David Widger

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 4.

XXII. Of custom, and that we should not easily change a law received
XXIII. Various events from the same counsel.
XXIV. Of pedantry.

CHAPTER XXII

OF CUSTOM, AND THAT WE SHOULD NOT EASILY CHANGE A LAW RECEIVED

He seems to me to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of
custom, who first invented the story of a country-woman who, having
accustomed herself to play with and carry a young calf in her arms, and
daily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that,
when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to bear it. For, in
truth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by
little and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of her
authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the
benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and
tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the
power so much as to lift up our eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcing
and violating the rules of nature:

"Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister."

["Custom is the best master of all things."
--Pliny, Nat. Hist.,xxvi. 2.]

I refer to her Plato's cave in his Republic, and the physicians, who so
often submit the reasons of their art to her authority; as the story of
that king, who by custom brought his stomach to that pass, as to live by
poison, and the maid that Albertus reports to have lived upon spiders.
In that new world of the Indies, there were found great nations, and in
very differing climates, who were of the same diet, made provision of
them, and fed them for their tables; as also, they did grasshoppe