The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 16
by Michel de Montaigne

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Title: The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 16

Author: Michel de Montaigne

Release Date: September 1, 2006 [EBook #3596]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE, VOLUME 16 ***

Produced by David Widger

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 16.

VI. Of Coaches.
VII. Of the Inconvenience of Greatness.
VIII. Of the Art of Conference.

CHAPTER VI

OF COACHES

It is very easy to verify, that great authors, when they write of causes,
not only make use of those they think to be the true causes, but also of
those they believe not to be so, provided they have in them some beauty
and invention: they speak true and usefully enough, if it be ingeniously.
We cannot make ourselves sure of the supreme cause, and therefore crowd a
great many together, to see if it may not accidentally be amongst them:

"Namque unam dicere causam
Non satis est, verum plures, unde una tamen sit."

[Lucretius, vi. 704.--The sense is in the preceding passage.]

Do you ask me, whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze?
We break wind three several ways; that which sallies from below is too
filthy; that which breaks out from the mouth carries with it some
reproach of gluttony; the third is sneezing, which, because it proceeds
from the head and is without offence, we give it this civil reception: do
not laugh at this distinction; they say 'tis Aristotle's.

I think I have seen in Plutarch' (who of all the authors I know, is he
who has best mixed art with nature, and judgment with knowledge), his
giving as a reason for the, rising of the stomach in those who are at
sea, that it is occasioned by fear; having first found out some reason by
which he proves that fear may produce such an effect. I, who am very
subject to it, know well that this cause concerns not me; and I know it,
not by argument, but by necessary experience. Without instancing what
has been told me,