![]() Adde a hundred times as many unto them, yet shall it not follow that of events to come there be any one found that in all this infinite number of selected and enregistred events shall meete with one to which be may so exactly joyne and match it, but some circumstance and diversity will remaine that may require a diverse consideration of judgement. The multiplying of our inventions shall never come to the variation of examples. What have our lawmakers gained with chusing a hundred thousand kinds of particular cases, and adde as many lawes unto them? That number hath no proportion with the infinite diversity of humane accidents. Ut olim flagitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus.Īs in times past we were sicke of offences, so now are we of lawes.Īs we have given our judges so large a scope to moote, to opinionate, to suppose, and decide, that there was never so powerfull and so licentious a liberty. For we have in France more lawes then all the world besides yea, more then were needefull to governe all the worlde imagined by Epicurus: Because our spirit findes not the field lesse spacious to controule and checke the sense of others then to represent his own, and as if there were as litle courage and sharpnesse to glose as to invent, Wee see how farre hee was deceived. And those but mocke themselves who thinke to diminish our debates and stay them by calling us to the expresse word of sacred Bible. He perceived not that there is as much liberty and extension in the interpretation of lawes as in their fashion. Yet doth not the opinion of that man greatly please mee, that supposed by the multitude of lawes to curbe the authority of judges in cutting out their morsels. Nature hath bound herselfe to make nothing that may not be dissemblable. Resemblance doth not so much make one as difference maketh another. Neither Perozet nor any other carde-maker can so industriously smoothe or whiten the backeside of his cardes, but some cunning gamester will distinguish them onely by seeing some other player handle or shuffle them. Some have neverthelesse beene found, especially one in Delphos, that knew markes of difference betweene egges, and never tooke one for another And having divers hennes, could rightly judge which had laid the egge.ĭissimilitude doth of it selfe insinuate into our workes, no arte can come neere unto similitude. The Greekes, the Latines, and wee, use for the most expresse examples of similitude that of egs. No quality is so universall in this surface of things as variety and diversity. The consequence we seeke to draw from the conference of events is unsure, because they are ever dissemblable. Reason hath so many shapes that wee know not which to take hold of. But truth is of so great consequence that wee ought not disdaine any induction that may bring us unto it. Which is a meane by much more weake and vile. When reason failes us, we employ experience.īy divers proofes experience art hath bred, We attempt all meanes that may bring us unto it. There is no desire more naturall then that of knowledge. Of Experience, by Michel de Montaigne Of Experience by Michel de Montaigne (1588) translated by John Florio (1603)
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