Essais Chapitre 11

(1, p. 13v-14v).Michel de MontaigneC111 Des prognosticationsMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvuMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvu/113v-14v

Des Prognostications.
Chap. XI.

QVant aux oracles, il est certain que bonne
piece avant la venue de Jesus-Christ, ils avoyent commencé à
perdre leur credit : car nous voyons que Cicero se met en peine de
trouver la cause de leur defaillance ;

Mais quant aux autres prognostiques, qui se tiroyent de l’anatomie des
bestes aux sacrifices,

du trepignement des poulets, du vol des oyseaux,

des foudres, du tournoiement des rivieres,

et autres sur lesquels l’ancienneté appuioit la plus part des
entreprinses, tant publiques que privées, nostre religion les a
abolies. Et encore qu’il reste entre nous quelques moyens de
divination és astres, és esprits, és figures du corps, és songes,
et ailleurs,--notable exemple de la forçenée curiosité de nostre
nature, s’amusant à preoccuper les choses futures, comme si elle
n’avoit pas assez affaire à digerer les presentes :

cur hanc tibi rector Olympi
Sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam,
Noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades.
Sit subitum quodcunque paras, sit caeca futuri
Mens hominum fati, liceat sperare timenti ; - si
est-ce qu’elle est de beaucoup moindre auctorité. Voylà pourquoy
l’exemple de François Marquis de Sallusse m’a semblé remarcable.
Car, lieutenant du Roy François en son armée de là les monts,
infiniment favorisé de nostre cour, et obligé au Roy du Marquisat
mesmes, qui avoit esté confisqué de son frere, au reste ne se
presentant occasion de le faire, son affection mesme y contredisant,
se
laissa si fort espouvanter (comme il a esté adveré) aux belles
prognostications qu’on faisoit lors courir de tous costez à
l’advantage de l’Empereur Charles cinquiesme, et à nostre
des-advantage, mesmes en Italie, où ces folles propheties avoyent
trouvé tant de place,
qu’à Rome fut baillé grande somme d’argent au
change, pour cette opinion de nostre ruine, qu’apres s’estre souvent
condolu à ses privez, des maux qu’il voyoit inevitablement preparez
à
la couronne de France, et aux amis qu’il y avoit, se revolta et
changea
de party : à son grand dommage pourtant, quelque constellation qu’il y
eut. Mais il s’y conduisit en homme combattu de diverses passions. Car
ayant et villes et forces en sa main, l’armée ennemye soubs Antoine
de Leve à trois pas de luy, et nous sans soubsçon de son faict,
il
estoit en luy de faire pis qu’il ne fist. Car, pour sa trahison, nous
ne perdismes ny homme ny ville que Fossan : encore apres l’avoir
long temps contestée.

Prudens futuri temporis exitum
Caliginosa nocte premit Deus,
Ridétque si mortalis ultra
Fas trepidat.
Ille potens sui
Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem
Dixisse, vixi, cras vel atra
Nube polum pater occupato
Vel sole puro.
Laetus in praesens animus, quod ultra est,
Oderit curare.

Chapter XI. Of prognostications.

For what concerns oracles, it is certain that a good while before the

coming of Jesus Christ they had begun to lose their credit; for we see

that Cicero troubled to find out the cause of their decay, and he has

these words:

"Cur isto modo jam oracula Delphis non eduntur,

non modo nostro aetate, sed jam diu; ut nihil

possit esse contemptius?"

But as to the other prognostics, calculated from the anatomy of beasts at

sacrifices (to which purpose Plato does, in part, attribute the natural

constitution of the intestines of the beasts themselves), the

scraping of poultry, the flight of birds--

"Aves quasdam . . . rerum augurandarum

causa natas esse putamus."

claps of thunder, the overflowing of rivers--

"Multa cernunt Aruspices, multa Augures provident,

multa oraculis declarantur, multa vaticinationibus,

multa somniis, multa portentis."

--and others of the like nature, upon which antiquity founded most of

their public and private enterprises, our religion has totally abolished

them. And although there yet remain amongst us some practices of

divination from the stars, from spirits, from the shapes and complexions

of men, from dreams and the like (a notable example of the wild curiosity

of our nature to grasp at and anticipate future things, as if we had not

enough to do to digest the present)--

"Cur hanc tibi, rector Olympi,

Sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam,

Noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades?...

Sit subitum, quodcumque paras; sit coeca futuri

Mens hominum fati, liceat sperare timenti."

"Ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit;

miserum est enim, nihil proficientem angi,"

yet are they of much less authority now than heretofore. Which makes so

much more remarkable the example of Francesco, Marquis of Saluzzo, who

being lieutenant to King Francis I. in his ultramontane army, infinitely

favoured and esteemed in our court, and obliged to the king's bounty for

the marquisate itself, which had been forfeited by his brother; and as to

the rest, having no manner of provocation given him to do it, and even

his own affection opposing any such disloyalty, suffered himself to be so

terrified, as it was confidently reported, with the fine prognostics that

were spread abroad everywhere in favour of the Emperor Charles V., and to

our disadvantage (especially in Italy, where these foolish prophecies

were so far believed, that at Rome great sums of money were ventured out

upon return of greater, when the prognostics came to pass, so certain

they made themselves of our ruin), that, having often bewailed, to those

of his acquaintance who were most intimate with him, the mischiefs that

he saw would inevitably fall upon the Crown of France and the friends he

had in that court, he revolted and turned to the other side; to his own

misfortune, nevertheless, what constellation soever governed at that

time. But he carried himself in this affair like a man agitated by

divers passions; for having both towns and forces in his hands, the

enemy's army under Antonio de Leyva close by him, and we not at all

suspecting his design, it had been in his power to have done more than he

did; for we lost no men by this infidelity of his, nor any town, but

Fossano only, and that after a long siege and a brave defence.--

"Prudens futuri temporis exitum

Caliginosa nocte premit Deus,

Ridetque, si mortalis ultra

Fas trepidat."

"Ille potens sui

Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem

Dixisse vixi! cras vel atra

Nube polum pater occupato,

Vel sole puro."

"Laetus in praesens animus; quod ultra est,

Oderit curare."

And those who take this sentence in a contrary sense interpret it amiss:

"Ista sic reciprocantur, ut et si divinatio sit,

dii sint; et si dii lint, sit divinatio."

Much more wisely Pacuvius--

"Nam istis, qui linguam avium intelligunt,

Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt, quam ex suo,

Magis audiendum, quam auscultandum, censeo."

The so celebrated art of divination amongst the Tuscans took its

beginning thus: A labourer striking deep with his cutter into the earth,

saw the demigod Tages ascend, with an infantine aspect, but endued with a

mature and senile wisdom. Upon the rumour of which, all the people ran

to see the sight, by whom his words and science, containing the

principles and means to attain to this art, were recorded, and kept for

many ages.-- --A birth suitable to its

progress; I, for my part, should sooner regulate my affairs by the chance

of a die than by such idle and vain dreams. And, indeed, in all

republics, a good share of the government has ever been referred to

chance. Plato, in the civil regimen that he models according to his own

fancy, leaves to it the decision of several things of very great

importance, and will, amongst other things, that marriages should be

appointed by lot; attributing so great importance to this accidental

choice as to ordain that the children begotten in such wedlock be brought

up in the country, and those begotten in any other be thrust out as

spurious and base; yet so, that if any of those exiles, notwithstanding,

should, peradventure, in growing up give any good hope of himself, he

might be recalled, as, also, that such as had been retained, should be

exiled, in case they gave little expectation of themselves in their early

growth.

I see some who are mightily given to study and comment upon their

almanacs, and produce them to us as an authority when anything has fallen

out pat; and, for that matter, it is hardly possible but that these

alleged authorities sometimes stumble upon a truth amongst an infinite

number of lies.

"Quis est enim, qui totum diem jaculans

non aliquando collineet?"

I think never the better of them for some such accidental hit. There

would be more certainty in it if there were a rule and a truth of always

lying. Besides, nobody records their flimflams and false prognostics,

forasmuch as they are infinite and common; but if they chop upon one

truth, that carries a mighty report, as being rare, incredible, and

prodigious. So Diogenes, surnamed the Atheist, answered him in

Samothrace, who, showing him in the temple the several offerings and

stories in painting of those who had escaped shipwreck, said to him,

"Look, you who think the gods have no care of human things, what do you

say to so many persons preserved from death by their especial favour?"

"Why, I say," answered he, "that their pictures are not here who were

cast away, who are by much the greater number."--

Cicero observes that of all the philosophers who have acknowledged a

deity, Xenophanes the Colophonian only has endeavoured to eradicate all

manner of divination-- --; which makes it the

less a wonder if we have now and then seen some of our princes, sometimes

to their own cost, rely too much upon these vanities. I had given

anything with my own eyes to see those two great marvels, the book of

Joachim the Calabrian abbot, which foretold all the future Popes, their

names and qualities; and that of the Emperor Leo, which prophesied all

the emperors and patriarchs of Greece. This I have been an eyewitness

of, that in public confusions, men astonished at their fortune, have

abandoned their own reason, superstitiously to seek out in the stars the

ancient causes and menaces of the present mishaps, and in my time have

been so strangely successful in it, as to make me believe that this being

an amusement of sharp and volatile wits, those who have been versed in

this knack of unfolding and untying riddles, are capable, in any sort of

writing, to find out what they desire. But above all, that which gives

them the greatest room to play in, is the obscure, ambiguous, and

fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting, where their authors deliver

nothing of clear sense, but shroud all in riddle, to the end that

posterity may interpret and apply it according to its own fancy.

Socrates demon might, perhaps, be no other but a certain impulsion of the

will, which obtruded itself upon him without the advice or consent of his

judgment; and in a soul so enlightened as his was, and so prepared by a

continual exercise of wisdom-and virtue, 'tis to be supposed those

inclinations of his, though sudden and undigested, were very important

and worthy to be followed. Every one finds in himself some image of such

agitations, of a prompt, vehement, and fortuitous opinion; and I may well

allow them some authority, who attribute so little to our prudence, and

who also myself have had some, weak in reason, but violent in persuasion

and dissuasion, which were most frequent with Socrates,-- --by which I have suffered myself to

be carried away so fortunately, and so much to my own advantage, that

they might have been judged to have had something in them of a divine

inspiration.