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274 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

altering the facts a little. They never represent things to you just as they are: they shape them and disguise them according to the aspect which they have seen them bear; and to win faith in their judgement and incline you to trust it, they readily help out the matter on one side, lengthen it, and amplify it. It needs a man either very truthful or so ignorant that he has no material wherewith to construct and give verisimilitude to false conceptions, and one who is wedded to nothing. My man was such a one; and, besides, he on divers occasions brought to me several sailors and traders whom he had known on his travels. So I am content with this information, without enquiring what the cosmo- graphers say about it. We need topographers who would give us a detailed description of the places where they have been. But when they have the advantage over us of having seen Palestine, they desire to enjoy the privilege of telling us news about all the rest of the world. I could wish that every one would write what he knows and as much as he knows, not about one subject alone, but about all others; for one may have some special knowledge or experience as to the nature of a river or a fountain, who about other things knows only what every one knows. He will undertake, how- ever, in order to give currency to that little scrap of know- ledge, to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault spring many grave disadvantages.

  • Now, to return to what I was talking of, I think that there

is nothing barbaric or uncivilised in that nation, according

to what I have been told, except that evermone calls “bar- bastunn sebatecer bets pot accnstomed- tty, . As, indeed, it seems that we have no other criterion ! of truth and of what is reasonable than the example and type of the opinions and customs of the country to which we belong: therein [to us] always is the perfect religion, the perfect political sys- tem, the perfect and achieved usage in all things. They are wild men,? just as we call those fruits wild * which Nature has produced unaided and in her usual course; whereas, in truth, it is those that we have altered by our skill and re- moved from the common kind which we ought rather to call wild. In the former the real and most useful and natural

1 Mire. 2 Sauvages.

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