Free The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne Page B

has given us two books: the Book of the Universal Order of Things (or, of Nature) and the Book of the Bible. The former was given to us first, from the origin of the world: for each creature is like a letter traced by the hand of God: this Book had to be composed of a great multitude of creatures (which are as so many ‘letters’); within them is found Man. He is the main, the capital letter.
    Now, just as letters and words composed from letters constitute a science by amply marshalling different sentences and meanings, so too the creatures, joined and coupled together, form various clauses and sentences, containing the science that is, before all, requisite for us.
    The second Book – Holy Scripture – was subsequently given in default of the first, in which, blinded as he was, he could make out nothing, notwithstanding that the first is common to all whereas the second is not: to read the second book one must be a clerk. Moreover, the Book of Nature cannot be corrupted nor effaced nor falsely interpreted. Therefore the heretics cannot interpret it falsely: from this Book no one becomes an heretic.
    With the Bible, things go differently. Nevertheless both Books derive from the same Author: God created his creatures just as he established his Scriptures. That is why they accord so well together, with no tendency to contradict each other, despite the first one’s symbolizing most closely with our nature and the second one’s being so far above it.
    Since Man, at his Birth, did not find himself furnished with any science (despite his rationality and capacity for knowledge) and since no science can be acquired without books in which it is written down, it was more than reasonable (so that our capacity for learning should not have been given us in vain) that the Divine Intelligence should provide us with the means of instructing ourselves in the doctrine which alone is requisite, without a schoolmaster, naturally, by ourselves.
    That is why that Intelligence made this visible world and gave it to us like a proper, familiar and infallible Book, written by his hand, in which the creatures are ranged like letters – not in accordance to our desires but according to the holy judgement of God, so as to teach us the wisdom and science of our salvation. Yet no one can [now] see and read that great Book by himself (even though it is ever open and present to our eyes) unless he is enlightened by God and cleansed of original sin. And therefore not one of the pagan philosophers of Antiquity could read this science, because they were all blinded concerning the sovereign good; even though they drew all their other sciences and all their knowledge from it, they could never perceive nor discover the wisdom which is enclosed within it nor that true and solid doctrine which guides us to eternal life.
    Now, in anyone capable of discernment, there is engendered a true understanding from a combining together of the creatures like a well-ordered tissue of words. So the method of treating this subject in this treatise is to classify the creatures and to establish their relationships one with the other, taking into consideration their weightiness and what they signify and, after having drawn forth the divine wisdom which they contain, fixing it and impressing it deeply in our hearts and souls.

    Now, since the Most Holy Church of Rome is the Mother of all faithful Christians, the Mother of Grace, the Rule of Faith and Truth, I submit to her correction all that is said and contained in this my work.

Chronology
     
1477 Ramond Eyquem, a rich merchant in Bordeaux trading in wines and salt fish, purchases the estates of Montaigne.
     
1497 Birth of Pierre Eyquem (Montaigne’s father) at the family estates.
     
1519 Pierre Eyquem, as a result of deaths in the family, inherits the estates at Montaigne and leaves to fight in Italy, entailing an absence of several years.
     
1528 Pierre Eyquem marries Antoinette de Louppes, of a rich and politically