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1. It is not perhaps without good reason that we attribute to simple-mindedness a readiness to believe anything and to ignorance the readiness to be convinced, for I think I was once taught that a belief is like an impression stamped on our soul: the softer and less resisting the soul, the easier it is to print anything on it: 'Ut necesse est lancem in libra ponderibus impositis deprimi, sic animum perspicuis cedere.' ['For just as a weight placed on a balance must weigh it down, so the mind must yield to clear evidence.']
The more empty a soul is and the less furnished with counterweights, the more easily its balance will be swayed under the force of its first convictions. That is why children, the common people, women and the sick are more readily led by the nose.
2. On the other hand there is a silly arrogance in continuing to disdain something and to condemn it as false just because it seems unlikely to us. That is a common vice among those who think their capacities are above the ordinary.
3. I used to do that once: if I heard tell of ghosts walking or of prophecies, enchantments, sorcery, or some other tale which I could not get my teeth into-
Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala
[Dreams, magic terrors, miracles, witches, nocturnal visits from the dead or spells from Thessaly]
-I used to feel sorry for the wretched folk who were taken in by such madness. Now I find that I was at least as much to be pitied as they were. It is not that experience has subsequently shown me anything going beyond my original beliefs (nor is it from any lack of curiosity on my part), but reason has taught me that, if you condemn in this way anything whatever as definitely false and quite impossible, you are claiming to know the frontiers and bounds of the will of God and the power of Nature our Mother; it taught me also that there is nothing in the whole world madder than bringing matters down to the measure of our own capacities and potentialities.
4. How many of the things which constantly come into our purview must be deemed monstrous or miraculous if we apply such terms to anything which outstrips our reason! If we consider that we have to grope through a fog even to understand the very things we hold in our hands, then we will certainly find that it is not knowledge but habit which takes away their strangeness;
jam nemo, fessus satiate vivendi,
Suspicere in coeli dignatur lucida templa;
[Already now, tired and satiated with life, nobody bothers to gaze up at the shining temples of the heavens:]
such things, if they were newly presented to us, would seem as unbelievable as any others;
si nunc primum mortalibus adsint
Ex improviso, ceu sint objecta repente,
Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici,
Aut minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes.
[supposing that now, for the first time, they were suddenly shown to mortal men: nothing could be called more miraculous; such things the nations would not have dared to believe.]
He who had never actually seen a river, the first time he did so took it for the ocean, since we think that the biggest things that we know represent the limits of what Nature can produce in that species.
Scilicet et fluvius, qui non est maximus, eii est
Qui non ante aliquem majorem vidit, et ingens
Arbor homoque videtur; et omnia de genere omni
Maxima quae vidit quisque, haec ingentia fingit.
[Just as a river may not be all that big, but seems huge to a man who has never seen a bigger one, so, too, for the biggest tree or biggest man; and the biggest thing of any kind which we know is considered huge by us.]
'Consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur, neque requirunt rationes earum rerum quas semper vident.' [When we grow used to seeing anything it accustoms our minds to it and we cease to be astonished by it; we never seek the causes of things like that.]
What makes us seek the cause of anything is not size but novelty.
5. We ought to judge the infinite power of Nature with more reverence and a greater recognition of our own ignorance and weakness. How many improbable things there are which have been testified to by people worthy of our trust: if we cannot be convinced we should at least remain in suspense. To condemn them as impossible is to be rashly presumptuous, boasting that we know the limits of the possible. If we understood the difference between what is impossible and what is unusual, or between what is against the order of the course of Nature and what is against the common opinion of mankind, then the way to observe that rule laid down by Chilo, Nothing to excess, would be, Not to believe too rashly: not to disbelieve too easily.
6. When we read in Froissart that the Comte de Foix knew the following morning in Béarn of the defeat of King John of Castille at Juberoth, and when we read of the means he is alleged to have used, we can laugh at that; we can laugh too when our annals tell how Pope Honorius, on the very same day that King PhilipAugustus died at Mante, celebrated a public requiem for him and ordered the same to be done throughout Italy, for the authority of such witnesses is not high enough to rein us back.
7. But wait. When Plutarch (leaving aside the many examples which he alleges from Antiquity) says that he himself knows quite definitely that, at the time of Domitian, news of the battle lost by Antony several days' journey away in Germany was publicly announced in Rome and spread through all the world on the very day that it was lost; and when Caesar maintains that it was often the case that news of an event actually anticipated the event itself: are we supposed to say that they were simple people who merely followed the mob and who let themselves be deceived because they saw things less clearly than we do!
8. Can there be anything more delicate, clear-cut and lively than the judgement of Pliny when he pleases to exercise it? Is there anything further from triviality? (I am not discussing his outstanding erudition; I put less store by that: but in which of those two qualities are we supposed to surpass him?) And yet every little schoolboy convicts him of lying and lectures him about the march of Nature's handiwork.
9. When we read in Bouchet about miracles associated with the relics of Saint Hilary we can shrug it off: his right to be believed is not great enough to take away our freedom to challenge him. But to go on from there and condemn all similar accounts seems to me to be impudent in the extreme. Such a great saint as Augustine swears that he saw:
a blind child restored to sight by the relics of Saint Gervaise and Saint Protasius at Milan; a woman in Carthage cured of a cancer by the sign of the cross made by a woman who had just been baptised; his close friend Hesperius driving off devils (who were infesting his house) by using a little soil taken from the sepulchre of our Lord, and that same soil, borne into the Church, suddenly curing a paralytic; a woman who, having touched the reliquary of Saint Stephen with a posy of flowers during a procession, rubbed her eyes with them afterwards and recovered her sight which she had recently lost-as well as several other miracles which occurred in his presence. What are we to accuse him of-him and the two holy bishops, Aurelius and Maximinus, whom he calls on as witnesses? Is it of ignorance, simple-mindedness, credulity, deliberate deception or imposture? Is there any man in our century so impudent as to think he can be compared with them for virtue, piety, scholarship, judgement and ability? 'Qui, ut rationem nullam afferent, ipsa authoritate me frangerent.' [Why, even if they gave no reasons, they would convince me by their very authority.]
10. Apart from the absurd rashness which it entails, there is a dangerous boldness of great consequence in despising whatever we cannot understand. For as soon as you have established the frontiers of truth and error with that fine brain of yours and then discover that you must of necessity believe some things even stranger than the ones which you reject, you are already forced to abandon these frontiers.
11. Now it seems to me that what brings as much disorder as anything into our consciences during our current religious strife is the way Catholics are prepared to treat some of their beliefs as expendable. They believe they are being moderate and well-informed when they surrender to their enemies some of the articles of faith which are in dispute. But, apart from the fact that they cannot see what an advantage you give to an adversary when you begin to yield ground and beat a retreat, or how much that excites him to follow up his attack, the very articles which they select as being less weighty are sometimes extremely important ones.
12. We must either totally submit to the authority of our ecclesiastical polity or else totally release ourselves from it. It is not for us to decide what degree of obedience we owe to it.
13. Moreover I can say that for having assayed it; in the past I made use of that freedom of personal choice and private selection in order to neglect certain details in the observances of our Church because they seemed to be rather odd or rather empty; then, when I came to tell some learned men about it, I discovered that those very practices were based on massive and absolutely solid foundations, and that it is only our ignorance and animal-stupidity which make us treat them with less reverence than all the rest.
14. Why cannot we remember all the contradictions which we feel within our own judgement, and how many things which were articles of belief for us yesterday are fables for us today?
15. Vainglory and curiosity are the twin scourges of our souls. The former makes us stick our noses into everything: the latter forbids us to leave anything unresolved or undecided.