And if one loves me for my judgment, memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself.  Where, then, is this Ego, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul?  And how love the body or the soul, except for these qualities which do not constitute me, since they are perishable?  For it is impossible and would be unjust to love the soul of a person in the abstract, and whatever qualities might be therein.  We never, then, love a person, but only qualities.

Let us, then, jeer no more at those who are honoured on account of rank and office; for we love a person only on account of borrowed qualities.

324

The people have very sound opinions, for example: 

1.  In having preferred diversion and hunting to poetry.  The half-learned laugh at it, and glory in being above the folly of the world; but the people are right for a reason which these do not fathom.

2.  In having distinguished men by external marks, as birth or wealth.  The world again exults in showing how unreasonable this is; but it is very reasonable.  Savages laugh at an infant king.[123]

3.  In being offended at a blow, on in desiring glory so much.  But it is very desirable on account of the other essential goods which are joined to it; and a man who has received a blow, without resenting it, is overwhelmed with taunts and indignities.

4.  In working for the uncertain; in sailing on the sea; in walking over a plank.

325

Montaigne is wrong.  Custom should be followed only because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.  But people follow it for this sole reason, that they think it just.  Otherwise they would follow it no longer, although it were the custom; for they will only submit to reason or justice.  Custom without this would pass for tyranny; but the sovereignty of reason and justice is no more tyrannical than that of desire.  They are principles natural to man.

It would therefore be right to obey laws and customs, because they are laws; but we should know that there is neither truth nor justice to introduce into them, that we know nothing of these, and so must follow what is accepted.  By this means we would never depart from them.  But people cannot accept this doctrine; and, as they believe that truth can be found, and that it exists in law and custom, they believe them, and take their antiquity as a proof of their truth, and not simply of their authority apart from truth.  Thus they obey laws, but they are liable to revolt when these are proved to be valueless; and this can be shown of all, looked at from a certain aspect.

326

Injustice.—­It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just.  Therefore it is necessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but because they are superiors.  In this way all sedition is prevented, if this can be made intelligible, and it be understood what is the proper definition of justice.