“Et supra bellum Thebanum et funera Trojae
Non alias alii quoque res cecinere poetae?”

["Why before the Theban war and the destruction of Troy, have not other poets sung other events?”—­Lucretius, v. 327.  Montaigne here diverts himself m giving Lucretius’ words a construction directly contrary to what they bear in the poem.  Lucretius puts the question, Why if the earth had existed from all eternity, there had not been poets, before the Theban war, to sing men’s exploits.  —­Coste.]

And the narrative of Solon, of what he had learned from the Egyptian priests, touching the long life of their state, and their manner of learning and preserving foreign histories, is not, methinks, a testimony to be refused in this consideration: 

“Si interminatam in omnes partes magnitudinem regionum videremus et temporum, in quam se injiciens animus et intendens, ita late longeque peregrinatur, ut nullam oram ultimi videat, in qua possit insistere:  in haec immensitate . . . infinita vis innumerabilium appareret fomorum.”

["Could we see on all parts the unlimited magnitude of regions and of times, upon which the mind being intent, could wander so far and wide, that no limit is to be seen, in which it can bound its eye, we should, in that infinite immensity, discover an infinite force of innumerable atoms.”  Here also Montaigne puts a sense quite different from what the words bear in the original; but the application he makes of them is so happy that one would declare they were actually put together only to express his own sentiments.  “Et temporum” is an addition by Montaigne.—­Coste.]

Though all that has arrived, by report, of our knowledge of times past should be true, and known by some one person, it would be less than nothing in comparison of what is unknown.  And of this same image of the world, which glides away whilst we live upon it, how wretched and limited is the knowledge of the most curious; not only of particular events, which fortune often renders exemplary and of great concern, but of the state of great governments and nations, a hundred more escape us than ever come to our knowledge.  We make a mighty business of the invention of artillery and printing, which other men at the other end of the world, in China, had a thousand years ago.  Did we but see as much of the world as we do not see, we should perceive, we may well believe, a perpetual multiplication and vicissitude of forms.  There is nothing single and rare in respect of nature, but in respect of our knowledge, which is a wretched foundation whereon to ground our rules, and that represents to us a very false image of things.  As we nowadays vainly conclude the declension and decrepitude of the world, by the arguments we extract from our own weakness and decay: 

“Jamque adeo est affecta aetas effoet aque tellus;”

["Our age is feeble, and the earth less fertile.” 
—­Lucretius, ii. 1151.]