[35] Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. [36] Montaigne says, in his author’s address to the reader:— “_Ie veulx qu’on m’y veoye en ma façon simple, naturelle et ordinaire, sans estude et artifice; car c’est moi que je peinds._” He says again elsewhere: “_Ie n’ay pas plus faict mon livre, que mon livre m’a faict; livre consubstantiel à son aucteur, d’une occupation propre, membre de ma vie, non d’une occupation et fin tierce et estrangiere, comme touts aultres livres_.” (Livre ii. ch. xviii.) [37] Introduction to the Encyclopædia. [38] Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. [39] Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. [40] No. 267. [41] Essays. [42] He refers to the following passage in the Gospel of St. John, xviii. 38: “Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.” [43] He probably refers to the “New Academy,” a sect of Greek philosophers, one of whose moot questions was, “What is truth?” Upon which they came to the unsatisfactory conclusion, that mankind has no criterion by which to form a judgment. [44] Perhaps he was thinking of St. Augustine.—See _Aug. Confess._ i. 25, 26. [45] “The wine of evil spirits.” [46] Genesis i. 3: “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” [47] At the moment when “The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”—_Genesis_ ii. 7. [48] Lucretius, the Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher, is alluded to.—_Lucret._ ii. _init._ Comp. _Adv. of Learning_, i. 8, 5. [49] He refers to the sect which followed the doctrines of Epicurus. The life of Epicurus himself was pure and abstemious in the extreme. One of his leading tenets was, that the aim of all speculation should be to enable men to judge with certainty what course is to be chosen, in order to secure health of body and tranquillity of mind. The adoption, however, of the term “pleasure,” as denoting this object, has at all periods subjected the Epicurean system to great reproach; which, in fact, is due rather to the conduct of many who, for their own purposes, have taken shelter under the system in name only, than to the tenets themselves, which did not inculcate libertinism. Epicurus admitted the existence of the Gods, but he deprived them of the characteristics of Divinity, either as creators or preservers of the world.