“Let him shew me, by the most skilful argument, upon what foundations he has built these excessive prerogatives which he supposes himself to have over other existences. Who has persuaded him that that admirable impulse of the celestial vault, the eternal brightness of those Lights rolling so majestically over our heads, the tremendous motions of that infinite sea of Globes, were established and have continued so many ages for his advantage and for his service. Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as that this pitiful [_chétive_], miserable creature, who is not even master of himself, exposed to injuries of every kind, should call itself master and lord of the universe, of which, so far from being lord of it, he knows but the smallest part?... Who has given him this sealed charter? Let him shew us the ‘letters patent’ of this grand commission. Have they been issued [_octroyées_] in favour of the wise only? They affect but the few in that case. The fools and the wicked--are they worthy of so extraordinary a favour, and being the worst part of the world [_le pire pièce du monde_], do they deserve to be preferred to all the rest? Shall we believe all this? “Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most calamitous and fragile of all creatures is man, and yet the most arrogant.[114] It is through the vanity of this same imagination that he equals himself to a god, that he attributes to himself divine conditions, that he picks himself out and separates himself from the crowd of other creatures, curtails the just shares of other animals his brethren [_confrères_] and companions, and assigns to them such portions of faculties and forces as seems to him good. How does he know, by the effort of his intelligence, the interior and secret movements and impulses of other animals? By what comparison between them and us does he infer the stupidity [_la bétise_] which he attributes to them?” Montaigne quotes the example of his master, the just and benevolent Plutarch, who made it a matter of justice and conscience not to sell or send to the slaughter-house (according to the common selfish ingratitude) a Cow who had served him faithfully and profitably for so many years. With Plutarch and Porphyry he never wearies of denouncing the unreasoning opinions, or rather prejudices, prevalent amongst men as to the mental qualities of many of the non-human races, and, as we have already seen, insists that the difference between them and us is of _degree_ and not of _kind_:--