“My profession is not to know the truth nor to attaine it. I rather open than discover things. The wisest that ever was, being demanded what he knew, answered that he knew nothing.” He speaks with approval of the doubters, the Phyrronians who “but desire to be contradicted, thereby to engender doubt and suspense of judgment which is their end and drift.” Thus these men have attained the condition of a quiet and contented life, exempted from the agitations which beset ourselves because we imagine we have a certainty and a knowledge that we do not possess. After all “that ignorance which knoweth and condemneth itselfe,” is not absolute ignorance. Montaigne seems to hold that it is the best we may attain and that in knowing and condemning our ignorance we may avoid much of the misery and mischief we inflict upon ourselves and one another. The fears and revenge and jealousies and partisan strife and rebellion and envy and immoderate desires which everywhere he finds about him all proceed, he thinks, from presumptuous ignorance which does not know itself to be ignorance. In the midst of theological disputation he smilingly reminds his neighbors that as, “Xenophanes said pleasantly that if beastes frame any gods unto themselves (as likely it is they doe) they surely frame them like unto themselves and glorifie themselves as we do. For what may not a Goose say this? All parts of the world behold me, the earth serveth me to tread upon, the sunne to give me light, the starres to inspire me with influence: this commodity I have of the winds, and this benefit of the waters: there is nothing that this world’s vault doth so favorably looke upon as me selfe: I am the favorite of nature. Is it not man that careth for me, that keepeth me, and serveth me? For me it is he soweth and reapeth and grindeth. If he eat me, so doth man feede on his fellow, and so doe I on the wormes that consume and eat him.” “I commend the Milesian wench who seeing Thales the Philosoper continually amusing hemselfe in the contemplation of heaven’s wide bounding vault and ever holding his eyes aloft, laid something in his way to make him stumble, thereby to warne and put him in minde that he should not amuse his thoughts about matters above the clouds before he had provided for and well considered those at his feet. Verily she advised him well, and it better became him rather to looke to himselfe than to gaze on heaven.” “_The wisest judging of heaven is not to judge of it at all._” His own modest answer to the riddle of existence in contrast to those who would “turne and winde God Almighty according to their own measure,” is “Que scay-je?”--What do I know?