Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/168

148 do in our hand. I saw another who lost his arms when a child, who wielded a two-handed sword and a halberd in the bend of the neck, for lack of hands, threw them in the air and caught them, cast a dagger, and cracked a whip as well as any carter in France.

But we discern her effects much better in the strange impressions she makes on our minds, where she does not find so much resistance. What is impossible to her regarding our judgements and our beliefs? Is there any opinion so fantastical (I leave out of account the gross imposture of religious belief wherewith so many great nations and so many able personages are seen to be bewildered; for that matter being outside of our human reasonings, it is more excusable for him who is not extraordinarily enlightened by divine favour to lose himself therein) — but of other opinions are there any so strange which she has not planted and established by law in the countries where it has seemed to her well to do so? (c) And that ancient exclamation is very true: Non pudet physicum, id est speculatorem venatoremque naturæ, ab animis consuetudine imbutis quærere testimonium veritatis. (b) I believe that no fancy, however extravagant, ever comes into the human imagination, which does not find example in some public custom, and which consequently our reason does not prop up and support. There are peoples who turn the back on the person saluted, and never look at one to whom they desire to do honour. There are other nations where, when the king spits, the greatest favourite among the women of his court holds out her hand; and in still another the most eminent of those about his person stoop to take up his dirt in a cloth.

(c) Let me find room here for an anecdote. A certain French gentleman always blew his nose with his hand (a