“ametes naines, et chetives” Montaigne
“dwarfish and puny soullets” (Frame)
“petty wretched soules” (Florio)
“wretched and dwarfish little souls” (Cotton)
“puny and dwarfed little souls” (Trechmann)
“dwarfed and paltry little intelligences” (Ives)
“mean and dwarfish souls” (Zeitlin)
“petty, dwarfish souls” (Screech)

Non seulement le vent des accidens me remue selon son inclination, mais en outre je me remue et trouble moy mesme par l’instabilité de ma posture; et qui y regarde primement, ne se trouve guere deux fois en mesme estat. Je donne à mon ame tantost un visage, tantost un autre, selon le costé où je la couche. Si je parle diversement de moy, c’est que je me regarde diversement. Toutes les contrarietez s’y trouvent selon quelque tour et en quelque façon. Honteux, insolent; chaste, luxurieux; bavard, taciturne; laborieux, delicat; ingenieux, hebeté; chagrin, debonaire; menteur, veritable; sçavant, ignorant, et liberal, et avare, et prodigue, tout cela, je le vois en moy aucunement, selon que je me vire; et quiconque s’estudie bien attentifvement trouve en soy, voire et en son jugement mesme, cette volubilité et discordance. Je n’ay rien à dire de moy, entierement, simplement, et solidement, sans confusion et sans meslange, ny en un mot. Distingo est le plus universel membre de ma Logique. (Montaigne)

“Not only does the wind of accident move me at will, but, besides, I am moved and disturbed as a result merely of my own unstable posture; and anyone who observes carefully can hardly find himself twice in the same state. I give my soul now one face, now another, according to which direction I turn it. If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. All contradictions may be found in me by some twist and in some fashion. Bashful, insolent; chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; tough, delicate; clever, stupid; surly, affable; lying, truthful; learned, ignorant; liberal, miserly, and prodigal: all this I see in myself to some extent according to how I turn; and whoever studies himself really attentively finds in himself, yes, even in his judgment, this gyration and discord. I have nothing to say about myself absolutely, simply, and solidly, without confusion and without mixture, or in one word. Distinguo is the most universal member of my logic.” (Frame)

“The blast of accidents doth not only remove me according to his inclination; for, besides, I remove and trouble my selfe by the instability of my posture, and whosoever looketh narrowly about himselfe, shall hardly see himselfe twice in the same state. Sometimes I give my soule one visage and sometimes another, according unto the posture or side I lay her in. If I speake diversly of selfe it is because I looke diversly upon my selfe. All contrarieties are found in her, according to some turne or removing, and in some fashion or other; shamefast, bashfull, insolent, chaste, luxurious, peevish, pratling, silent, fond, doting, labourious, nice, delicate, ingenious, slow, dull, froward, humorous, debonaire, wise, ignorant, false in words, true-speaking, both liberall, covetous, and prodigall. All these I perceive in some measure or other to bee in mee, according as I stirre or turne my selfe; And whosoever shall heedfully survey and consider himselfe, shall finde this volubility and discordance to be in himselfe, yea and in his very judgement. I have nothing to say entirely, simply, and with soliditie of my selfe, without confusion, disorder, blending, mingling, and in one word, Distinguo is the most universall part of my logike.” (Florio)

“For my part, the puff of every accident not only carries me along with it according to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and trouble myself by the instability of my own posture; and whoever will look narrowly into his own bosom, will hardly find himself twice in the same condition. I give to my soul sometimes one face and sometimes another, according to the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of myself, it is because I consider myself variously; all the contrarieties are there to be found in one corner or another; after one fashion or another: bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; prating, silent; laborious, delicate; ingenious, heavy; melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant; liberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more or less, according as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift himself to the bottom, will find in himself, and even in his own judgment, this volubility and discordance. I have nothing to say of myself entirely, simply, and solidly without mixture and confusion. ‘Distinguo’ is the most universal member of my logic.” (Cotton)

“Not only do chance winds sway me according to their direction, but I am also swayed and confused by the instability of my footing; and he who closely observes about this finds himself scarcely twice in the same state. I give to my soul sometimes one point of view, sometimes another, according to the side to which I turn her. If I speak diversely about myself, it is because I see myself diversely. All contradictions exist in me at some moment and in some fashion. Shamefaced, insolent; chaste, licentious; talkative, taciturn; hardy, effeminate; sharp-witted, stupid; ill-humoured, courteous; a liar, truthful; learned, ignorant; and open-handed and avaricious and prodigal – all these things I see in myself in some degree, according as I turn myself about; and whoever studies himself very carefully finds in himself, aye, and in his very judgement, this same volubility and discordance. I have nothing to say of myself in complete, simple, and sound terms, without confusion and intermixture, or in a single word. Distinguo is the most universal part of my logic.” (Ives)

“Not only does the wind of accidents stir me according to its blowing, but I am also stirred and troubled by the instability of my attitude; and he who examines himself closely will seldom find himself twice in the same state. I give my soul now one face, now another, according to the side to which I turn it. If I speak differently of myself, it is because I regard myself differently. All the contradictions are to be found in me, according as the wind turns and changes. Bashful, insolent; chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; clumsy, gentle; witty, dull; peevish, sweet-tempered; mendacious, truthful; knowing, ignorant; and liberal and avaricious and prodigal: all this I see in myself in some degree, according as I veer about; and whoever will study himself very attentively will find in himself, yea, in his judgement, this discordance and unsteadiness. I can say nothing of myself absolutely, simply, and steadily, without confusion and mixture, nor in one word. Distinguo is the most universal member of my logic.” (Trechmann)

“Not only does the wind of chance move me according to its own direction, but in addition I discompose and trouble myself by the instability of my posture; and whoever will look narrowly into it, will hardly find himself twice in the same state. I give to my soul sometimes one face, sometimes another, according to the side to which I turn it. If I speak of variously of myself, it is because I see myself variously. All the contradictions exist there, in one aspect or another, in one fashion or another. Bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; talkative, taciturn; hardy, effeminate; ingenious, dull; surly, affable; lying, truthful; learned, ignorant; and generous, and miserly, and prodigal: all this I find in myself, more or less, according as I turn myself about; and whoever will study himself very attentively, will find in himself, yes, even in his judgement, this mutableness and discordance. There is nothing I can say about myself absolutely, simply, and solidly, without confusion and without mixture, or in a single word. DISTINGO (‘I distinguish’) is the most universal member of my logic.” (Zeitlin)

“Not only does the wind of chance events shake me about as it lists, but I also shake and disturb myself by the instability of my stance: anyone who turns his prime attention on to himself will hardly ever find himself in the same state twice. I give my soul this face or that, depending upon which side I lay it down on. I speak about myself in diverse ways: that is because I look at myself in diverse ways. Every sort of contradiction can be found in me, depending upon some twist or attribute: timid, insolent; chaste, lecherous; talkative, taciturn; tough, sickly; clever, dull; brooding, affable; lying, truthful; learned, ignorant; generous, miserly and then prodigal – I can see something of all that in myself, depending on how I gyrate; and anyone who studies himself attentively finds in himself and in his very judgement this whirring about and this discordancy. There is nothing I can say about myself as a whole simply and completely, without intermingling and admixture. The most universal article of my own Logic is DISTINGUO.” (Screech)

Montaigne on the fabrications of philosophers: “There is no more retrogradation, trepidation, accession, recession, reversal, in the stars and heavenly bodies, than they have fabricated in this poor little human body. Truly they had good reason therefore to call it the little world, so many pieces and facets have they used to plaster it and build it. To accommodate the impulses they see in man, the diverse functions and faculties that we sense in us, into how many parts have they divided our soul? How many seats have they assigned to it? Into how many orders and stages have they split this poor man, besides the natural and perceptible ones, and into how many functions and occupations? They make him an imaginary republic. He is a subject that they hold and handle; they are allowed full power to take him apart, rearrange him, reassemble him, and stuff him, each according to his fancy; and yet they still do not have him. Not only in reality, but even in daydreams they cannot so regulate him that there will not be some cadence or some sound that escapes their architecture, prodigious as it is, and patched with a thousand false and fantastic bits.” (Frame)

Jacques Barzun on the fabrications of social scientists: “Removing man from the science of man is much harder than removing him from the science of nature… Equally unsatisfactory is the method of keeping man in view but splitting him into as many separate ‘men’ as he has functions, and then dealing with each slice as if it belonged to a class of similar pieces. How does one discern them in the first place? How does one name them, classify them? … After ‘economic man’ had been split off, boxed, labeled, and told how he would infallibly behave, the subject had no difficulty disregarding the ‘laws’ he was supposed to exhibit.” (Science: The Glorious Entertainment, 1964)

“Moy à cette heure et moy tantost sommes bien deux; mais quand meilleur, je n’en puis rien dire. Il feroit beau estre vieil si nous ne marchions que vers l’amendement. C’est un mouvement d’yvroigne titubant, vertigineux, informe, ou des joncs que l’air manie casuellement selon soy.” #Montaigne

“Myself now and myself a while ago are indeed two; but when better, I simply cannot say. It would be fine to be old if we traveled only toward improvement. It is a drunkard’s motion, staggering, dizzy, wobbling, or that of reeds that the wind stirs haphazardly as it pleases.” (Frame, 1957)

“I at the present moment and I a little while ago are indeed two different persons; but at which stage better, I cannot really say. It would be a fine thing to be old if the path of the years led only to improvement. It is a drunkard’s motion, reeling, dizzy, unsteady, or like that of reeds, which the wind agitates at its pleasure.” (Zeitlin, 1936)

“‘I’ now and ‘I’ then are certainly twain, but which ‘I’ was better? I know nothing about that. If we were always progressing towards improvement, to be old would be a beautiful thing. But it is a drunkard’s progress, formless, staggering, like reeds which the wind shakes as it fancies, haphazardly.” (Screech, 1991)

“Myself now and myself then are two persons; which the better? I do not at all know. It would be a fine thing to be old if we progressed only toward improvement; it is the motion of a drunken man, staggering, dizzy, tortuous, or of reeds which the wind sways casually as it lists.” (George Burnham Ives, 1925)

“I now, and I anon, are two several persons; but whether better, I cannot determine. It were a fine thing to be old, if we only travelled towards improvement; but ’tis a drunken, stumbling, reeling, infirm motion: like that of reeds, which the air casually waves to and fro at pleasure.” (Cotton, ed. Hazlitt, 1877)

“My selfe now and my selfe anon are indeede two; but when better, in good sooth I cannot tell. It were a goodly thing to bee old if wee did onely march towards amendment. It is the motion of a drunkard, stumbling, reeling, giddie-brain’d, formeles, or of reedes, which the ayre dooth casually wave to and fro what way it bloweth.” (Florio, 1603)

“Chaque homme porte la forme entiere de l’humaine condition.” #Montaigne

“Each man bears the entire form of man’s estate.” (Frame, 1957)

“Every man bears the whole Form of the human condition.” (Screech, 1991)

“Every man carries in himself the complete pattern of human nature.” (JM Cohen, 1958)

“Every man has in himself the whole form of human nature.” (Ives, 1925)

“Every man carries the entire form of human condition.” (Cotton, ed. Hazlitt, 1877)

“Every man beareth the whole stampe of humane condition.” (Florio, 1603)

“Voilà ce que la memoire m’en represente en gros, et assez incertainement. Tous jugemens en gros sont laches et imparfaicts.” #Montaigne

“That is what my memory of Tacitus offers me in gross, and rather uncertainly. All judgments in gross are loose and imperfect.” (Frame, 1957)

“That is, grosso modo, the Tacitus which is presented to me, vaguely enough, by my memory. All grosso-modo judgements are lax and defective.” (Screech, 1991)

“This is what my memory of Tacitus presents to me in a general way, and with no great certainty. All general judgements are weak and imperfect.” (JM Cohen, 1958)

“This is what my memory of Tacitus presents to me in gross and with much uncertainty. All general judgements are weak and imperfect.” (George Burnham Ives, 1925)

“This is what my memory presents to me in gross, and with uncertainty enough; all judgments in gross are weak and imperfect.” (Cotton, ed. Hazlitt, 1877)

“Loe here what my memory doth in grose, and yet very uncertainely present unto me of it. In breefe, all judgments are weake, demisse and imperfect.” (Florio, 1603)

Anyone who would aim straight at a cure and would reflect on it before taking any action, would be likely to cool off about setting his hand to it. Pacuvius Calavius corrected the error of this procedure by a signal example. His fellow citizens were in revolt against their magistrates. He, a person of great authority in the city of Capua, one day found means to lock up the Senate in the palace, and, calling the people together in the market place, told them that the day had come when in full liberty they could take vengeance on the tyrants who had so long oppressed them, and whom he held alone and disarmed at his mercy. He advised them that these men should be brought out one by one, by lot, and that they should decide about each one individually, and have their sentence executed on the spot; with this provision also, that at the same time they should decide to appoint some honorable man in the place of the condemned man, so that the office should not remain vacant. They had no sooner heard the name of one senator than there arose a cry of general dissatisfaction against him. “I see very well,” said Pacuvius, “that we must dismiss this one; he is a wicked man; let us have a good one in exchange.” There was a prompt silence, everyone being much at a loss whom to choose. The first man bold enough to name his choice met a still greater unanimity of voices to refuse him, citing a hundred imperfections and just causes for rejecting him. These contradictory humors having grown heated, it fared still worse with the second senator, and the third: as much disagreement about election as agreement about dismissal. Having tired themselves out uselessly in this dispute, they began bit by bit, one this way, one that, to steal away from the assembly, each one bearing away this conclusion in his mind, that the oldest and best-known evil is always more bearable than an evil that is new and untried. (Montaigne, Essays, III, 9)

Another source of mistakes in belief formation is selection bias. Patients in dialysis centers are often surprisingly reluctant to be on the waiting list for a kidney transplantation. One reason is that all the transplanted patients they ever see are those for whom the operation failed so that they had to go back on dialysis. Montaigne was citing a bias of this kind when he referred to Diagoras as being “shown many vows and votive portraits from those who have survived shipwrecks and… then asked, ‘You, there, who think that the gods are indifferent to human affairs, what have you to say about so many men saved by their grace?’ — ‘It is like this,’ he replied, ‘there are no portraits here of those who stayed and drowned — and they are more numerous!'” Similarly, a psychiatrist who claims that “no child abusers ever stop on their own” neglects the fact that if any does he is unlikely to have met them. (Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior)

“…the thought occurs that if fairness to all divisions of humanity requires their separate mention when referred to in the mass, then the listing must not read simply ‘men and women’, it must include teenagers. They have played a large role in the world and they are not clearly distinguished in the phrase ‘men and women.’ Reflection further shows that mention should be given to yet another group: children. The child prodigy in music is a small category. But one must not forget the far larger group of 8-, 10-, and 12-year olds: boys (and sometimes girls in disguise) who in the armies and navies of the West have served in fife-and-drum corps or as cabin boys. Columbus’s ships had a large contingent; all the great explorers of the New World relied on sizable teams of these hard-worked crew members.” (Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence)

Most social scientists conceive it as their exclusive task to discover and stress regularities, stable relationships, and uniform sequences. This is obviously an essential search, one in which no thinking person can refrain from participating. But in the social sciences there is a special room for the opposite type of endeavor: to underline the multiplicity and creative disorder of the human adventure, to bring out the uniqueness of a certain occurrence, and to perceive an entirely new way of turning a historical corner.

The coexistence as equals of the two types of activities just outlined is characteristic of the social sciences. In the natural sciences the unexplained phenomenon and alertness to it are also of the greatest importance, but only as a means to an end, as the beginning of a new search for an improved general theory which would subsume the odd fact, thus overcoming its recalcitrance and destroying it in its uniqueness. In the social sciences, on the other hand, it is not at all clear which is means and which is end: true, most social scientists behave in this respect as if they were natural scientists; but they would be more surprised than the latter and, above all, considerably distraught if their search for general laws were crowned with total success. Quite possibly, then, all the successive theories and models in the social sciences, and the immense efforts that go into them, are motivated by the noble, if unconscious, desire to demonstrate the irreducibility of the social world to general laws! In no other way would it have been possible to affirm so conclusively the social world as the realm of freedom and creativity. But by now there surely is something to be said for pursuing this theme in a less roundabout fashion.

The importance of granting equal rights of citizenship in social science to the search for general laws and to the search for uniqueness appears particularly in the analysis of social change. One way of dealing with this phenomenon is to look for “laws of change” on the basis of our understanding of past historical sequences. But the possibility of encountering genuine novelty can never be ruled out — this is indeed one of the principal lessons of the past itself. And there is a special justification for the direct search for novelty, creativity, and uniqueness: without these attributes change, at least large-scale social change, may not be possible at all. For, in the first place, the powerful social forces opposed to change will be quite proficient at blocking off those paths of change that have already been trod. Secondly, revolutionaries or radical reformers are unlikely to generate the extraordinary social energy they need to achieve change unless they are exhilaratingly conscious of writing an entirely new page of human history.

I have of course not been disinterested in claiming equal rights for an approach to the social world that would stress the unique rather than the general, the unexpected rather than the expected, and the possible rather than the probable. For the fundamental bent of my writings has been to widen the limits of what is or is perceived to be possible, be it at the cost of lowering our ability, real or imaginary, to discern the probable. (Hirschman, 1971, A Bias for Hope)