[The Essays of Montaigne by Michel de Montaigne]@TWC D-Link book
The Essays of Montaigne

CHAPTER XXIX
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cap.
19)."-- Coste.] The archer that shoots over, misses as much as he that falls short, and 'tis equally troublesome to my sight, to look up at a great light, and to look down into a dark abyss.

Callicles in Plato says, that the extremity of philosophy is hurtful, and advises not to dive into it beyond the limits of profit; that, taken moderately, it is pleasant and useful; but that in the end it renders a man brutish and vicious, a contemner of religion and the common laws, an enemy to civil conversation, and all human pleasures, incapable of all public administration, unfit either to assist others or to relieve himself, and a fit object for all sorts of injuries and affronts.

He says true; for in its excess, it enslaves our natural freedom, and by an impertinent subtlety, leads us out of the fair and beaten way that nature has traced for us.
The love we bear to our wives is very lawful, and yet theology thinks fit to curb and restrain it.

As I remember, I have read in one place of St.
Thomas Aquinas,--[Secunda Secundx, Quaest.

154, art.


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