perfect in things which all the philosophy in the world could never
beat into the heads of the wisest men? For we know entire nations,
where death was not only despised, but entertained with the greatest
triumph; where children of seven years old suffered themselves to be
whipped to death, without changing countenance; where riches were in
such contempt, that the meanest citizen would not have deigned to
stoop to take up a purse of crowns. And we know regions, very fruitful
in all manner of provisions, where, notwithstanding, the most ordinary
diet, and that they are most pleased with, is only bread, cresses, and
water. Did not custom, moreover, work that miracle in Chios that, in
seven hundred years, it was never known that ever maid or wife
committed any act to the prejudice of her honor.

    To conclude; there is nothing, in my opinion, that she does not,
or may not do; and, therefore, with very good reason it is, that
Pindar calls her the queen, and empress of the world. He that was seen
to beat his father, and reproved for so doing, made answer, that it
was the custom of their family: that, in like manner his father had
beaten his grandfather, his grandfather his great-grandfather, "And
this," says he, pointing to his son, "when he comes to my age, shall
beat me." And the father, whom the son dragged and hauled along the
streets, commanded him to stop at a certain door, for he himself, he
said, had dragged his father no farther, that being the utmost limit
of the hereditary outrage the sons used to practice upon the fathers
in their family. It is as much by custom as infirmity, says Aristotle,
that women tear their hair, bite their nails, and eats coals and
earth, and, more by custom than nature, that men abuse themselves with
one another.

    The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from
nature, proceed from custom; every one, having an inward veneration
for the opinions and manners approved and received among his own
people, cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor
apply himself to them without applause. In times past, when those of
Crete would curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in
some ill custom. But the principal effect of its power is, so to seize
and ensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves from
its gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to
weigh the things it enjoins. To say the truth, by reason that we
suck it in with our milk, and that the face of the world presents
itself in this posture to our first sight, it seems as if we were born
upon condition to follow on this track; and the common fancies that we
find in repute everywhere about us, and infused into our minds with
the seed of our fathers, appear to be the most universal and
genuine: from whence it comes to pass, that whatever is off the hinges
of custom, is believed to be also off the hinges of reason; how
unreasonably, for the most part, God knows.

    If, as we who study ourselves, have learned to do, every one who
hears a good sentence, would immediately consider how it does any
way touch his own private concern, every one would find that it was
not so much a good saying, as a severe lash to the ordinary
stupidity of his own judgment; but men receive the precepts and
admonitions of truth, as directed to the common sort, and never to
themselves; and instead of applying them to their own manners, do only
very ignorantly and unprofitably commit them to memory. But let us
return to the empire of custom.

    Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no
other dominion but the authority of their own will, look upon all
other form of government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those
who are inured to monarchy do the same; and what opportunity soever
fortune presents them with to change, even then, when with the
greatest difficulties they have disengaged themselves from one master,
that was troublesome and grievous to them, they presently run, with
the same difficulties, to create another; being unable to take into
hatred subjection itself.

    'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with
the place where he is planted by nature; and the Highlanders of
Scotland no more pant after Touraine, than the Scythians after
Thessaly. Darius asking certain Greeks what they would take to
assume the custom of the Indians, of eating the dead bodies of their
fathers (for that was their use, believing they could not give them
a better, nor more noble sepulture, than to bury them in their own
bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the world should hire
them to do it; but having also tried to persuade the Indians to
leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn the bodies of
their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at the notion.
Every one does the same, for use veils from us the true aspect of
things.

              "Nil adeo magnum, nec tam mirabile quidquam

               Principio, quod non minuant mirarier omnes

               Paullatim."

    Taking upon me once to justify something in use among us, and that
was received with absolute authority for a great many leagues round
about us, and not content, as men commonly do, to establish it only by
force of law and example, but inquiring still farther into its origin,
I found the foundation so weak, that I who made it my business to
confirm others, was very near being dissatisfied myself. 'Tis by
this receipt that Plato undertakes to cure the unnatural and
preposterous loves of his time, as one which he esteems of sovereign
virtue; namely, that the public opinion condemns them; that the poets,
and all other sorts of writers, relate horrible stories of them; a
recipe, by virtue of which the most beautiful daughters no more allure
their father's lust; nor brothers, of the finest shape and fashion,