When Our Mind Gets in Its Own Way — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne fancies a mind exactly balanced betwixt two equal desires. It can never pitch upon either, because the choice and application would show an inequality of esteem. Set betwixt the bottle and the ham, with an equal appetite to drink and to eat, there would be no remedy: the person must die of thirst and hunger. The Stoics, asked whence the soul elects among a great number of identical crowns, answer that the movement is extraordinary and irregular, entering by a foreign, accidental, and fortuitous impulse.

Montaigne would rather say that nothing presents itself wherein there is not some difference, however little. Sight or touch always finds a choice that, though it be imperceptible, tempts and attracts. Whoever presupposes a packthread equally strong throughout finds it utterly impossible it should break, for where will the breaking begin? That it should break altogether is not in nature.

He then joins geometric propositions that conclude the contained to be greater than the containing, the centre to be as great as its circumference, and two lines incessantly approaching each other which yet can never meet. He adds the philosopher's stone and the quadrature of the circle, where reason and the effect stand so opposite. Those puzzles second Pliny's saying that it is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man. The mind that waits for a perfect tie has not yet moved.