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Monday, June 13, 2022

Tidbits from Montaigne 42


There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the substance; it is a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. 

God, who is all fullness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. 

Thus is it that to God alone glory and honor appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need of amelioration, it is to that we ought to employ all our endeavor

—Michel de Montaigne, Essays 2.16 

IMAGE: Raphael, Ezekiel's Vision (1518) 



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