Impossible, You Say?

Montaigne confronts unbelief, arrogance and ignorance head-on in his short essay, “That it is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity.” He begins explaining that belief is in direct proportion to the malleability of the soul. Establishing this, he proves that we can’t say this or that is impossible on the grounds that we don’t have enough information. We should say instead that this or that is unusual. 

Reason dictates that “to condemn anything for false and impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit the will of God, and the power of our mother nature, within the bounds of my own capacity.”  He adds that, “to condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption to pretend to know the utmost bounds of possibility.” Belief is kept intact by judging “with more reverence, and with greater acknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity . . . “

So the next time someone says “that’s impossible” see what happens by asking “don’t you mean ‘unusual’?”

For further study: Matthew 17:30, 19:26; Mark 10:27; Luke 1:30, 18:27