As near as I can tell, this is Montaigne’s progression in Of coaches (pp. 831-849):
- I don’t like riding in coaches; I’m much more comfortable on horseback.
- Some ancient kings and emperors sure used some strange and extravagant means of conveying their coaches.
- Kings and emperors tend to spend their subjects’ money liberally and ostentatiously.
- People sure were inventive in the days of old, and the past is like a million foreign countries.
- Boy, have we committed some awful atrocities on the natives in the Americas.
- The king of Peru never used a coach, but was borne in a throne of gold by his subjects.
It’s that second-to-last section that M. focuses on, detailing a number of grotesque abuses that the Spanish inflicted on the natives in the new world. Reflecting on the ill treatment of the natives, he laments that America wasn’t discovered in the time of Alexander, who could have brought out the better aspects of their souls, rather than push them into darkness and war as the explorers did. I was caught up on that point, as it seemed to indicate that M. thinks the world would have been better off without a Catholic church.
Moreover, I was fascinated by the notion that, in his time, the Americas really were a new world. I’m not sure I ever considered how Columbus’ discovery was understood in that era (the first century or so after 1492). M. writes:
Our world has just discovered another world (and who will guarantee us that it is the last of its brothers, since the daemons, the sibyls, and we ourselves have up to now been ignorant of this one?) no less great, full, and well-limbed than itself, yet so new and so infantile that it is still being taught its A B C; not fifty years ago it knew neither letters, nor weights and measures, nor clothes, nor wheat, nor vines. . . . If we are right to infer the end of our world, and that poet is right about the youth of his own age, this other world will only be coming into the light when ours is leaving it. The universe will fall into paralysis; one member will be crippled, the other in full vigor.
I’m sure there’s some cutting remark to be made here, contrasting America with Europe, but I’m not the guy to make it.
Robert Burton had some observations along these lines about what the discovery of the new world might mean in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621):
“Why so many thousand strange birds and beasts proper to America alone…Were they created in the six days, or ever in Noah’s Ark? if there, why are they not dispersed and found in other countries? It is a thing, saith he (Acosta–evidently a philosopher, unknown to me) hath long held me in suspense; no Greek, Latin, Hebrew ever heard of them before, and yet as differing from our European animals as an egg and a chestnut: and, which is more, kine, horses, sheep, etc., till the Spaniards brought them, were never heard of in those parts.”
Hahaha. Cutting Remark Accomplished