OF CUSTOM, AND THAT WE SHOULD NOT EASILY CHANGE A LAW RECEIVEDHe seems to me to have had a right and true apprehension of the power ofcustom, who first invented the story of a country-woman who, havingaccustomed herself to play with and carry a young calf in her arms, anddaily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that,when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to bear it. For, intruth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, bylittle and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of herauthority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with thebenefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious andtyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or thepower so much as to lift up our eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcingand violating the rules of nature: "Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister." ["Custom is the best master of all things." --Pliny, Nat. Hist.,xxvi. 2.]I refer to her Plato's cave in his Republic, and the physicians, who sooften submit the reasons of their art to her authority; as the story ofthat king, who by custom brought his stomach to that pass, as to live bypoison, and the maid that Albertus reports to have lived upon spiders.In that new world of the Indies, there were found great nations, and invery differing climates, who were of the same diet, made provision ofthem, and fed them for their tables; as also, they did grasshoppers,mice, lizards, and bats; and in a time of scarcity of such delicacies, atoad was sold for six crowns, all which they cook, and dish up withseveral sauces. There were also others found, to whom our diet, and theflesh we eat, were venomous and mortal: "Consuetudinis magna vis est: pernoctant venatores in nive: in montibus uri se patiuntur: pugiles, caestibus contusi, ne ingemiscunt quidem." ["The power of custom is very great: huntsmen will lie out all night in the snow, or suffer themselves to be burned up by the sun on the mountains; boxers, hurt by the caestus, never utter a groan."--Cicero, Tusc., ii. 17]These strange examples will not appear so strange if we consider what wehave ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our senses. Weneed not go to what is reported of the people about the cataracts of theNile; and what philosophers believe of the music of the spheres, that thebodies of those circles being solid and smooth, and coming to touch andrub upon one another, cannot fail of creating a marvellous harmony, thechanges and cadences of which cause the revolutions and dances of thestars; but that the hearing sense of all creatures here below, beinguniversally, like that of the Egyptians, deafened, and stupefied with thecontinual noise, cannot, how great soever, perceive it--[This passage istaken from Cicero, "Dream of Scipio"; see his De Republica, vi. II. TheEgyptians were said to be stunned by the noise of the Cataracts.]--Smiths, millers, pewterers, forgemen, and armourers could never be ableto live in the perpetual noise of their own trades, did it strike theirears with the same violence that it does ours.