There is no more patent folly in the world than to reduce these things to the measure of our own power and capacity.

From Essays by Montaigne. Translated by John M. Cohen

It is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault among those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd. I used to be like that once, and if I heard talk of ghosts walking or prognostications of future events, of enchantments or sorceries, or some other tale I could not swallow, I would pity the poor people who were taken in by such nonsense. And now I find that I was at least as much to be pitied myself. Not that experience has since shown me anything that transcends my former beliefs, though this has not been for lack of curiosity; but reason has taught me to condemn anything so positively as false and impossible is to claim that our own brains have the privilege of knowing the bounds and limits of God's will, and of mother nature's power. I have learned too, that there is no more patent folly in the world than to reduce these things to the measure of our own power and capacity.