The ingenious medley of Nature

I am sure you have been struck with an element of wonder with similarities of people who you know well, and someone who is not remotely related to you. Then contrast this with the great differences in even children from the same family.

Michel de Montaigne highlights this interesting little fact in his Essays, of how different yet similar we humans are. I find it intriguing:

‘Just as no event and no form completely resembles another, neither does any completely differ.

What an ingenious medley is Nature’s: if our faces were not alike we could not tell man from beast:

If they were not unalike we could not tell man from man.

All things are connected by some similarity; yet every example limps and any correspondence which we draw from experience is always feeble and imperfect.’

Montaigne wraps up in his own words the thoughts of Augustine, writing in City of God; and Cicero, in his Academica.