Our utmost endeavors cannot arrive at so much as to imitate the nest of the least of birds, its contexture, beauty, and convenience: not so much as the web of a poor spider. All things, says Plato, are produced either by nature, by fortune, or by art; the greatest and most beautiful by the one or the other of the former, the least and the most imperfect by the last.

Montiagne’s statement can best be paraphrased as .

Humans should stop trying to control animals because they always destroy them.

Nature creates more superior things than human ability can.

Those things that nature creates are always useful, especially birds’ nests and spider webs.

The nests of birds and the webs of spiders are imperfect, but lovely.