Desiderius Erasmus
Erasmus, the man who brought to maturity the Christian humanist endeavor to draw on all wisdom was not Italian but Dutch and born in Rotterdam, Holland around 1466 as an an illegitimate child. His father, of middle-class origin was a priest at the time of Erasmus' birth. Little is known of his mother who cared for him. He was a cosmopolitan scholar. These years of simple piety ended when Erasmus was 14; his mother died of the plague, and his father soon after. His guardian was anxious to be rid of responsibility for the him and his brother, and had them prepared for the monastery. There was
no escape, reluctantly, Erasmus became an Augustinian monk at the age of 21.
Erasmus first work, which he called "The Book Against the Barbarians" was modelled on Lorenzo Valla, and argued that the new learning of the pagan writers was not opposed to Christian
virtue. The Netherlands was the home of those cells of reforming zeal and devotion known
as The Brethren of the Common Life, the milieu from which had risen the peak of medieval
devotional writing, The Imitation of Christ. His school was supervised by the Brethren of
the Common Life and he was deeply touched by this early influence. Dedicated to a pious,
mystical Christianity, they taught that individual lives should be modelled on the example
of Jesus and held to the ideals of service and love. After Erasmus left school he was
persuaded to enter an Augustinian monastery, where he received little formal instruction
but was free to read as he pleased in the classics, both Christian and pagan.
At the age of thirty, aspiring to wider and deeper scholarship, he secured a release from
his monastic vows, left the priesthood about 1492, and went to the University of Paris,
where he completed a course in theology. From then on, he devoted his life to research and
writing, visiting the major centers of learning. Though he was ordained as a priest,
Erasmus never served a parish. He lived, sometimes meagerly, on the support of patrons and
on income from his books. Persuaded that a man's studies should serve to strengthen his
faith, not undermine it. He mastered Greek, for example, not in order to find a truer
Homer or Thucydides, but to discover a truer Christ.
Erasmus dominated the intellectual life of Europe as few other men have done. He knew Greek so well that he published a scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament. Erasmus was one of the very first to detect the pretensions and hypocrisies of nationalism. He played no favorites, satirized any group or class inflated by a sense of its own importance - merchants, churchmen,
scientists, philosophers, courtiers, and kings. Socrates moved Erasmus so much that he
almost cried out "Pray for us, St. Socrates." Before the Reformation opened, he became a relentless critic of the Roman Catholic Church.
It was monumental evidence of his belief that the purification of the text of the Bible
would greatly contribute to the purification of Christian life and produced the New
Testament in Greek with a Latin translation. Martin Luther valued it so much that he later used it in making his German translation of the New Testament. By 1516 the writings of Erasmus had brought him to the pinnacle of fame. Publishers eagerly sought his books and important persons sought his services. Money came from many sources, so that he no longer felt the pinch of poverty. Always considering himself a loyal son of the Church, he nevertheless helped to destroy
the universality of Catholicism. His edition of the Greek New Testament raised disquieting
doubts about the correctness of the Vulgate and therefore of Catholic Biblical
interpretations.
Erasmus joined a love of the classics with respect for Christian values. His "philosophy of Christ" was the application, in the most humane spirit, of the doctrines of charity and love taught by Jesus. A famous 16th century epigram states: "Where Erasmus merely nodded, Luther rushed in; where Erasmus laid the eggs, Luther hatched the chicks; where Erasmus merely doubted, Luther laid down the law." He continued to believe that truth could be attained only by the educated, while Luther thought that divine truth was imparted to the simplest believer by faith. He continued to respect tradition as the gradual unfolding of divine providence, while Luther believed that tradition had deviated from the truth and should be broken. The former placed his
faith in human reason, the latter considered reason a stumbling block to faith.
All tradition, religion, and learning, Erasmus believed, are part of a great whole, moving under
the influence of God's will, and should therefore not be dealt with separately. Erasmus
was a supporter of Luther's 95 thesis and tried to guard Luther from persecution.
What Erasmus wanted from both sides was moderation. At the same time he wanted Luther to
be moderate, and Erasmus knew that Luther was a less moderate man, indeed less a humanist,
than many church dignitaries. What made Erasmus helpless was that he believed Luther's
criticisms of the church to be just, but he knew that that they would merely entrench in
the church the uncompromising men, the monkish bigots whom the humanists had worked so
hard to displace. If Luther was defeated, then the reactionaries would also sweep away all
that the humanists had gained. The churchmen accused Erasmus of double dealing. The church
was making it clear whoever was not against Luther was for him. Therefore when the
churched pressed Erasmus to speak out against Luther he chose an issue, Free Will, on
which he was intellectually opposed to Luther and to the rising shadow of Calvinism.
Luther replied by writing "The Bondage of the Will", and left no doubt that
there was no longer common ground between them. Subsequent history reveals that Erasmus was on the right side on the issue of free will and pre-destination and Luther and Calvin to be wrong. Erasmus and Calvin found no common ground.
Luther and Erasmus had much in common. Both Luther and Erasmus insisted that the church of their day had relapsed into the Judaistic legalism, castigated by the apostle Paul. Christianity, said Erasmus, had been made to consist not in loving one's neighbor, but in abstaining from butter and cheese during Lent. What are pilgrimages, he demanded, but outward feats, often at the expense of family responsibility? What good are indulgences to those who do not mend their ways? At first Erasmus and Luther appeared to be preaching the same gospel. But there were differences; and the most fundamental was that Erasmus was after all a man of the Renaissance, desirous of bringing religion itself within the compass of man's understanding. The attempt of Erasmus to make Christianity simple and easy was to Luther utterly vain because Christ must so deeply offend. Man's corruption must be assailed before ever his eyes can be opened. Erasmus felt Luther had done much good, and that he was no heretic. But he deplored the disintegration of Christendom. Erasmus was interested primarily in morals, whereas Luther's question was whether doing right, even if possible, can affect man's fate. Erasmus succeeded in diverting Luther from the course by asking whether the ethical precepts of the gospels have any point if they cannot be fulfilled.
Luther's mistake was the implication that man has no freedom whatever to decide for good or ill.
The movement of Christian humanism which Erasmus personified was a liberal movement. The life of Erasmus has a modern moral and, indeed, a very modern ring. The Reformation divided Europe into two religious camps, and soon each side outdid the other in dogmatic bitterness. Erasmus was helpless between two forms of intolerance, and the last years of his life are marked with his own sense of failure.
Erasmus was just as critical of the passions and violence aroused by Martin Luther as he
was the errors of the popes. Erasmus stood fast upon his conviction that Christian unity
should be maintained, reason pursued, and rebellion shunned. Although Erasmus accomplished
as much as any man of his age in preparing for the Reformation, yet he never joined the
movement, remained outwardly a Catholic and criticized the Reformers as sharply as he did
the old church. Erasmus was sincerely Christian and wished for the reformation of the
church and the church purged of superstition through the use of intelligence and a return
to the ethical teaching of Christ. His approach was rational. He wanted a purified church
not a divided one. Optimistically he devoted his life to the restoration of the unity of
Christendom. Based upon stoic, Platonic, and Christian ethics, influenced by the mysticism
of the Brethren of the Common Life, and strengthened by the writings of the church
fathers, the humanism of Erasmus laid particular emphasis upon the inwardness of religion,
virtuous living, and moral social relationships. Piety and love, not traditions and forms,
should determine man's conduct.
Erasmus wished to cleanse the church and society of selfishness, cruelty, hypocrisy, pride
and ignorance - and to replace them with tolerance, honesty, wisdom , service, and love.
Repelled by violence and disorder, he hoped that appeals to reason would bring about
peaceful change. His most widely read and most influential work, the "Praise of Folly" is filled with ironic scepticism. Erasmus has Folly sing her own praises "Without me, the world cannot exist for a moment". He ridiculed the excesses of the popular cult of relics, the invocation of saints, and the purchases of indulgences. Folly, the amiable woman who personified human weakness, should not be condemned but praised, he stated, for without her men would not marry and procreate, governments and other institutions would not survive, literature would not flourish, and the church would lose its following.
True to his philosophy of Jesus he stressed the historical Jesus as opposed to the Jesus of the theologians. Religion for Erasmus was both a personal matter and a question of scholarship and doctrine. He appealed to men's reason and his sense of humor. More than any other humanist, he wrote books that penetrated the homes and the studies of northern readers. Erasmus was more than a master of style and scholarship. His natural wit was fed by a delicate and humorous and sometimes cynical observation of human beings.
While Erasmus could not be dull, he was rarely superficial. His intellect was powerful as well
as agile and he penetrated to the core of his subject. Among all his targets, he aimed his
most penetrating shafts at the abuses of the church and was offended by the stink of
corruption. More than any other single man, he lowered the European reputation of popes
and clergy monks and friars, and above all, the theologians. His rise showed that a
movement of tolerance, such as Christian humanism was, can inspire men so long as it confronts a
single intolerance. And his decline showed that tolerance as an ideal no longer moves men
when two opposing intolerances clamor for their loyalty. This has been the dilemma of liberality in every age since Erasmus. Erasmus had always longed for the liberal and humane vision of the classics, and had always believed that it expressed the best in Christianity. Now he felt that he saw that best in action, and that Christianity could be an expression of broad and tolerant virtues, of the whole man.
The Praise of Folly was placed on the index of prohibited books and Erasmus was condemned
by the Council of Trent as "an impious heretic". His cause had failed; he was at
home in neither of the two camps now at war; and he had lived beyond his time. As in our day, what had failed was not a man but a righteous outlook: the liberal view. His gave his life to the belief
that virtue can be based on humanity, and that tolerance can be as positive an impulse as
fanaticism. Above all, he believed in the life of the mind. He believed that thoughtful
men would become good men. Part of that struggle was national: Luther was very German, and
the reformation of Henry VIII was very English. In this also Erasmus was out of place; he
had hoped to make Christian humanism a movement of universal peace from one end of Europe to
another, secular humanism was to take its place as an aberration. Protestantism was for a couple of centuries all but sterile in the field of study, criticism and philosophy. In the words of Erasmus: "Where Luther enters, civilization disappears." But this very sterility helped the new religion to attain popular penetration in contrast to the more robust Renaissance, which always remained a movement of elite circles. Erasmus died in 1536. Intolerance would still reign on all sides, tradition and puritan ignorance would suppress his truths, but liberal love and understanding is just around the corner.
to his friend
THOMAS MORE, health:
As I was coming awhile since out of Italy for England, that I might not waste
all that time I was to sit on horseback in foolish and illiterate fables, I
chose rather one while to revolve with myself something of our common studies,
and other while to enjoy the remembrance of my friends, of whom I left here
some no less learned than pleasant. Among these you, my More, came first in my
mind, whose memory, though absent yourself, gives me such delight in my
absence, as when present with you I ever found in your company; than which, let
me perish if in all my life I ever met with anything more delectable. And
therefore, being satisfied that something was to be done, and that that time
was no wise proper for any serious matter, I resolved to make some sport with
the praise of folly. But who the devil put that in your head? you'll say. The
first thing was your surname of More, which comes so near the word Moriae
(folly) as you are far from the thing. And that you are so, all the world will
cleat you. In the next place, I conceived this exercise of wit would not be
least approved by you; inasmuch as you are wont to be delighted with such kind
of mirth, that is to say, neither unlearned, if I am not mistaken, not
altogether insipid, and in the whole course of your life have played the part
of a Democtitus. And though such is the excellence of your judgment that it was
even contrary to that of the people's, yet such is your incredible ability and
sweetness of temper that you both can and delight to carry yourself to all men
a man of all hours. Wherefore you will not only with good will accept this
small declamation, but take upon you the defense of it, for as much as being
dedicated to you, it is now no longer mine but yours. But perhaps there will
not be wanting some wranglers that may cavil and charge me, partly that these
toys are lighter than may become a divine, and partly more biting than may
beseem the modesty of a Christian, and consequently exclaim that I resemble the
ancient comedy, or another Lucian, and snarl at everything. But I would have
them whom the lightness or foolery of the argument may offend to consider that
mine is not the first of this kind, but the same thing that has been often
practiced even by great authors: when Homer, so many ages since, did the like
with the battle of frogs and mice; Virgil, with the gnat and puddings; Ovid,
with the nut; when Polycrates and his corrector Isocrates extolled tyranny;
Glauco, injustice; Favorinus, deformity and the quartan ague; Synescius,
baldness; Lucian, the fly and flattery; when Seneca made such sport with
Claudius' canonizations; Plutarch, with his dialogue between Ulysses and
Gryllus; Lucian and Apuleius, with the ass; and some other, I know not who,
with the hog that made his last will and testament, of which also even St.
Jerome makes mention. And therefore if they please, let them suppose I played
at tables for my diversion, or if they had rather have it so, that I rode on a
hobbyhorse. For what injustice is it that when we allow every course of life
its recreation, that study only should have none? Especially when such toys are
not without their serious matter, and foolery is so handled that the reader
that is not altogether thick-skulled may reap more benefit from it than from
some men's crabbish and specious arguments. As when one, with long study and
great pains, patches many pieces together on the praise of rhetoric or
philosophy; another makes a panegyric to a prince; another encourages him to a
war against the Turks; another tells you what will become of the world after
himself is dead; and another finds out some new device for the better ordering
of goat's wool: for as nothing is more trifling than to treat of serious
matters triflingly, so nothing carries a better grace than so to discourse of
trifles as a man may seem to have intended them least. For my own part, let
other men judge of what I have written; though yet, unless an overweening
opinion of myself may have made me blind in my own cause, I have praised folly,
but not altogether foolishly. And now to say somewhat to that other cavil, of
biting. This liberty was ever permitted to all men's wits, to make their smart,
witty reflections on the common errors of mankind, and that too without
offense, as long as this liberty does not run into licentiousness; which makes
me the more admire the tender ears of the men of this age, that can away with
solemn titles. No, you'll meet with some so preposterously religious that they
will Sooner endure the broadest scoffs even against Christ himself than hear
the Pope or a prince be touched in the least, especially if it be anything that
concerns their profit; whereas he that so taxes the lives of men, without
naming anyone in particular, whither, I pray, may he be said to bite, or rather
to teach and admonish? Or otherwise, I beseech you, under how many notions do I
tax myself? Besides, he that spares no sort of men cannot be said to be angry
with anyone in particular, but the vices of all. And therefore, if there shall
happen to be anyone that shall say he is hit, he will but discover either his
guilt or fear. Saint Jerome sported in this kind with more freedom and greater
sharpness, not sparing sometimes men's very name. But I, besides that I have
wholly avoided it, I have so moderated my style that the understanding reader
will easily perceive my endeavors herein were rather to make mirth than bite.
Nor have I, after the example of Juvenal, raked up that forgotten sink of filth
and ribaldry, but laid before you things rather ridiculous than dishonest. And
now, if there be anyone that is yet dissatisfied, let him at least remember
that it is no dishonor to be discommended by Folly; and having brought her in
speaking, it was but fit that I kept up the character of the person. But why do
I run over these things to you, a person so excellent an advocate that no man
better defends his client, though the cause many times be none of the best?
Farewell, my best disputant More, and stoutly defend your Moriae.
From the country,
the 5th of the Ides of June.
THE PRAISE OF FOLLY
An oration, of feigned matter, spoken by Folly
in her own person
At what rate soever the world talks of me (for I am not ignorant what an ill
report Folly has got, even among the most foolish), yet that I am that she,
that only she, whose deity recreates both gods and men, even this is a
sufficient argument, that I no sooner stepped up to speak to this full assembly
than all your faces put on a kind of new and unwonted pleasantness. So suddenly
have you cleared your brows, and with so frolic and hearty a laughter given me
your applause, that in truth as many of you as I behold on every side of me
seem to me no less than Homer's gods drunk with nectar and nepenthe; whereas
before, you sat as lumpish and pensive as if you had come from consulting an
oracle. And as it usually happens when the sun begins to show his beams, or
when after a sharp winter the spring breathes afresh on the earth, all things
immediately get a new face, new color, and recover as it were a certain kind of
youth again: in like manner by but beholding me you have in an instant gotten
another kind of countenance; and so what the otherwise great rhetoricians with
their tedious and long-studied orations can hardly effect, to wit, to remove
the trouble of the mind, I have done it at once with my single look.
But if you ask me why I appear before you in this strange dress, be pleased to
lend me your ears, and I'll tell you; not those ears, I mean, you carry to
church, but abroad with you, such as you are wont to prick up to jugglers,
fools, and buffoons, and such as our friend Midas once gave to Pan. For I am
disposed awhile to play the sophist with you; not of their sort who nowadays
boozle young men's heads with certain empty notions and curious trifles, yet
teach them nothing but a more than womanish obstinacy of scolding: but I'll
imitate those ancients who, that they might the better avoid that infamous
appellation of sophi or wise chose rather to be called sophists. Their business
was to celebrate the praises of the gods and valiant men. And the like encomium
shall you hear from me, but neither of Hercules nor Solon, but my own dear
self, that is to say, Folly. Nor do I esteem a rush that call it a foolish and
insolent thing to praise one's self. Be it as foolish as they would make it, so
they confess it proper: and what can be more than that Folly be her own
trumpet? For who can set me out better than myself, unless perhaps I could be
better known to another than to myself ? Though yet I think it somewhat more
modest than the general practice of our nobles and wise men who, throwing away
all shame, hire some flattering orator or lying poet from whose mouth they may
hear their praises, that is to say, mere lies; and yet, composing themselves
with a seeming modesty, spread out their peacock's plumes and erect their
crests, while this impudent flatterer equals a man of nothing to the gods and
proposes him as an absolute pattern of all virtue that's wholly a stranger to
it, sets out a pitiful jay in other's feathers, washes the blackamoor white,
and lastly swells a gnat to an elephant. In short, I will follow that old
proverb that says, "He may lawfully praise himself that lives far from
neighbors." Though, by the way, I cannot but wonder at the ingratitude, shall I
say, or negligence of men who, notwithstanding they honor me in the first place
and are willing enough to confess my bounty, yet not one of them for these so
many ages has there been who in some thankful oration has set out the praises
of Folly; when yet there has not wanted them whose elaborate endeavors have
extolled tyrants, agues, flies, baldness, and such other pests of nature, to
their own loss of both time and sleep. And now you shall hear from me a plain
extemporary speech, but so much the truer. Nor would I have you think it like
the rest of orators, made for the ostentation of wit; for these, as you know,
when they have been beating their heads some thirty years about an oration and
at last perhaps produce somewhat that was never their own, shall yet swear they
composed it in three days, and that too for diversion: whereas I ever liked it
best to speak whatever came first out.
But let none of you expect from me that after the manner of rhetoricians I
should go about to define what I am, much less use any division; for I hold it
equally unlucky to circumscribe her whose deity is universal, or make the least
division in that worship about which everything is so generally agreed. Or to
what purpose, think you, should I describe myself when I am here present before
you, and you behold me speaking? For I am, as you see, that true and only giver
of wealth whom the Greeks call Moria, the Latins Stultitia, and our plain
English Folly. Or what need was there to have said so much, as if my very looks
were not sufficient to inform you who I am? Or as if any man, mistaking me for
wisdom, could not at first sight convince himself by my face the true index of
my mind? I am no counterfeit, nor do I carry one thing in my looks and an other
in my breast. No, I am in every respect so like myself that neither can they
dissemble me who arrogate to themselves the appearance and title of wise men
and walk like asses in scarlet hoods, though after all their hypocrisy Midas'
ears will discover their master. A most ungrateful generation of men that, when
they are wholly given up to my party, are yet publicly ashamed of the name, as
taking it for a reproach; for which cause, since in truth they are morotatoi,
fools, and yet would appear to the world to be wise men and Thales, we'll even
call them morosophous, wise fools.
Nor will it be amiss also to imitate the rhetoricians of our times, who think
themselves in a manner gods if like horse leeches they can but appear to be
double-tongued, and believe they have done a mighty act if in their Latin
orations they can but shuffle in some ends of Greek like mosaic work, though
altogether by head and shoulders and less to the purpose. And if they want hard
words, they run over some worm-eaten manuscript and pick out half a dozen of
the most old and obsolete to confound their reader, believing, no doubt, that
they that understand their meaning will like it the better, out its particular
grace; for if there happen to be any mote ambitious than others, they may give
their applause with a smile, and, like the ass, shake their ears, that they may
be thought to understand more than the rest of their neighbors.
But to come to the purpose: I have given you my name, but what epithet shall I
add? What but that of the most foolish? For by what more proper name can so
great a goddess as Folly be known to her disciples? And because it is not alike
known to all from what stock I am sprung, with the Muses' good leave I'll do my
endeavor to satisfy you. But yet neither the first Chaos, Orcus, Saturn, or
Japhet, nor any of those threadbare, musty gods were my father, but Plutus,
Riches; that only he, that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter
himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the father of gods and men, at whose
single beck, as heretofore, so at present, all things sacred and profane are
turned topsy-turvy. According to whose pleasure war, peace, empire, counsels,
judgments, assemblies, wedlocks, bargains, leagues, laws, arts, all things
light or serious--I want breath--in short, all the public and private business
of mankind is governed; without whose help all that herd of gods of the poets'
making, and those few of the better sort of the rest, either would not be at
all, or if they were, they would be but such as live at home and keep a poor
house to themselves. And to whomsoever he's an enemy, 'tis not Pallas herself
that can befriend him; as on the contrary he whom he favors may lead Jupiter
and his thunder in a string. This is my father and in him I glory. Nor did he
produce me from his brain, as Jupiter that sour and ill-looked Pallas; but of
that lovely nymph called Youth, the most beautiful and galliard of all the
rest. Not was I, like that limping blacksmith, begot in the sad and irksome
bonds of matrimony. Yet, mistake me not, 'twas not that blind and decrepit
Plutus in Aristophanes that got me, but such as he was in his full strength and
pride of youth; and not that only, but at such a time when he had been well
heated with nectar, of which he had, at one of the banquets of the gods, taken
a dose extraordinary.
And as to the place of my birth, forasmuch as nowadays that is looked upon as a
main point of nobility, it was neither, like Apollo's, in the floating Delos,
nor Venus-like on the rolling sea, nor in any of blind Homer's as blind caves:
but in the Fortunate Islands, where all things grew without plowing or sowing;
where neither labor, nor old age, nor disease was ever heard of; and in whose
fields neither daffodil, mallows, onions, beans, and such contemptible things
would ever grow, but, on the contrary, rue, angelica, bugloss, marjoram,
trefoils, roses, violets, lilies, and all the gardens of Adonis invite both
your sight and your smelling. And being thus born, I did not begin the world,
as other children are wont, with crying; but straight perched up and smiled on
my mother. Nor do I envy to the great Jupiter the goat, his nurse, forasmuch as
I was suckled by two jolly nymphs, to wit, Drunkenness, the daughter of
Bacchus, and Ignorance, of Pan. And as for such my companions and followers as
you perceive about me, if you have a mind to know who they are, you are not
like to be the wiser for me, unless it be in Greek: this here, which you
observe with that proud cast of her eye, is Philautia, Self-love; she with the
smiling countenance, that is ever and anon clapping her hands, is Kolakia,
Flattery; she that looks as if she were half asleep is Lethe, Oblivion; she
that sits leaning on both elbows with her hands clutched together is Misoponia,
Laziness; she with the garland on her head, and that smells so strong of
perfumes, is Hedone, Pleasure; she with those staring eyes, moving here and
there, is Anoia, Madness; she with the smooth skin and full pampered body is
Tryphe, Wantonness; and, as to the two gods that you see with them, the one is
Komos, Intemperance, the other Ecgretos hypnos, Dead Sleep. These, I say, are
my household servants, and by their faithful counsels I have subjected all
things to my dominion and erected an empire over emperors themselves. Thus have
you had my lineage, education, and companions .
And now, lest I may seem to have taken upon me the name of goddess without
cause, you shall in the next place understand how far my deity extends, and
what advantage by it I have brought both to gods and men. For, if it was not
unwisely said by somebody, that this only is to be a god, to help men; and if
they are deservedly enrolled among the gods that first brought in corn and wine
and such other things as are for the common good of mankind, why am not I of
right the alpha, or first, of all the gods? who being but one, yet bestow all
things on all men. For first, what is more sweet or more precious than life?
And yet from whom can it more properly be said to come than from me? For
neither the crab-favoured Pallas' spear nor the cloudgathering Jupiter's shield
either beget or propagate mankind; but even he himself, the father of gods and
king of men at whose very beck the heavens shake, must lay by his forked
thunder and those looks wherewith he conquered the giants and with which at
pleasure he frightens the rest of the gods, and like a common stage player put
on a disguise as often as he goes about that, which now and then he does, that
is to say the getting of children: And the Stoics too, that conceive themselves
next to the gods, yet show me one of them, nay the veriest bigot of the sect,
and if he do not put off his beard, the badge of wisdom, though yet it be no
more than what is common with him and goats; yet at least he must lay by his
supercilious gravity, smooth his forehead, shake off his rigid principles, and
for some time commit an act of folly and dotage. In fine, that wise man whoever
he be, if he intends to have children, must have recourse to me. But tell me, I
beseech you, what man is that would submit his neck to the noose of wedlock,
if, as wise men should, he did but first truly weigh the inconvenience of the
thing? Or what woman is there would ever go to it did she seriously consider
either the peril of child-bearing or the trouble of bringing them up? So then,
if you owe your beings to wedlock, you owe that wedlock to this my follower,
Madness; and what you owe to me I have already told you. Again, she that has
but once tried what it is, would she, do you think, make a second venture if it
were not for my other companion, Oblivion? Nay, even Venus herself,
notwithstanding whatever Lucretius has said, would not deny but that all her
virtue were lame and fruitless without the help of my deity. For out of that
little, odd, ridiculous May-game came the supercilious philosophers, in whose
room have succeeded a kind of people the world calls monks, cardinals, priests,
and the most holy popes. And lastly, all that rabble of the poets' gods, with
which heaven is so thwacked and thronged, that though it be of so vast an
extent, they are hardly able to crowd one by another.
But I think it is a small matter that you thus owe your beginning of life to
me, unless I also show you that whatever benefit you receive in the progress of
it is of my gift likewise. For what other is this? Can that be called life
where you take away pleasure? Oh! Do you like what I say? I knew none of you
could have so little wit, or so much folly, or wisdom rather, as to be of any
other opinion. For even the Stoics themselves that so severely cried down
pleasure did but handsomely dissemble, and railed against it to the common
people to no other end but that having discouraged them from it, they might the
more plentifully enjoy it themselves. But tell me, by Jupiter, what part of
man's life is that that is not sad, crabbed, unpleasant, insipid, troublesome,
unless it be seasoned with pleasure, that is to say, folly? For the proof of
which the never sufficiently praised Sophocles in that his happy elegy of us,
"To know nothing is the only happiness," might be authority enough, but that I
intend to take every particular by itself.
And first, who knows not but a man's infancy is the merriest part of life to
himself, and most acceptable to others? For what is that in them which we kiss,
embrace, cherish, nay enemies succor, but this witchcraft of folly, which wise
Nature did of purpose give them into the world with them that they might the
more pleasantly pass over the toil of education, and as it were flatter the
care and diligence of their nurses? And then for youth, which is in such
reputation everywhere, how do all men favor it, study to advance it, and lend
it their helping hand? And whence, I pray, all this grace? Whence but from me?
by whose kindness, as it understands as little as may be, it is also for that
reason the higher privileged from exceptions; and I am mistaken if, when it is
grown up and by experience and discipline brought to savor something like man,
if in the same instant that beauty does not fade, its liveliness decay, its
pleasantness grow fat, and its briskness fail. And by how much the further it
runs from me, by so much the less it lives, till it comes to the burden of old
age, not only hateful to others, but to itself also. Which also were altogether
insupportable did not I pity its condition, in being present with it, and, as
the poets' gods were wont to assist such as were dying with some pleasant
metamorphosis, . help their decrepitness as much as in me lies by bringing them
back to a second childhood, from whence they are not improperly called twice
children. Which, if you ask me how I do it, I shall not be shy in the point. I
bring them to our River Lethe (for its springhead rises in the Fortunate
Islands, and that other of hell is but a brook in comparison), from which, as
soon as they have drunk down a long forgetfulness, they wash away by degrees
the perplexity of their minds, and so wax young again.
But perhaps you'll say they are foolish and doting. Admit it; 'tis the very
essence of childhood; as if to be such were not to be a fool, or that that
condition had anything pleasant in it, but that it understood nothing. For who
would not look upon that child as a prodigy that should have as much wisdom as
a man?--according to that common proverb, "I do not like a child that is a man
too soon." Or who would endure a converse or friendship with that old man who
to so large an experience of things had joined an equal strength of mind and
sharpness of judgment? And therefore for this reason it is that old age dotes;
and that it does so, it is beholding to me. Yet, notwithstanding, is this
dotard exempt from all those cares that distract a wise man; he is not the less
pot companion, nor is he sensible of that burden of life which the more manly
age finds enough to do to stand upright under it. And sometimes too, like
Plautus' old man, he returns to his three letters, A.M.O., the most unhappy of
all things living, if he rightly understood what he did in it. And yet, so much
do I befriend him that I make him well received of his friends and no
unpleasant companion; for as much as, according to Homer, Nestor's discourse
was pleasanter than honey, whereas Achilles' was both bitter and malicious; and
that of old men, as he has it in another place, florid. In which respect also
they have this advantage of children, in that they want the only pleasure of
the others' life, we'll suppose it prattling. Add to this that old men are more
eagerly delighted with children, and they, again, with old men. "Like to like,"
quoted the Devil to the collier. For what difference between them, but that the
one has more wrinkles and years upon his head than the other? Otherwise, the
brightness of their hair, toothless mouth, weakness of body, love of mild,
broken speech, chatting, toying, forgetfulness, inadvertency, and briefly, all
other their actions agree in everything. And by how much the nearer they
approach to this old age, by so much they grow backward into the likeness of
children, until like them they pass from life to death, without any weariness
of the one, or sense of the other.
And now, let him that will compare the benefits they receive by me, the
metamorphoses of the gods, of whom I shall not mention what they have done in
their pettish humors but where they have been most favorable: turning one into
a tree, another into a bird, a third into a grasshopper, serpent, or the like.
As if there were any difference between perishing and being another thing! But
I restore the same man to the best and happiest part of his life. And if men
would but refrain from all commerce with wisdom and give up themselves to be
governed by me, they should never know what it were to be old, but solace
themselves with a perpetual youth. Do but observe our grim philosophers that
are perpetually beating their brains on knotty subjects, and for the most part
you'll find them grown old before they are scarcely young. And whence is it,
but that their continual and restless thoughts insensibly prey upon their
spirits and dry up their radical moisture? Whereas, on the contrary, my fat
fools are as plump and round as a Westphalian hog, and never sensible of old
age, unless perhaps, as sometimes it rarely happens, they come to be infected
with wisdom, so hard a thing it is for a man to be happy in all things. And to
this purpose is that no small testimony of the proverb, that says, "Folly is
the only thing that keeps youth at a stay and old age afar off;" as it is
verified in the Brabanders, of whom there goes this common saying, "That age,
which is wont to render other men wiser, makes them the greater fools." And yet
there is scarce any nation of a more jocund converse, or that is less sensible
of the misery of old age, than they are. And to these, as in situation, so for
manner of living, come nearest my friends the Hollanders. And why should I not
call them mine, since they are so diligent observers of me that they are
commonly called by my name?--of which they are so far from being ashamed, they
rather pride themselves in it. Let the foolish world then be packing and seek
out Medeas, Circes, Venuses, Auroras, and I know not what other fountains of
restoring youth. I am sure I am the only person that both can, and have, made
it good. 'Tis I alone that have that wonderful juice with which Memnon's
daughter prolonged the youth of her grandfather Tithon. I am that Venus by
whose favor Phaon became so young again that Sappho fell in love with him. Mine
are those herbs, if yet there be any such, mine those charms, and mine that
fountain that not only restores departed youth but, which is more desirable,
preserves it perpetual. And if you all subscribe to this opinion, that nothing
is better than youth or more execrable than age, I conceive you cannot but see
how much you are indebted to me, that have retained so great a good and shut
out so great an evil.
But why do I altogether spend my breath in speaking of mortals? View heaven
round, and let him that will reproach me with my name if he find any one of the
gods that were not stinking and contemptible were he not made acceptable by my
deity. Why is it that Bacchus is always a stripling, and bushy-haired? but
because he is mad, and drunk, and spends his life in drinking, dancing, revels,
and May games, not having so much as the least society with Pallas. And lastly,
he is so far from desiring to be accounted wise that he delights to be
worshipped with sports and gambols; nor is he displeased with the proverb that
gave him the surname of fool, "A greater fool than Bacchus;" which name of his
was changed to Morychus, for that sitting before the gates of his temple, the
wanton country people were wont to bedaub him with new wine and figs. And of
scoffs, what not, have not the ancient comedies thrown on him? O foolish god,
say they, and worthy to be born as you were of your father's thigh! And yet,
who had not rather be your fool and sot, always merry, ever young, and making
sport for other people, than either Homer's Jupiter with his crooked counsels,
terrible to everyone; or old Pan with his hubbubs; or smutty Vulcan half
covered with cinders; or even Pallas herself, so dreadful with her Gorgon's
head and spear and a countenance like bullbeef? Why is Cupid always portrayed
like a boy, but because he is a very wag and can neither do nor so much as
think of anything sober? Why Venus ever in her prime, but because of her vanity
with me? Witness that color of her hair, so resembling my father, from whence
she is called the golden Venus; and lastly, ever laughing, if you give any
credit to the poets, or their followers the statuaries. What deity did the
Romans ever more religiously adore than that of Flora, the foundress of all
pleasure? Nay, if you should but diligently search the lives of the most sour
and morose of the gods out of Homer and the test of the poets, you would find
them all but so many pieces of Folly. And to what purpose should I run over any
of the other gods' tricks when you know enough of Jupiter's loose loves? When
that chaste Diana shall so fat forget her sex as to be ever hunting and ready
to perish for Endymion? But I had rather they should hear these things from
Momus, from whom heretofore they were wont to have their shares, till in one of
their angry humors they tumbled him, together with Ate, goddess of mischief,
down headlong to the earth, because his wisdom, forsooth, unseasonably
disturbed their happiness. Nor since that dares any mortal give him harbor,
though I must confess there wanted little but that he had been received into
the courts of princes, had not my companion Flattery reigned in chief there,
with whom and the other there is no more correspondence than between lambs and
wolves. From whence it is that the gods play the fool with the greater liberty
and more content to themselves "doing all things carelessly," as says Father
Homer, that is to say, without anyone to correct them. For what ridiculous
stuff is there which that stump of the fig tree Pripaus does not afford them?
What tricks and legerdemains with which Mercury does not cloak his thefts? What
buffoonery that Vulcan is not guilty of, while one with his polt-foot, another
with his smutched muzzle, another with his impertinencies, he makes sport for
the rest of the gods? As also that old Silenus with his country dances,
Polyphemus footing time to his Cyclops hammers, the nymphs with their jigs and
satyrs with their antics; while Pan makes them all twitter with some coarse
ballad, which yet they had rather hear than the Muses themselves, and chiefly
when they are well whittled with nectar. Besides, what should I mention what
these gods do when they are half drunk? Now by my troth, so foolish that I
myself can hardly refrain laughter. But in these matters 'twere better we
remembered Harpocrates, lest some eavesdropping god or other take us whispering
that which Momus only has the privilege of speaking at length.
And therefore, according to Homer's example, I think it high time to leave the
gods to themselves, and look down a little on the earth; wherein likewise
you'll find nothing frolic or fortunate that it owes not to me. So provident
has that great parent of mankind, Nature, been that there should not be
anything without its mixture and, as it were, seasoning of Folly. For since
according to the definition of the Stoics, wisdom is nothing else than to be
governed by reason, and on the contrary Folly, to be given up to the will of
our passions, that the life of man might not be altogether disconsolate and
hard to away with, of how much more passion than reason has Jupiter composed
us? putting in, as one would say, "scarce half an ounce to a pound." Besides,
he has confined reason to a narrow corner of the brain and left all the rest of
the body to our passions; has also set up, against this one, two as it were,
masterless tyrants--anger, that possesses the region of the heart, and
consequently the very fountain of life, the heart itself; and lust, that
stretches its empire everywhere. Against which double force how powerful reason
is let common experience declare, inasmuch as she, which yet is all she can do,
may call out to us till she be hoarse again and tell us the rules of honesty
and virtue; while they give up the reins to their governor and make a hideous
clamor, till at last being wearied, he suffer himself to be carried whither
they please to hurry him.
But forasmuch as such as are born to the business of the world have some little
sprinklings of reason more than the rest, yet that they may the better manage
it, even in this as well as in other things, they call me to counsel; and I
give them such as is worthy of myself, to wit, that they take to them a wife--a
silly thing, God wot, and foolish, yet wanton and pleasant, by which means the
roughness of the masculine temper is seasoned and sweetened by her folly. For
in that Plato seems to doubt under what genus he should put woman, to wit, that
of rational creatures or brutes, he intended no other in it than to show the
apparent folly of the sex. For if perhaps any of them goes about to be thought
wiser than the rest, what else does she do but play the fool twice, as if a man
should "teach a cow to dance," "a thing quite against the hair." For as it
doubles the crime if anyone should put a disguise upon Nature, or endeavor to
bring her to that she will in no wise bear, according to that proverb of the
Greeks, "An ape is an ape, though clad in scarlet;" so a woman is a woman
still, that is to say foolish, let her put on whatever viz'ard she please.
But, by the way, I hope that sex is not so foolish as to take offense at this,
that I myself, being a woman, and Folly too, have attributed folly to them. For
if they weigh it tight, they needs must acknowledge that they owe it to folly
that they are more fortunate than men. As first their beauty, which, and that
not without cause, they prefer before everything, since by its means they
exercise a tyranny even upon tyrants themselves; otherwise, whence proceeds
that sour look, rough skin, bushy beard, and such other things as speak plain
old age in a man, but from that disease of wisdom? Whereas women's cheeks are
ever plump and smooth, their voice small, their skin soft, as if they imitated
a certain kind of perpetual youth. Again, what greater thing do they wish in
their whole lives than that they may please the man? For to what other purpose
are all those dresses, washes, baths, slops, perfumes, and those several little
tricks of setting their faces, painting their eyebrows, and smoothing their
skins? And now tell me, what higher letters of recommendation have they to men
than this folly? For what is it they do not permit them to do? And to what
other purpose than that of pleasure? Wherein yet their folly is not the least
thing that pleases; which so true it is, I think no one will deny, that does
but consider with himself, what foolish discourse and odd gambols pass between
a man and his woman, as often as he had a mind to be gamesome? And so I have
shown you whence the first and chiefest delight of man's life springs.
But there are some, you'll say, and those too none of the youngest, that have a
greater kindness for the pot than the petticoat and place their chiefest
pleasure in good fellowship. If there can be any great entertainment without a
woman at it, let others look to it. This I am sure, there was never any
pleasant which folly gave not the relish to. Insomuch that if they find no
occasion of laughter, they send for "one that may make it," or hire some
buffoon flatterer, whose ridiculous discourse may put by the gravity of the
company. For to what purpose were it to clog our stomachs with dainties,
junkets, and the like stuff, unless our eyes and ears, nay whole mind, were
likewise entertained with jests, merriments, and laughter? But of these kind of
second courses I am the only cook; though yet those ordinary practices of our
feasts, as choosing a king, throwing dice, drinking healths, trolling it round,
dancing the cushion, and the like, were not invented by the seven wise men but
myself, and that too for the common pleasure of mankind. The nature of all
which things is such that the more of folly they have, the more they conduce to
human life, which, if it were unpleasant, did not deserve the name of life; and
other than such it could not well be, did not these kind of diversions wipe
away tediousness, next cousin to the other.
But perhaps there are some that neglect this way of pleasure and rest satisfied
in the enjoyment of their friends, calling friendship the most desirable of all
things, more necessary than either air, fire, or water; so delectable that he
that shall take it out of the world had as good put out the sun; and, lastly,
so commendable, if yet that make anything to the matter, that neither the
philosophers themselves doubted to reckon it among their chiefest good. But
what if I show you that I am both the beginning and end of this so great good
also? Nor shall I go about to prove it by fallacies, sorites, dilemmas, or
other the like subtleties of logicians, but after my blunt way point out the
thing as clearly as it were with my finger.
And now tell me if to wink, slip over, be blind at, or deceived in the vices of
our friends, nay, to admire and esteem them for virtues, be not at least the
next degree to folly? What is it when one kisses his mistress' freckle neck,
another the watt on her nose? When a father shall swear his squint-eyed child
is more lovely than Venus? What is this, I say, but mere folly? And so, perhaps
you'll cry it is; and yet 'tis this only that joins friends together and
continues them so joined. I speak of ordinary men, of whom none are born
without their imperfections, and happy is he that is pressed with the least:
for among wise princes there is either no friendship at all, or if there be,
'tis unpleasant and reserved, and that too but among a very few 'twere a crime
to say none. For that the greatest part of mankind are fools, nay there is not
anyone that dotes not in many things; and friendship, you know, is seldom made
but among equals. And yet if it should so happen that there were a mutual good
will between them, it is in no wise firm nor very long lived; that is to say,
among such as are morose and more circumspect than needs, as being
eagle-sighted into his friends' faults, but so blear-eyed to their own that
they take not the least notice of the wallet that hangs behind their own
shoulders. Since then the nature of man is such that there is scarce anyone to
be found that is not subject to many errors, add to this the great diversity of
minds and studies, so many slips, oversights, and chances of human life, and
how is it possible there should be any true friendship between those Argus, so
much as one hour, were it not for that which the Greeks excellently call
euetheian? And you may render by folly or good nature, choose you whether. But
what? Is not the author and parent of all our love, Cupid, as blind as a
beetle? And as with him all colors agree, so from him is it that everyone likes
his own sweeterkin best, though never so ugly, and "that an old man dotes on
his old wife, and a boy on his girl." These things are not only done everywhere
but laughed at too; yet as ridiculous as they are, they make society pleasant,
and, as it were, glue it together.
And what has been said of friendship may more reasonably be presumed of
matrimony, which in truth is no other than an inseparable conjunction of life.
Good God! What divorces, or what not worse than that, would daily happen were
not the converse between a man and his wife supported and cherished by
flattery, apishness, gentleness, ignorance, dissembling, certain retainers of
mine also! Whoop holiday! how few marriages should we have, if the husband
should but thoroughly examine how many tricks his pretty little mop of modesty
has played before she was married! And how fewer of them would hold together,
did not most of the wife's actions escape the husband's knowledge through his
neglect or sottishness! And for this also you are beholden to me, by whose
means it is that the husband is pleasant to his wife, the wife to her husband,
and the house kept in quiet. A man is laughed at, when seeing his wife weeping
he licks up her tears. But how much happier is it to be thus deceived than by
being troubled with jealousy not only to torment himself but set all things in
a hubbub! In fine, I am so necessary to the making of all society and manner of
life both delightful and lasting, that neither would the people long endure
their governors, nor the servant his master, nor the master his footman, nor
the scholar his tutor, nor one friend another, nor the wife her husband, nor
the usurer the borrower, nor a soldier his commander, nor one companion
another, unless all of them had their interchangeable failings, one while
flattering, other while prudently conniving, and generally sweetening one
another with some small relish of folly.
And now you'd think I had said all, but you shall hear yet greater things. Will
he, I pray, love anyone that hates himself ? Or ever agree with another who is
not at peace with himself? Or beget pleasure in another that is troublesome to
himself? I think no one will say it that is not more foolish than Folly. And
yet, if you should exclude me, there's no man but would be so far from enduring
another that he would stink in his own nostrils, be nauseated with his own
actions, and himself become odious to himself; forasmuch as Nature, in too many
things rather a stepdame than a parent to us, has imprinted that evil in men,
especially such as have least judgment, that everyone repents him of his own
condition and admires that of others. Whence it comes to pass that all her
gifts, elegancy, and graces corrupt and perish. For what benefit is beauty, the
greatest blessing of heaven, if it be mixed with affectation? What youth, if
corrupted with the severity of old age?
Lastly, what is that in the whole business of a man's life he can do with any
grace to himself or others --for it is not so much a thing of art, as the very
life of every action, that it be done with a good mien --unless this my friend
and companion, Self-love, be present with it? Nor does she without cause supply
me the place of a sister, since her whole endeavors are to act my part
everywhere. For what is more foolish than for a man to study nothing else than
how to please himself? To make himself the object of his own admiration? And
yet, what is there that is either delightful or taking, nay rather what not the
contrary, that a man does against the hair? Take away this salt of life, and
the orator may even sit still with his action, the musician with all his
division will be able to please no man, the player be hissed off the stage, the
poet and all his Muses ridiculous, the painter with his art contemptible, and
the physician with all his slip-slops go a-begging. Lastly, you will be taken
for an ugly fellow instead of youthful, and a beast instead of a wise man, a
child instead of eloquent, and instead of a well-bred man, a clown. So
necessary a thing it is that everyone flatter himself and commend himself to
himself before he can be commended by others Lastly, since it is the chief
point of happiness "that a man is willing to be what he is," you have further
abridged in this my Self-love, that no man is ashamed of his own face, no man
of his own wit, no man of his own parentage, no man of his own house, no man of
his manner of living, not any man of his own country; so that a Highlander has
no desire to change with an Italian, a Thracian with an Athenian, not a
Scythian for the Fortunate Islands. O the singular care of Nature, that in so
great a variety of things has made all equal! Where she has been sometimes
sparing of her gifts she has recompensed it with the mote of self-love; though
here, I must confess, I speak foolishly, it being the greatest of all other her
gifts: to say nothing that no great action was ever attempted without my
motion, or art brought to perfection without my help.
Is not war the very root and matter of all famed enterprises? And yet what more
foolish than to undertake it for I know what trifles, especially when both
parties are sure to lose more than they get by the bargain? For of those that
are slain, not a word of them; and for the rest, when both sides are close
engaged "and the trumpets make an ugly noise," what use of those wise men, I
pray, that are so exhausted with study that their thin, cold blood has scarce
any spirits left? No, it must be those blunt, fat fellows, that by how much the
more they exceed in courage, fall short in understanding. Unless perhaps one
had rather choose Demosthenes for a soldier, who, following the example of
Archilochius, threw away his arms and betook him to his heels e'er he had
scarce seen his enemy; as ill a soldier, as happy an orator.
But counsel, you'll say, is not of least concern in matters of war. In a
general I grant it; but this thing of warring is not part of philosophy, but
managed by parasites, panders, thieves, cut-throats, plowmen, sots,
spendthrifts, and such other dregs of mankind, not philosophers; who how unapt
they are even for common converse, let Socrates, whom the oracle of Apollo,
though not so wisely, judged "the wisest of all men living," be witness; who
stepping up to speak somewhat, I know not what, in public was forced to come
down again well laughed at for his pains. Though yet in this he was not
altogether a fool, that he refused the appellation of wise, and returning it
back to the oracle, delivered his opinion that a wise man should abstain from
meddling with public business; unless perhaps he should have rather admonished
us to beware of wisdom if we intended to be reckoned among the number of men,
there being nothing but his wisdom that first accused and afterwards sentenced
him to the drinking of his poisoned cup. For while, as you find him in
Aristophanes, philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring how far a flea
could leap, and admitting that so small a creature as a fly should make so
great a buzz, he meddled not with anything that concerned common life. But his
master being in danger of his head, his scholar Plato is at hand, to wit that
famous patron, that being disturbed with the noise of the people, could not go
through half his first sentence. What should I speak of Theophrastus, who being
about to make an oration, became as dumb as if he had met a wolf in his way,
which yet would have put courage in a man of war? Or Isocrates, that was so
cowhearted that he dared never attempt it? Or Tully, that great founder of the
Roman eloquence, that could never begin to speak without an odd kind of
trembling, like a boy that had got the hiccough; which Fabius interprets as an
argument of a wise orator and one that was sensible of what he was doing; and
while he says it, does he not plainly confess that wisdom is a great obstacle
to the true management of business? What would become of them, think you, were
they to fight it out at blows that are so dead through fear when the contest is
only with empty words ?
And next to these is cried up, forsooth, that goodly sentence of Plato's,
"Happy is that commonwealth where a philosopher is prince, or whose prince is
addicted to philosophy." When yet if you consult historians, you'll find no
princes more pestilent to the commonwealth than where the empire has fallen to
some smatterer in philosophy or one given to letters. To the truth of which I
think the Catoes give sufficient credit; of whom the one was ever disturbing
the peace of the commonwealth with his hair-brained accusations; the other,
while he too wisely vindicated its liberty, quite overthrew it. Add to this the
Bruti, Casii, nay Cicero himself, that was no less pernicious to the
commonwealth of Rome than was Demosthenes to that of Athens. Besides M.
Antoninus (that I may give you one instance that there was once one good
empetor; for with much ado I can make it out) was become burdensome and hated
of his subjects upon no other score but that he was so great a philosopher. But
admitting him good, he did the commonwealth more hurt in leaving behind him
such a son as he did than ever he did it good by his own government. For these
kind of men that are so given up to the study of wisdom are generally most
unfortunate, but chiefly in their children; Nature, it seems, so providently
ordering it, lest this mischief of wisdom should spread further among mankind.
For which reason it is manifest why Cicero's son was so degenerate, and that
wise Socrates' children, as one has well observed, were more like their mother
than their father, that is to say, fools.
However this were to be born with, if only as to public employments they were
"like a sow upon a pair of organs," were they anything more apt to discharge
even the common offices of life. Invite a wise man to a feast and he'll spoil
the company, either with morose silence or troublesome disputes. Take him out
to dance, and you'll swear "a cow would have done it better." Bring him to the
theatre, and his very looks are enough to spoil all, till like Cato he take an
occasion of withdrawing rather than put off his supercilious gravity. Let him
fall into discourse, and he shall make more sudden stops than if he had a wolf
before him. Let him buy, or sell, or in short go about any of those things
without there is no living in this world, and you'll say this piece of wisdom
were rather a stock than a man, of so little use is he to himself, country, or
friends; and all because he is wholly ignorant of common things and lives a
course of life quite different from the people; by which means it is impossible
but that he contract a popular odium, to wit, by reason of the great diversity
of their life and souls. For what is there at all done among men that is not
full of folly, and that too from fools and to fools? Against which universal
practice if any single one shall dare to set up his throat, my advice to him
is, that following the example of Timon, he retire into some desert and there
enjoy his wisdom to himself.
But, to return to my design, what power was it that drew those stony, oaken,
and wild people into cities but flattery? For nothing else is signified by
Amphion and Orpheus' harp. What was it that, when the common people of Rome
were like to have destroyed all by their mutiny, reduced them to obedience? Was
it a philosophical oration? Least. But a ridiculous and childish fable of the
belly and the rest of the members. And as good success had Themistocles in his
of the fox and hedgehog. What wise man's oration could ever have done so much
with the people as Sertorius' invention of his white hind? Or his ridiculous
emblem of pulling off a horse's tail hair by hair? Or as Lycurgus his example
of his two whelps? To say nothing of Minos and Numa, both which ruled their
foolish multitudes with fabulous inventions; with which kind of toys that great
and powerful beast, the people, are led anyway. Again what city ever received
Plato's or Aristotle's laws, or Socrates' precepts? But, on the contrary, what
made the Decii devote themselves to the infernal gods, or Q. Curtius to leap
into the gulf, but an empty vainglory, a most bewitching siren? And yet 'tis
strange it should be so condemned by those wise philosophers. For what is more
foolish, say they, than for a suppliant suitor to flatter the people, to buy
their favor with gifts, to court the applauses of so many fools, to please
himself with their acclamations, to be carried on the people's shoulders as in
triumph, and have a brazen statue in the marketplace? Add to this the adoption
of names and surnames, those divine honors given to a man of no reputation, and
the deification of the most wicked tyrants with public ceremonies; most foolish
things, and such as one Democritus is too little to laugh at. Who denies it?
And yet from this root sprang all the great acts of the heroes which the pens
of so many eloquent men have extolled to the skies. In a word, this folly is
that that laid the foundation of cities; and by it, empire, authority,
religion, policy, and public actions are preserved; neither is there anything
in human life that is not a kind of pastime of folly.
But to speak of arts, what set men's wits on work to invent and transmit to
posterity so many famous, as they conceive, pieces of learning but the thirst
of glory? With so much loss of sleep, such pains and travail, have the most
foolish of men thought to purchase themselves a kind of I know not what fame,
than which nothing can be more vain. And yet notwithstanding, you owe this
advantage to folly, and which is the most delectable of all other, that you
reap the benefit of other men's madness.
And now, having vindicated to myself the praise of fortitude and industry, what
think you if I do the same by that of prudence? But some will say, you may as
well join fire and water. It may be so. But yet I doubt not but to succeed even
in this also, if, as you have done hitherto, you will but favor me with your
attention. And first, if prudence depends upon experience, to whom is the honor
of that name more proper? To the wise man, who partly out of modesty and partly
distrust of himself, attempts nothing; or the fool, whom neither modesty which
he never had, nor danger which he never considers, can discourage from
anything? The wise man has recourse to the books of the ancients, and from
thence picks nothing but subtleties of words. The fool, in undertaking and
venturing on the business of the world, gathers, if I mistake not, the true
prudence, such as Homer though blind may be said to have seen when he said,
"The burnt child dreads the fire." For there are two main obstacles to the
knowledge of things, modesty that casts a mist before the understanding, and
fear that, having fancied a danger, dissuades us from the attempt. But from
these folly sufficiently frees us, and few there are that rightly understand
of what great advantage it is to blush at nothing and attempt everything.
But if you had rather take prudence for that that consists in the judgment of
things, hear me, I beseech you, how far they are from it that yet crack of the
name. For first 'tis evident that all human things, like Alcibiades' Sileni or
rural gods, carry a double face, but not the least alike; so that what at first
sight seems to be death, if you view it narrowly may prove to be life; and so
the contrary. What appears beautiful may chance to be deformed; what wealthy, a
very beggar; what infamous, praiseworthy; what learned, a dunce; what lusty,
feeble; what jocund, sad; what noble, base; what lucky, unfortunate; what
friendly, an enemy; and what healthful, noisome. In short, view the inside of
these Sileni, and you'll find them quite other than what they appear; which, if
perhaps it shall not seem so philosophically spoken, I'll make it plain to you
"after my blunt way." Who would not conceive a prince a great lord and abundant
in everything? But yet being so ill-furnished with the gifts of the mind, and
ever thinking he shall never have enough, he's the poorest of all men. And then
for his mind so given up to vice, 'tis a shame how it enslaves him. I might in
like manner philosophize of the rest; but let this one, for example's sake, be
enough.
Yet why this? will someone say. Have patience, and I'll show you what I drive
at. If anyone seeing a player acting his part on a stage should go about to
strip him of his disguise and show him to the people in his true native form,
would he not, think you, not only spoil the whole design of the play, but
deserve himself to be pelted off with stones as a phantastical fool and one out
of his wits? But nothing is more common with them than such changes; the same
person one while impersonating a woman, and another while a man; now a
youngster, and by and by a grim seignior; now a king, and presently a peasant;
now a god, and in a trice again an ordinary fellow. But to discover this were
to spoil all, it being the only thing that entertains the eyes of the
spectators. And what is all this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up
and down in one another's disguises and act their respective parts, till the
property-man brings them back to the attiring house. And yet he often orders a
different dress, and makes him that came but just now off in the robes of a
king put on the rags of a beggar. Thus are all things represented by
counterfeit, and yet without this there was no living.
And here if any wise man, as it were dropped from heaven, should start up and
cry, this great thing whom the world looks upon for as a god and I know not
what is not so much as a man, for that like a beast he is led by his passions,
but the worst of slaves, inasmuch as he gives himself up willingly to so many
and such detestable masters. Again if he should bid a man that were bewailing
the death of his father to laugh, for that he now began to live by having got
an estate, without which life is but a kind of death; or call another that were
boasting of his family ill begotten or base, because he is so far removed from
virtue that is the only fountain of nobility; and so of the rest: what else
would he get by it but be thought himself mad and frantic? For as nothing is
more foolish than preposterous wisdom, so nothing is more unadvised than a
forward unseasonable prudence. And such is his that does not comply with the
present time "and order himself as the market goes," but forgetting that law of
feasts, "either drink or begone," undertakes to disprove a common received
opinion. Whereas on the contrary ,tis the part of a truly prudent man not to be
wise beyond his condition, but either to take no notice of what the world does,
or run with it for company. But this is foolish, you'll say; nor shall I deny
it, provided always you be so civil on the other side as to confess that this
is to act a part in that world.
But, O you gods, "shall I speak or hold my tongue?" But why should I be silent
in a thing that is more true than truth itself ? However it might not be amiss
perhaps in so great an affair to call forth the Muses from Helicon, since the
poets so often invoke them upon every foolish occasion. Be present then awhile,
and assist me, you daughters of Jupiter, while I make it out that there is no
way to that so much famed wisdom, nor access to that fortress as they call it
of happiness, but under the banner of Folly. And first ,tis agreed of all hands
that our passions belong to Folly; inasmuch as we judge a wise man from a fool
by this, that the one is ordered by them, the other by reason; and therefore
the Stoics remove from a wise man all disturbances of mind as so many diseases.
But these passions do not only the office of a tutor to such as are making
towards the port of wisdom, but are in every exercise of virtue as it were
spurs and incentives, nay and encouragers to well doing: which though that
great Stoic Seneca most strongly denies, and takes from a wise man all
affections whatever, yet in doing that he leaves him not so much as a man but
rather a new kind of god that was never yet nor ever like to be. Nay, to speak
plainer, he sets up a stony semblance of a man, void of all sense and common
feeling of humanity. And much good to them with this wise man of theirs; let
them enjoy him to themselves, love him without competitors, and live with him
in Plato's commonwealth, the country of ideas, of Tantalus' orchards. For who
would not shun and startle at such a man, as at some unnatural accident or
spirit? A man dead to all sense of nature and common affections, and no more
moved with love or pity than if he were a flint or rock; whose censure nothing
escapes; that commits no errors himself, but has a lynx's eyes upon others;
measures everything by an exact line, and forgives nothing; pleases himself
with himself only; the only rich, the only wise, the only free man, and only
king; in brief, the only man that is everything, but in his own single judgment
only; that cares not for the friendship of any man, being himself a friend to
no man; makes no doubt to make the gods stoop to him, and condemns and laughs
at the whole actions of our life? And yet such a beast is this their perfect
wise man. But tell me pray, if the thing were to be carried by most voices,
what city would choose him for its governor, or what army desire him for their
general? What woman would have such a husband, what goodfellow such a guest, or
what servant would either wish or endure such a master? Nay, who had not rather
have one of the middle sort of fools, who, being a fool himself, may the better
know how to command or obey fools; and who though he please his like, 'tis yet
the greater number; one that is kind to his wife, merry among his friends, a
boon companion, and easy to be lived with; and lastly one that thinks nothing
of humanity should be a stranger to him? But I am weary of this wise man, and
therefore I'll proceed to some other advantages.
Go to then. Suppose a man in some lofty high tower, and that he could look
round him, as the poets say Jupiter was now and then wont. To how many
misfortunes would he find the life of man subject? How miserable, to say no
worse, our birth, how difficult our education; to how many wrongs our childhood
exposed, to what pains our youth; how unsupportable our old age, and grievous
our unavoidable death? As also what troops of diseases beset us, how many
casualties hang over our heads, how many troubles invade us, and how little
there is that is not steeped in gall? To say nothing of those evils one man
brings upon another, as poverty, imprisonment, infamy, dishonesty, racks,
snares, treachery, reproaches, actions, deceits--but I'm got into as endless a
work as numbering the sands--for what offenses mankind have deserved these
things, or what angry god compelled them to be born into such miseries is not
my present business. Yet he that shall diligently examine it with himself,
would he not, think you, approve the example of the Milesian virgins and kill
himself? But who are they that for no other reason but that they were weary of
life have hastened their own fate? Were they not the next neighbors to wisdom?
among whom, to say nothing of Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato, Cassius, Brutus, that
wise man Chiron, being offered immortality, chose rather to die than be
troubled with the same thing always.
And now I think you see what would become of the world if all men should be
wise; to wit it were necessary we got another kind of clay and some better
potter. But I, partly through ignorance, partly unadvisedness, and sometimes
through forgetfulness of evil, do now and then so sprinkle pleasure with the
hopes of good and sweeten men up in their greatest misfortunes that they are
not willing to leave this life,. even then when according to the account of the
destinies this life has left them; and by how much the less reason they have to
live, by so much the more they desire it; so far are they from being sensible
of the least wearisomeness of life. Of my gift it is, that you have so many old
Nestors everywhere that have scarce left them so much as the shape of a man;
stutterers, dotards, toothless, grayhaired, bald; or rather, to use the words
of Aristophanes, "Nasty, crumpled, miserable, shriveled, bald, toothless, and
wanting their baubles," yet so delighted with life and to be thought young that
one dyes his gray hairs; another covers his baldness with a periwig; another
gets a set of new teeth; another falls desperately in love with a young wench
and keeps more flickering about her than a young man would have been ashamed
of. For to see such an old crooked piece with one foot in the grave to marry a
plump young wench, and that too without a portion, is so common that men almost
expect to be commended for it. But the best sport of all is to see our old
women, even dead with age, and such skeletons one would think they had stolen
out of their graves, and ever mumbling in their mouths, "Life is sweet;" and as
old as they are, still caterwauling, daily plastering their face, scarce ever
from the glass, gossiping, dancing, and writing love letters. These things are
laughed at as foolish, as indeed they are; yet they please themselves, live
merrily, swim in pleasure, and in a word are happy, by my courtesy. But I would
have them to whom these things seem ridiculous to consider with themselves
whether it be not better to live so pleasant a life in such kind of follies,
than, as the proverb goes, "to take a halter and hang themselves." Besides
though these things may be subject to censure, it concerns not my fools in the
least, inasmuch as they take no notice of it; or if they do, they easily
neglect it. If a stone fall upon a man's head, that's evil indeed; but
dishonesty, infamy, villainy, ill reports carry no more hurt in them than a man
is sensible of; and if a man have no sense of them, they are no longer evils.
What are you the worse if the people hiss at you, so you applaud yourself? And
that a man be able to do so, he must owe it to folly.
But methinks I heat the philosophers opposing it and saying 'tis a miserable
thing for a man to be foolish, to err, mistake, and know nothing truly. Nay
rather, this is to be a man. And why they should call it miserable, I see no
reason; forasmuch as we are so born, so bred, so instructed, nay such is the
common condition of us all. And nothing can be called miserable that suits with
its kind, unless perhaps you'll think a man such because he can neither fly
with birds, nor walk on all four with beasts, and is not armed with horns as a
bull. For by the same reason he would call the warlike horse unfortunate,
because he understood not grammar, nor ate cheese-cakes; and the bull
miserable, because he'd make so ill a wrestler. And therefore, as a horse that
has no skill in grammar is not miserable, no more is man in this respect, for
that they agree with his nature. But again, the virtuosi may say that there was
particularly added to man the knowledge of sciences, by whose help he might
recompense himself in understanding for what nature cut him short in other
things. As if this had the least face of truth, that Nature that was so
solicitously watchful in the production of gnats, herbs, and flowers should
have so slept when she made man, that he should have need to be helped by
sciences, which that old devil Theuth, the evil genius of mankind, first
invented for his destruction, and are so little conducive to happiness that
they rather obstruct it; to which purpose they are properly said to be first
found out, as that wise king in Plato argues touching the invention of
letters.
Sciences therefore crept into the world with other the pests of mankind, from
the same head from whence all other mischiefs spring; we'll suppose it devils,
for so the name imports when you call them demons, that is to say, knowing. For
that simple people of the golden age, being wholly ignorant of everything
called learning, lived only by the guidance and dictates of nature; for what
use of grammar, where every man spoke the same language and had no further
design than to understand one another? What use of logic, where there was no
bickering about the double-meaning words? What need of rhetoric, where there
were no lawsuits? Or to what purpose laws, where there were no ill manners?
from which without doubt good laws first came. Besides, they were more
religious than with an impious curiosity to dive into the secrets of nature,
the dimension of stars, the motions, effects, and hidden causes of things; as
believing it a crime for any man to attempt to be wise beyond his condition.
And as to the inquiry of what was beyond heaven, that madness never came into
their heads. But the purity of the golden age declining by degrees, first, as I
said before, arts were invented by the evil genii; and yet but few, and those
too received by fewer. After that the Chaldean superstition and Greek
newfangledness, that had little to do, added I know not how many more; mere
torments of wit, and that so great that even grammar alone is work enough for
any man for his whole life.
Though yet among these sciences those only are in esteem that come nearest to
common sense, that is to say, folly. Divines are half starved, naturalists out
of heart, astrologers laughed at, and logicians slighted; only the physician is
worth all the rest. And among them too, the more unlearned, impudent, or
unadvised he is, the more he is esteemed, even among princes. For physic,
especially as it is now professed by most men, is nothing but a branch of
flattery, no less than rhetoric. Next them, the second place is given to our
law-drivers, if not the first, whose profession, though I say it myself, most
men laugh at as the ass of philosophy; yet there's scarce any business, either
so great or so small, but is managed by these asses. These purchase their great
lordships, while in the meantime the divine, having run through the whole body
of divinity, sits gnawing a radish and is in continual warfare with lice and
fleas. As therefore those arts are best that have the nearest affinity with
folly, so are they most happy of all others that have least commerce with
sciences and follow the guidance of Nature, who is in no wise imperfect, unless
perhaps we endeavor to leap over those bounds she has appointed to us. Nature
hates all false coloring and is ever best where she is least adulterated with
art.
Go to then, don't you find among the several kinds of living creatures that
they thrive best that understand no more than what Nature taught them? What is
more prosperous or wonderful than the bee? And though they have not the same
judgment of sense as other bodies have, yet wherein has architecture gone
beyond their building of houses? What philosopher ever founded the like
republic? Whereas the horse, that comes so near man in understanding and is
therefore so familiar with him, is also partaker of his misery. For while he
thinks it a shame to lose the race, it often happens that he cracks his wind;
and in the battle, while he contends for victory, he's cut down himself, and,
together with his rider "lies biting the earth ;" not to mention those strong
bits, sharp spurs, close stables, arms, blows, rider, and briefly, all that
slavery he willingly submits to, while, imitating those men of valor, he so
eagerly strives to be revenged of the enemy. Than which how much more were the
life of flies or birds to be wished for, who living by the instinct of nature,
look no further than the present, if yet man would but let them alone in it.
And if at anytime they chance to be taken, and being shut up in cages endeavor
to imitate our speaking, 'tis strange how they degenerate from their native
gaiety. So much better in every respect are the works of nature than the
adulteries of art.
In like manner I can never sufficiently praise that Pythagoras in a dunghill
cock, who being but one had been yet everything, a philosopher, a man, a woman,
a king, a private man, a fish, a horse, a frog, and, I believe too, a sponge;
and at last concluded that no creature was more miserable than man, for that
all other creatures are content with those bounds that nature set them, only
man endeavors to exceed them. And again, among men he gives the precedency not
to the learned or the great, but the fool. Nor had that Gryllus less wit than
Ulysses with his many counsels, who chose rather to lie grunting in a hog sty
than be exposed with the other to so many hazards. Nor does Homer, that father
of trifles, dissent from me; who not only called all men "wretched and full of
calamity," but often his great pattern of wisdom, Ulysses, "miserable;" Paris,
Ajax, and Achilles nowhere. And why, I pray but that, like a cunning fellow and
one that was his craft's master, he did nothing without the advice of Pallas?
In a word he was too wise, and by that means ran wide of nature. As therefore
among men they are least happy that study wisdom, as being in this twice fools,
that when they are born men, they should yet so far forget their condition as
to affect the life of gods; and after the example of the giants, with their
philosophical gimcracks make a war upon nature: so they on the other side seem
as little miserable as is possible who come nearest to beasts and never attempt
anything beyond man. Go to then, let's try how demonstrable this is; not by
enthymemes or the imperfect syllogisms of the Stoics, but by plain, downright,
and ordinary examples.
And now, by the immortal gods! I think nothing more happy than that generation
of men we commonly call fools, idiots, lack-wits, and dolts; splendid titles
too, as I conceive them. I'll tell you a thing, which at first perhaps may seem
foolish and absurd, yet nothing more true. And first they are not afraid of
death--no small evil, by Jupiter! They are not tormented with the conscience of
evil acts, not terrified with the fables of ghosts, nor frightened with spirits
and goblins. They are not distracted with the fear of evils to come nor the
hopes of future good. In short, they are not disturbed with those thousand of
cares to which this life is subject. They are neither modest, nor fearful, nor
ambitious, nor envious, nor love they any man. And lastly, if they should come
nearer even to the very ignorance of brutes, they could not sin, for so hold
the divines. And now tell me, you wise fool, with how many troublesome cares
your mind is continually perplexed; heap together all the discommodities of
your life, and then you'll be sensible from how many evils I have delivered my
fools. Add to this that they are not only merry, play, sing, and laugh
themselves, but make mirth wherever they come, a special privilege it seems the
gods have given them to refresh the pensiveness of life. Whence it is that
whereas the world is so differently affected one towards another, that all men
indifferently admit them as their companions, desire, feed, cherish, embrace
them, take their parts upon all occasions, and permit them without offense to
do or say what they like. And so little does everything desire to hurt them,
that even the very beasts, by a kind of natural instinct of their innocence no
doubt, pass by their injuries. For of them it may be truly said that they are
consecrate to the gods, and therefore and not without cause do men have them in
such esteem. Whence is it else that they are in so great request with princes
that they can neither eat nor drink, go anywhere, or be an hour without them?
Nay, and in some degree they prefer these fools before their crabbish wise men,
whom yet they keep about them for state's sake. Nor do I conceive the reason so
difficult, or that it should seem strange why they are preferred before the
others, for that these wise men speak to princes about nothing but grave,
serious matters, and trusting to their own parts and learning do not fear
sometimes "to grate their tender ears with smart truths;" but fools fit them
with that they most delight in, as jests, laughter, abuses of other men, wanton
pastimes, and the like.
Again, take notice of this no contemptible blessing which Nature has given
fools, that they are the only plain, honest men and such as speak truth. And
what is more commendable than truth? For though that proverb of Alcibiades in
Plato attributes truth to drunkards and children, yet the praise of it is
particularly mine, even from the testimony of Euripides, among whose other
things there is extant that his honorable saying concerning us, "A fool speaks
foolish things." For whatever a fool has in his heart, he both shows it in his
looks and expresses it in his discourse; while the wise men's are those two
tongues which the same Euripides mentions, whereof the one speaks truth, the
other what they judge most seasonable for the occasion. These are they "that
turn black into white," blow hot and cold with the same breath, and carry a far
different meaning in their breast from what they feign with their tongue. Yet
in the midst of all their prosperity, princes in this respect seem to me most
unfortunate, because, having no one to tell them truth, they are forced to
receive flatterers for friends.
But, someone may say, the ears of princes are strangers to truth, and for this
reason they avoid those wise men, because they fear lest someone more frank
than the rest should dare to speak to them things rather true than pleasant;
for so the matter is, that they don't much care for truth. And yet this is
found by experience among my fools, that not only truths but even open
reproaches are heard with pleasure; so that the same thing which, if it came
from a wise man's mouth might prove a capital crime, spoken by a fool is
received with delight. For truth carries with it a certain peculiar power of
pleasing, if no accident fall in to give occasion of offense; which faculty the
gods have given only to fools. And for the same reasons is it that women are so
earnestly delighted with this kind of men, as being more propense by nature to
pleasure and toys. And whatsoever they may happen to do with them, although
sometimes it be of the most serious, yet they turn it to jest and laughter, as
that sex was ever quickwitted, especially to color their own faults.
But to return to the happiness of fools, who when they have passed over this
life with a great deal of pleasantness and without so much as the least fear or
sense of death, they go straight forth into the Elysian field, to recreate
their pious and careless souls with such sports as they used here. Let's
proceed then, and compare the condition of any of your wise men with that of
this fool. Fancy to me now some example of wisdom you'd set up against him; one
that had spent his childhood and youth in learning the sciences and lost the
sweetest part of his life in watchings, cares, studies, and for the remaining
part of it never so much as tasted the least of pleasure; ever sparing, poor,
sad, sour, unjust, and rigorous to himself, and troublesome and hateful to
others; broken with paleness, leanness, crassness, sore eyes, and an old age
and death contracted before their time (though yet, what matter is it, when he
die that never lived?); and such is the picture of this great wise man.
And here again do those frogs of the Stoics croak at me and say that nothing is
more miserable than madness. But folly is the next degree, if not the very
thing. For what else is madness than for a man to be out of his wits? But to
let them see how they are clean out of the way, with the Muses' good favor
we'll take this syllogism in pieces. Subtly argued, I must confess, but as
Socrates in Plato teaches us how by splitting one Venus and one Cupid to make
two of either, in like manner should those logicians have done and
distinguished madness from madness, if at least they would be thought to be
well in their wits themselves. For all madness is not miserable, or Horace had
never called his poetical fury a beloved madness; nor Plato placed the raptures
of poets, prophets, and lovers among the chiefest blessings of this life; nor
that sibyl in Virgil called Aeneas' travels mad labors. But there are two sorts
of madness, the one that which the revengeful Furies send privily from hell, as
often as they let loose their snakes and put into men's breasts either the
desire of war, or an insatiate thirst after gold, or some dishonest love, or
parricide, or incest, or sacrilege, or the like plagues, or when they terrify
some guilty soul with the conscience of his crimes; the other, but nothing like
this, that which comes from me and is of all other things the most desirable;
which happens as often as some pleasing dotage not only clears the mind of its
troublesome cares but renders it more jocund. And this was that which, as a
special blessing of the gods, Cicero, writing to his friend Atticus, wished to
himself, that he might be the less sensible of those miseries that then hung
over the commonwealth.
Nor was that Grecian in Horace much wide of it, who was so far mad that he
would sit by himself whole days in the theatre laughing and clapping his hands,
as if he had seen some tragedy acting, whereas in truth there was nothing
presented; yet in other things a man well enough, pleasant among his friends,
kind to his wife, and so good a master to his servants that if they had broken
the seal of his bottle, he would not have run mad for it. But at last, when by
the care of his friends and physic he was freed from his distemper and become
his own man again, he thus expostulates with them, "Now, by Pollux, my friends,
you have rather killed than preserved me in thus forcing me from my pleasure."
By which you see he liked it so well that he lost it against his will. And
trust me, I think they were the madder of the two, and had the greater need of
hellebore, that should offer to look upon so pleasant a madness as an evil to
be removed by physic; though yet I have not determined whether every distemper
of the sense or understanding be to be called madness.
For neither he that having weak eyes should take a mule for an ass, nor he that
should admire an insipid poem as excellent would be presently thought mad; but
he that not only errs in his senses but is deceived also in his judgment, and
that too more than ordinary and upon all occasions--he, I must confess, would
be thought to come very near to it. As if anyone hearing an ass bray should
take it for excellent music, or a beggar conceive himself a king. And yet this
kind of madness, if, as it commonly happens, it turn to pleasure, it brings a
great delight not only to them that are possessed with it but to those also
that behold it, though perhaps they may not be altogether so mad as the other,
for the species of this madness is much larger than the people take it to be.
For one mad man laughs at another, and beget themselves a mutual pleasure. Nor
does it seldom happen that he that is the more mad, laughs at him that is less
mad. And in this every man is the more happy in how many respects the more he
is mad; and if I were judge in the case, he should be ranged in that class of
folly that is peculiarly mine, which in truth is so large and universal that I
scarce know anyone in all mankind that is wise at all hours, or has not some
tang or other of madness.
And to this class do they appertain that slight everything in comparison of
hunting and protest they take an unimaginable pleasure to hear the yell of the
horns and the yelps of the hounds, and I believe could pick somewhat
extraordinary out of their very excrement. And then what pleasure they take to
see a buck or the like unlaced? Let ordinary fellows cut up an ox or a wether,
'twere a crime to have this done by anything less than a gentleman! who with
his hat off, on his bare knees, and a couteau for that purpose (for every sword
or knife is not allowable), with a curious superstition and certain postures,
lays open the several parts in their respective order; while they that hem him
in admire it with silence, as some new religious ceremony, though perhaps they
have seen it a hundred times before. And if any of them chance to get the least
piece of it, he presently thinks himself no small gentleman. In all which they
drive at nothing more than to become beasts themselves, while yet they imagine
they live the life of princes.
And next these may be reckoned those that have such an itch of building; one
while changing rounds into squares, and presently again squares into rounds,
never knowing either measure or end, till at last, reduced to the utmost
poverty, there remains not to them so much as a place where they may lay their
head, or wherewith to fill their bellies. And why all this? but that they may
pass over a few years in feeding their foolish fancies.
And, in my opinion, next these may be reckoned such as with their new
inventions and occult arts undertake to change the forms of things and hunt all
about after a certain fifth essence; men so bewitched with this present hope
that it never repents them of their pains or expense, but are ever contriving
how they may cheat themselves, till, having spent all, there is not enough left
them to provide another furnace. And yet they have not done dreaming these
their pleasant dreams but encourage others, as much as in them lies, to the
same happiness. And at last, when they are quite lost in all their
expectations, they cheer up themselves with this sentence, "In great things the
very attempt is enough," and then complain of the shortness of man's life that
is not sufficient for so great an understanding.
And then for gamesters, I am a little doubtful whether they are to be admitted
into our college; and yet 'tis a foolish and ridiculous sight to see some
addicted so to it that they can no sooner hear the rattling of the dice but
their heart leaps and dances again. And then when time after time they are so
far drawn on with the hopes of winning that they have made shipwreck of all,
and having split their ship on that rock of dice, no less terrible than the
bishop and his clerks, scarce got alive to shore, they choose rather to cheat
any man of their just debts than not pay the money they lost, lest otherwise,
forsooth, they be thought no men of their words. Again what is it, I pray, to
see old fellows and half blind to play with spectacles? Nay, and when a justly
deserved gout has knotted their knuckles, to hire a caster, or one that may put
the dice in the box for them? A pleasant thing, I must confess, did it not for
the most part end in quarrels, and therefore belongs rather to the Furies than
me.
But there is no doubt but that that kind of men are wholly ours who love to
hear or tell feigned miracles and strange lies and are never weary of any tale,
though never so long, so it be of ghosts, spirits, goblins, devils, or the
like; which the further they are from truth, the more readily they are believed
and the more do they tickle their itching ears. And these serve not only to
pass away time but bring profit, especially to mass priests and pardoners. And
next to these are they that have gotten a foolish but pleasant persuasion that
if they can but see a wooden or painted Polypheme Christopher, they shall not
die that day; or do but salute a carved Barbara, in the usual set form, that he
shall return safe from battle; or make his application to Erasmus on certain
days with some small wax candles and proper prayers, that he shall quickly be
rich. Nay, they have gotten a Hercules, another Hippolytus, and a St. George,
whose horse most religiously set out with trappings and bosses there wants
little but they worship; however, they endeavor to make him their friend by
some present or other, and to swear by his master's brazen helmet is an oath
for a prince. Or what should I say of them that hug themselves with their
counterfeit pardons; that have measured purgatory by an hourglass, and can
without the least mistake demonstrate its ages, years, months, days, hours,
minutes, and seconds, as it were in a mathematical table? Or what of those who,
having confidence in certain magical charms and short prayers invented by some
pious impostor, either for his soul's health or profit's sake, promise to
themselves everything: wealth, honor, pleasure, plenty, good health, long life,
lively old age, and the next place to Christ in the other world, which yet they
desire may not happen too soon, that is to say before the pleasures of this
life have left them?
And now suppose some merchant, soldier, or judge, out of so many rapines, parts
with some small piece of money. He straight conceives all that sink of his
whole life quite cleansed; so many perjuries, so many lusts, so many
debaucheries, so many contentions, so many murders, so many deceits, so many
breaches of trusts, so many treacheries bought off, as it were by compact; and
so bought off that they may begin upon a new score. But what is more foolish
than those, or rather more happy, who daily reciting those seven verses of the
Psalms promise to themselves more than the top of felicity? Which magical
verses some devil or other, a merry one without doubt but more a blab of his
tongue than crafty, is believed to have discovered to St. Bernard, but not
without a trick. And these are so foolish that I am half ashamed of them
myself, and yet they are approved, and that not only by the common people but
even the professors of religion. And what, are not they also almost the same
where several countries avouch to themselves their peculiar saint, and as
everyone of them has his particular gift, so also his particular form of
worship? As, one is good for the toothache; another for groaning women; a
third, for stolen goods; a fourth, for making a voyage prosperous; and a fifth,
to cure sheep of the rot; and so of the rest, for it would be too tedious to
run over all. And some there are that are good for more things than one; but
chiefly, the Virgin Mother, to whom the common people do in a manner attribute
more than to the Son.
Yet what do they beg of these saints but what belongs to folly? To examine it a
little. Among all those offerings which are so frequently hung up in churches,
nay up to the very roof of some of them, did you ever see the least
acknowledgment from anyone that had left his folly, or grown a hair's breadth
the wiser? One escapes a shipwreck, and he gets safe to shore. Another, run
through in a duel, recovers. Another, while the rest were fighting, ran out of
the field, no less luckily than valiantly. Another, condemned to be hanged, by
the favor of some saint or other, a friend to thieves, got off himself by
impeaching his fellows. Another escaped by breaking prison. Another recovered
from his fever in spite of his physician. Another's poison turning to a
looseness proved his remedy rather than death; and that to his wife's no small
sorrow, in that she lost both her labor and her charge. Another's cart broke,
and he saved his horses. Another preserved from the fall of a house. All these
hang up their tablets, but no one gives thanks for his recovery from folly; so
sweet a thing it is not to be wise, that on the contrary men rather pray
against anything than folly.
But why do I launch out into this ocean of superstitions? Had I a hundred
tongues, as many mouths, and a voice never so strong, yet were I not able to
run over the several sorts of fools or all the names of folly, so thick do they
swarm everywhere. And yet your priests make no scruple to receive and cherish
them as proper instruments of profit; whereas if some scurvy wise fellow should
step up and speak things as they are, as, to live well is the way to die well;
the best way to get quit of sin is to add to the money you give the hatred of
sin, tears, watchings, prayers, fastings, and amendment of life; such or such a
saint will favor you, if you imitate his life-- these, I say, and the
like--should this wise man chat to the people, from what happiness into how
great troubles would he draw them?
Of this college also are they who in their lifetime appoint with what solemnity
they'll be buried, and particularly set down how many torches, how many
mourners, how many singers, how many almsmen they will have at it; as if any
sense of it could come to them, or that it were a shame to them that their
corpse were not honorably interred; so curious are they herein, as if, like the
aediles of old, these were to present some shows or banquet to the people.
And though I am in haste, yet I cannot yet pass by them who, though they differ
nothing from the meanest cobbler, yet 'tis scarcely credible how they flatter
themselves with the empty title of nobility. One derives his pedigree from
Aeneas, another from Brutus, a third from the star by the tail of Ursa Major.
They show you on every side the statues and pictures of their ancestors; run
over their greatgrandfathers and the great-great-grandfathers of both lines,
and the ancient matches of their families, when themselves yet are but once
removed from a statue, if not worse than those trifles they boast of. And yet
by means of this pleasant self-love they live a happy life. Nor are they less
fools who admire these beasts as if they were gods.
But what do I speak of any one or the other particular kind of men, as if this
self-love had not the same effect everywhere and rendered most men
superabundantly happy? As when a fellow, more deformed than a baboon, shall
believe himself handsomer than Homer's Nereus. Another, as soon as he can draw
two or three lines with a compass, presently thinks himself a Euclid. A third,
that understands music no more than my horse, and for his voice as hoarse as a
dunghill cock, shall yet conceive himself another Hermogenes. But of all
madness that's the most pleasant when a man, seeing another any way excellent
in what he pretends to himself, makes his boasts of it as confidently as if it
were his own. And such was that rich fellow in Seneca, who whenever he told a
story had his servants at his elbow to prompt him the names; and to that height
had they flattered him that he did not question but he might venture a rubber
at cuffs, a man otherwise so weak he could scarce stand, only presuming on
this, that he had a company of sturdy servants about him.
Or to what purpose is it I should mind you of our professors of arts? Forasmuch
as this self-love is so natural to them all that they had rather part with
their father's land than their foolish opinions; but chiefly players, fiddlers,
orators, and poets, of which the more ignorant each of them is, the more
insolently he pleases himself, that is to say vaunts and spreads out his
plumes. And like lips find like lettuce; nay, the more foolish anything is, the
more ,tis admired, the greater number being ever tickled at the worst things,
because, as I said before, most men are so subject to folly. And therefore if
the more foolish a man is, the more he pleases himself and is admired by
others, to what purpose should he beat his brains about true knowledge, which
first will cost him dear, and next render him the more troublesome and less
confident, and lastly, please only a few?
And now I consider it, Nature has planted, not only in particular men but even
in every nation, and scarce any city is there without it, a kind of common
self-love. And hence is it that the English, besides other things, particularly
challenge to themselves beauty, music, and feasting. The Scots are proud of
their nobility, alliance to the crown, and logical subtleties. The French think
themselves the only wellbred men. The Parisians, excluding all others, arrogate
to themselves the only knowledge of divinity. The Italians affirm they are the
only masters of good letters and eloquence, and flatter themselves on this
account, that of all others they only are not barbarous. In which kind of
happiness those of Rome claim the first place, still dreaming to themselves of
somewhat, I know not what, of old Rome. The Venetians fancy themselves happy in
the opinion of their nobility. The Greeks, as if they were the only authors of
sciences, swell themselves with the titles of the ancient heroes. The Turk, and
all that sink of the truly barbarous, challenge to themselves the only glory of
religion and laugh at Christians as superstitious. And much more pleasantly the
Jews expect to this day the coming of the Messiah, and so obstinately contend
for their Law of Moses. The Spaniards give place to none in the reputation of
soldiery. The Germans pride themselves in their tallness of stature and skill
in magic.
And, not to instance in every particular, you see, I conceive, how much
satisfaction this Self-love, who has a sister also not unlike herself called
Flattery, begets everywhere; for self-love is no more than the soothing of a
man's self, which, done to another, is Hattery. And though perhaps at this day
it may be thought infamous, yet it is so only with them that are more taken
with words than things. They think truth is inconsistent with flattery, but
that it is much otherwise we may learn from the examples of true beasts. What
more fawning than a dog? And yet what more trusty? What has more of those
little tricks than a squirrel? And yet what more loving to man? Unless, perhaps
you'll say, men had better converse with fierce lions, merciless tigers, and
furious leopards. For that flattery is the most pernicious of all things, by
means of which some treacherous persons and mockers have run the credulous into
such mischief. But this of mine proceeds from a certain gentleness and
uprightness of mind and comes nearer to virtue than its opposite, austerity, or
a morose and troublesome peevishness, as Horace calls it. This supports the
dejected, relieves the distressed, encourages the fainting, awakens the stupid,
refreshes the sick, supplies the untractable, joins loves together, and keeps
them so joined. It entices children to take their learning, makes old men
frolic, and, under the color of praise, does without offense both tell princes
their faults and show them the way to amend them. In short, it makes every man
the more jocund and acceptable to himself, which is the chiefest point of
felicity. Again, what is more friendly than when two horses scrub one another?
And to say nothing of it, that it's a main part of physic, and the only thing
in poetry; 'tis the delight and relish of all human society.
But 'tis a sad thing, they say, to be mistaken. Nay rather, he is most
miserable that is not so. For they are quite beside the mark that place the
happiness of men in things themselves, since it only depends upon opinion. For
so great is the obscurity and variety of human affairs that nothing can be
clearly known, as it is truly said by our academics, the least insolent of all
the philosophers; or if it could, it would but obstruct the pleasure of life.
Lastly, the mind of man is so framed that it is rather taken with the false
colors than truth; of which if anyone has a mind to make the experiment, let
him go to church and hear sermons, in which if there be anything serious
delivered, the audience is either asleep, yawning, or weary of it; but if the
preacher--pardon my mistake, I would have said declaimer--as too often it
happens, fall but into an old wives' story, they're presently awake, prick up
their ears and gape after it. In like manner, if there be any poetical saint,
or one of whom there goes more stories than ordinary, as for example, a George,
a Christopher, or a Barbara, you shall see him more religiously worshipped than
Peter, Paul, or even Christ himself. But these things are not for this place.
And now at how cheap a rate is this happiness purchased! Forasmuch as to the
thing itself a man's whole endeavor is required, be it never so inconsiderable;
but the opinion of it is easily taken up, which yet conduces as much or more to
happiness. For suppose a man were eating rotten stockfish, the very smell of
which would choke another, and yet believed it a dish for the gods, what
difference is there as to his happiness? Whereas on the contrary, if another's
stomach should turn at a sturgeon, wherein, I pray, is he happier than the
other? If a man have a crooked, ill-favored wife, who yet in his eye may stand
in competition with Venus, is it not the same as if she were truly beautiful?
Or if seeing an ugly, ill-pointed piece, he should admire the work as believing
it some great master's hand, were he not much happier, think you, than they
that buy such things at vast rates, and yet perhaps reap less pleasure from
them than the other? I know one of my name that gave his new married wife some
counterfeit jewels, and as he was a pleasant droll, persuaded her that they
were not only right but of an inestimable price; and what difference, I pray,
to her, that was as well pleased and contented with glass and kept it as warily
as if it had been a treasure In the meantime the husband saved his money and
had this advantage of her folly, that he obliged her as much as if he had
bought them at a great rate. Or what difference, think you, between those in
Plato's imaginary cave that stand gaping at the shadows and figures of things,
so they please themselves and have no need to wish, and that wise man, who,
being got loose from them, sees things truly as they are? Whereas that cobbler
in Lucian if he might always have continued his golden dreams, he would never
have desired any other happiness. So then there is no difference; or, if there
be, the fools have the advantage: first, in that their happiness costs them
least, that is to say, only some small persuasion; next, that they enjoy it in
common. And the possession of no good can be delightful without a companion.
For who does not know what a dearth there is of wise men, if yet any one be to
be found? And though the Greeks for these so many ages have accounted upon
seven only, yet so help me Hercules, do but examine them narrowly, and I'll be
hanged if you find one half-witted fellow, nay or so much as one-quarter of a
wise man, among them all.
For whereas among the many praises of Bacchus they reckon this the chief, that
he washes away cares, and that too in an instant, do but sleep off his weak
spirits, and they come on again, as we say, on horseback. But how much larger
and more present is the benefit you receive by me, since, as it were with a
perpetual drunkenness I fill your minds with mirth, fancies, and jollities, and
that too without any trouble? Nor is there any man living whom I let be without
it; whereas the gifts of the gods are scrambled, some to one and some to
another. The sprightly delicious wine that drives away cares and leaves such a
flavor behind it grows not everywhere. Beauty, the gift of Venus, happens to
few; and to fewer gives Mercury eloquence. Hercules makes not everyone rich.
Homer's Jupiter bestows not empire on all men. Mars oftentimes favors neither
side. Many return sad from Apollo's oracle. Phoebus sometimes shoots a plague
among us. Neptune drowns more than he saves: to say nothing of those
mischievous gods, Plutoes, Ates, punishments, fevers, and the like, not gods
but executioners. I am that only Folly that so readily and indifferently
bestows my benefits on all. Nor do I look to be entreated, or am I subject to
take pet, and require an expiatory sacrifice if some ceremony be omitted. Nor
do I beat heaven and earth together if, when the rest of the gods are invited,
I am passed by or not admitted to the stream of their sacrifices. For the rest
of the gods are so curious in this point that such an omission may chance to
spoil a man's business; and therefore one has as good even let them alone as
worship them: just like some men, who are so hard to please, and withall so
ready to do mischief, that 'tis better be a stranger than have any familiarity
with them.
But no man, you'll say, ever sacrificed to Folly or built me a temple. And
troth, as I said before, I cannot but wonder at the ingratitude; yet because I
am easily to be entreated, I take this also in good part, though truly I can
scarce request it. For why should I require incense, wafers, a goat, or sow
when all men pay me that worship everywhere which is so much approved even by
our very divines? Unless perhaps I should envy Diana that her sacrifices are
mingled with human blood. Then do I conceive myself most religiously worshipped
when everywhere, as 'tis generally done, men embrace me in their minds, express
me in their manners, and represent me in their lives, which worship of the
saints is not so ordinary among Christians. How many are there that burn
candles to the Virgin Mother, and that too at noonday when there's no need of
them! But how few are there that study to imitate her in pureness of life,
humility and love of heavenly things, which is the true worship and most
acceptable to heaven! Besides why should I desire a temple when the whole world
is my temple, and I'm deceived or 'tis a goodly one? Nor can I want priests but
in a land where there are no men. Nor am I yet so foolish as to require statues
or painted images, which do often obstruct my worship, since among the stupid
and gross multitude those figures are worshipped for the saints themselves. And
so it would fare with me, as it does with them that are turned out of doors by
their substitutes. No, I have statues enough, and as many as there are men,
everyone bearing my lively resemblance in his face, how unwilling so ever he be
to the contrary. And therefore there is no reason why I should envy the rest of
the gods if in particular places they have their particular worship, and that
too on set days--as Phoebus at Rhodes; at Cyprus, Venus; at Argos, Juno; at
Athens, Minerva; in Olympus, Jupiter; at Tarentum, Neptune; and near the
Hellespont, Priapus--as long as the world in general performs me every day much
better sacrifices.
Wherein notwithstanding if I shall seem to anyone to have spoken more boldly
than truly, let us, if you please, look a little into the lives of men, and it
will easily appear not only how much they owe to me, but how much they esteem
me even from the highest to the lowest. And yet we will not run over the lives
of everyone, for that would be too long, but only some few of the great ones,
from whence we shall easily conjecture the rest. For to what purpose is it to
say anything of the common people, who without dispute are wholly mine? For
they abound everywhere with so many several sorts of folly, and are every day
so busy in inventing new, that a thousand Democriti are too few for so general
a laughter, though there were another Democritus to laugh at them too. 'Tis
almost incredible what sport and pastime they daily make the gods; for though
they set aside their sober forenoon hours to dispatch business and receive
prayers, yet when they begin to be well whittled with nectar and cannot think
of anything that's serious, they get them up into some part of heaven that has
better prospect than other and thence look down upon the actions of men. Nor is
there anything that pleases them better. Good, good! what an excellent sight it
is! How many several hurly-burlies of fools! for I myself sometimes sit among
those poetical gods.
Here's one desperately in love with a young wench, and the more she slights him
the more outrageously he loves her. Another marries a woman's money, not
herself. Another's jealousy keeps more eyes on her than Argos. Another becomes
a mourner, and how foolishly he carries it! nay, hires others to bear him
company to make it more ridiculous. Another weeps over his mother-in-law's
grave. Another spends all he can rap and run on his belly, to be the more
hungry after it. Another thinks there is no happiness but in sleep and
idleness. Another turmoils himself about other men's business and neglects his
own. Another thinks himself rich in taking up moneys and changing securities,
as we say borrowing of Peter to pay Paul, and in a short time becomes bankrupt.
Another starves himself to enrich his heir. Another for a small and uncertain
gain exposes his life to the casualties of seas and winds, which yet no money
can restore. Another had rather get riches by war than live peaceably at home.
And some there are that think them easiest attained by courting old childless
men with presents; and others again by making rich old women believe they love
them; both which afford the gods most excellent pastime, to see them cheated by
those persons they thought to have over-caught. But the most foolish and basest
of all others are our merchants, to wit such as venture on everything be it
never so dishonest, and manage it no better; who though they lie by no
allowance, swear and forswear, steal, cozen, and cheat, yet shuffle themselves
into the first rank, and all because they have gold rings on their fingers. Nor
are they without their flattering friars that admire them and give them openly
the title of honorable, in hopes, no doubt, to get some small snip of it
themselves.
There are also a kind of Pythagoreans with whom all things are so common that
if they get anything under their cloaks, they make no more scruple of carrying
it away than if it were their own by inheritance. There are others too that are
only rich in conceit, and while they fancy to themselves pleasant dreams,
conceive that enough to make them happy. Some desire to be accounted wealthy
abroad and are yet ready to starve at home. One makes what haste he can to set
all going, and another rakes it together by right or wrong. This man is ever
laboring for public honors, and another lies sleeping in a chimney corner. A
great many undertake endless suits and outvie one another who shall most enrich
the dilatory judge or corrupt advocate. One is all for innovations and another
for some great he-knows-not-what. Another leaves his wife and children at home
and goes to Jerusalem, Rome, or in pilgrimage to St. James's where he has no
business. In short, if a man like Menippus of old could look down from the moon
and behold those innumerable rufflings of mankind, he would think he saw a
swarm of flies and gnats quarreling among themselves, fighting, laying traps
for one another, snatching, playing, wantoning, growing up, falling, and dying.
Nor is it to be believed what stir, what broils, this little creature raises,
and yet in how short a time it comes to nothing itself; while sometimes war,
other times pestilence, sweeps off many thousands of them together.
But let me be most foolish myself, and one whom Democritus may not only laugh
at but flout, if I go one foot further in the discovery of the follies and
madnesses of the common people. I'll betake me to them that carry the
reputation of wise men and hunt after that golden bough, as says the proverb.
Among whom the grammarians hold the first place, a generation of men than whom
nothing would be more miserable, nothing more perplexed, nothing more hated of
the gods, did not I allay the troubles of that pitiful profession with a
certain kind of pleasant madness. For they are not only subject to those five
curses with which Homer begins his Iliads, as says the Greek epigram, but six
hundred; as being ever hungerstarved and slovens in their schools--schools, did
I say? Nay, rather cloisters, bridewells, or slaughterhouses--grown old among a
company of boys, deaf with their noise, and pined away with stench and
nastiness. And yet by my courtesy it is that they think themselves the most
excellent of all men, so greatly do they please themselves in frighting a
company of fearful boys with a thundering voice and big looks, tormenting them
with ferules, rods, and whips; and, laying about them without fear or wit,
imitate the ass in the lion's skin. In the meantime all that nastiness seems
absolute spruceness, that stench a perfume, and that miserable slavery a
kingdom, and such too as they would not change their tyranny for Phalaris' or
Dionysius' empire. Nor are they less happy in that new opinion they have taken
up of being learned; for whereas most of them beat into boys, heads nothing but
foolish toys, yet, you good gods! what Palemon, what Donatus, do they not scorn
in comparison of themselves? And so, I know not by what tricks, they bring it
about that to their boys' foolish mothers and dolt-headed fathers they pass for
such as they fancy themselves. Add to this that other pleasure of theirs, that
if any of them happen to find out who was Anchises' mother, or pick out of some
worm-eaten manuscript a word not commonly known--as suppose it bubsequa for a
cowherd, bovinator for a wrangler, manticulator for a cutputse--or dig up the
ruins of some ancient monument with the letters half eaten out; O Jupiter! what
towerings! what triumphs! what commendations! as if they had conquered Africa
or taken in Babylon.
But what of this when they give up and down their foolish insipid verses, and
there wants not others that admire them as much? They believe presently that
Virgil's soul is transmigrated into them! But nothing like this, when with
mutual compliments they praise, admire, and claw one another. Whereas if
another do but slip a word and one more quick-sighted than the rest discover it
by accident, O Hercules ! what uproars, what bickerings, what taunts, what
invectives! If I lie, let me have the ill will of all the grammarians. I knew
in my time one of many arts, a Grecian, a Latinist, a mathematician, a
philosopher, a physician, a man master of them all, and sixty years of age,
who, laying by all the rest, perplexed and tormented himself for above twenty
years in the study of grammar, fully reckoning himself a prince if he might but
live so long till he could certainly determine how the eight parts of speech
were to be distinguished, which none of the Greeks or Latins had yet fully
cleared: as if it were a matter to be decided by the sword if a man made an
adverb of a conjunction. And for this cause is it that we have as many grammars
as grammarians; nay more, forasmuch as my friend Aldus has given us above five,
not passing by any kind of grammar, how barbarously or tediously soever
compiled, which he has not turned over and examined; envying every man's
attempts in this kind, rather to be pitied than happy, as persons that are ever
tormenting themselves; adding, changing, putting in, blotting out, revising,
reprinting, showing it to friends, and nine years in correcting, yet never
fully satisfied; at so great a rate do they purchase this vain reward, to wit,
praise, and that too of a very few, with so many watchings, so much sweat, so
much vexation and loss of sleep, the most precious of all things. Add to this
the waste of health, spoil of complexion, weakness of eyes or rather blindness,
poverty, envy, abstinence from pleasure, over-hasty old age, untimely death,
and the like; so highly does this wise man value the approbation of one or two
blear-eyed fellows. But how much happier is this my writer's dotage who never
studies for anything but puts in writing whatever he pleases or what comes
first in his head, though it be but his dreams; and all this with small waste
of paper, as well knowing that the vainer those trifles are, the higher esteem
they will have with the greater number, that is to say all the fools and
unlearned. And what matter is it to slight those few learned if yet they ever
read them? Or of what authority will the censure of so few wise men be against
so great a cloud of gainsayers?
But they are the wiser that put out other men's works for their own, and
transfer that glory which others with great pains have obtained to themselves;
relying on this, that they conceive, though it should so happen that their
theft be never so plainly detected, that yet they should enjoy the pleasure of
it for the present. And 'tis worth one's while to consider how they please
themselves when they are applauded by the common people, pointed at in a crowd,
"This is that excellent person;" lie on booksellers' stalls; and in the top of
every page have three hard words read, but chiefly exotic and next degree to
conjuring; which, by the immortal gods! what are they but mere words? And
again, if you consider the world, by how few understood, and praised by fewer!
for even among the unlearned there are different palates. Or what is it that
their own very names are often counterfeit or borrowed from some books of the
ancients? When one styles himself Telemachus, another Sthenelus, a third
Laertes, a fourth Polycrates, a fifth Thrasymachus. So that there is no
difference whether they title their books with the "Tale of a Tub," or,
according to the philosophers, by alpha, beta.
But the most pleasant of all is to see them praise one another with reciprocal
epistles, verses, and encomiums; fools their fellow fools, and dunces their
brother dunces. This, in the other's opinion, is an absolute Alcaeus; and the
other, in his, a very Callimachus. He looks upon Tully as nothing to the other,
and the other again pronounces him more learned than Plato. And sometimes too
they pick out their antagonist and think to raise themselves a fame by writing
one against the other; while the giddy multitude are so long divided to whether
of the two they shall determine the victory, till each goes off conqueror, and,
as if he had done some great action, fancies himself a triumph. And now wise
men laugh at these things as foolish, as indeed they are. Who denies it? Yet in
the meantime, such is my kindness to them, they live a merry life and would not
change their imaginary triumphs, no, not with the Scipioes. While yet those
learned men, though they laugh their fill and reap the benefit of the other's
folly, cannot without ingratitude deny but that even they too are not a little
beholding to me themselves.
And among them our advocates challenge the first place, nor is there any sort
of people that please themselves like them: for while they daily roll Sisyphus
his stone, and quote you a thousand cases, as it were, in a breath no matter
how little to the purpose, and heap glosses upon glosses, and opinions on the
neck of opinions, they bring it at last to this pass, that that study of all
other seems the most difficult. Add to these our logicians and sophists, a
generation of men more prattling than an echo and the worst of them able to
outchat a hundred of the best picked gossips. And yet their condition would be
much better were they only full of words and not so given to scolding that they
most obstinately hack and hew one another about a matter of nothing and make
such a sputter about terms and words till they have quite lost the sense. And
yet they are so happy in the good opinion of themselves that as soon as they
are furnished with two or three syllogisms, they dare boldly enter the lists
against any man upon any point, as not doubting but to run him down with noise,
though the opponent were another Stentor.
And next these come our philosophers, so much reverenced for their furred gowns
and starched beards that they look upon themselves as the only wise men and all
others as shadows. And yet how pleasantly do they dote while they frame in
their heads innumerable worlds; measure out the sun, the moon, the stars, nay
and heaven itself, as it were, with a pair of compasses; lay down the causes of
lightning, winds, eclipses, and other the like inexplicable matters; and all
this too without the least doubting, as if they were Nature's secretaries, or
dropped down among us from the council of the gods; while in the meantime
Nature laughs at them and all their blind conjectures. For that they know
nothing, even this is a sufficient argument, that they don't agree among
themselves and so are incomprehensible touching every particular. These, though
they have not the least degree of knowledge, profess yet that they have
mastered all; nay, though they neither know themselves, nor perceive a ditch or
block that lies in their way, for that perhaps most of them are half blind, or
their wits a wool-gathering, yet give out that they have discovered ideas,
universalities, separated forms, first matters, quiddities, haecceities,
formalities, and the like stuff; things so thin and bodiless that I believe
even Lynceus himself was not able to perceive them. But then chiefly do they
disdain the unhallowed crowd as often as with their triangles, quadrangles,
circles, and the like mathematical devices, more confounded than a labyrinth,
and letters disposed one against the other, as it were in battle array, they
cast a mist before the eyes of the ignorant. Nor is there wanting of this kind
some that pretend to foretell things by the stars and make promises of miracles
beyond all things of soothsaying, and are so fortunate as to meet with people
that believe them.
But perhaps I had better pass over our divines in silence and not stir this
pool or touch this fair but unsavory plant, as a kind of men that are
supercilious beyond comparison, and to that too, implacable; lest setting them
about my ears, they attack me by troops and force me to a recantation sermon,
which if I refuse, they straight pronounce me a heretic. For this is the
thunderbolt with which they fright those whom they are resolved not to favor.
And truly, though there are few others that less willingly acknowledge the
kindnesses I have done them, yet even these too stand fast bound to me upon no
ordinary accounts; while being happy in their own opinion, and as if they dwelt
in the third heaven, they look with haughtiness on all others as poor creeping
things and could almost find in their hearts to pity them; while hedged in with
so many magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions
explicit and implicit, they abound with so many starting-holes that Vulcan's
net cannot hold them so fast, but they'll slip through with their distinctions,
with which they so easily cut all knots asunder that a hatchet could not have
done it better, so plentiful are they in their new-found words and prodigious
terms. Besides, while they explicate the most hidden mysteries according to
their own fancy--as how the world was first made; how original sin is derived
to posterity; in what manner, how much room, and how long time Christ lay in
the Virgin's womb; how accidents subsist in the Eucharist without their
subject.
But these are common and threadbare; these are worthy of our great and
illuminated divines, as the world calls them! At these, if ever they fall
athwart them, they prick up--as whether there was any instant of time in the
generation of the Second Person; whether there be more than one filiation in
Christ; whether it be a possible proposition that God the Father hates the Son;
or whether it was possible that Christ could have taken upon Him the likeness
of a woman, or of the devil, or of an ass, or of a stone, or of a gourd; and
then how that gourd should have preached, wrought miracles, or been hung on the
cross; and what Peter had consecrated if he had administered the Sacrament at
what time the body of Christ hung upon the cross; or whether at the same time
he might be said to be man; whether after the Resurrection there will be any
eating and drinking, since we are so much afraid of hunger and thirst in this
world. There are infinite of these subtle trifles, and others more subtle than
these, of notions, relations, instants, formalities, quiddities, haecceities,
which no one can perceive without a Lynceus whose eyes could look through a
stone wall and discover those things through the thickest darkness that never
were.
Add to this those their other determinations, and those too so contrary to
common opinion that those oracles of the Stoics, which they call paradoxes,
seem in comparison of these but blockish and idle--as 'tis a lesser crime to
kill a thousand men than to set a stitch on a poor man's shoe on the Sabbath
day; and that a man should rather choose that the whole world with all food and
raiment, as they say, should perish, than tell a lie, though never so
inconsiderable. And these most subtle subtleties are rendered yet more subtle
by the several methods of so many Schoolmen, that one might sooner wind himself
out of a labyrinth than the entanglements of the realists, nominalists,
Thomists, Albertists, Occamists, Scotists. Nor have I named all the several
sects, but only some of the chief; in all which there is so much doctrine and
so much difficulty that I may well conceive the apostles, had they been to deal
with these new kind of divines, had needed to have prayed in aid of some other
spirit.
Paul knew what faith was, and yet when he said, "Faith is the substance of
things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen," he did not define it
doctor-like. And as he understood charity well himself, so he did as
illogically divide and define it to others in his first Epistle to the
Corinthians, Chapter the thirteenth. And devoutly, no doubt, did the apostles
consecrate the Eucharist; yet, had they been asked the question touching the
"terminus a quo," and the "terminus ad quem" of transubstantiation; of the
manner how the same body can be in several places at one and the same time; of
the difference the body of Christ has in heaven from that of the cross, or this
in the Sacrament; in what point of time transubstantiation is, whereas prayer,
by means of which it is, as being a discrete quantity, is transient; they would
not, I conceive, have answered with the same subtlety as the Scotists dispute
and define it. They knew the mother of Jesus, but which of them has so
philosophically demonstrated how she was preserved from original sin as have
done our divines? Peter received the keys, and from Him too that would not have
trusted them with a person unworthy; yet whether he had understanding or no, I
know not, for certainly he never attained to that subtlety to determine how he
could have the key of knowledge that had no knowledge himself. They baptized
far and near, and yet taught nowhere what was the formal, material, efficient,
and final cause of baptism, nor made the least mention of delible and indelible
characters. They worshipped, 'tis true, but in spirit, following herein no
other than that of the Gospel, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship, must
worship him in spirit and truth;" yet it does not appear it was at that time
revealed to them that an image sketched on the wall with a coal was to be
worshipped with the same worship as Christ Himself, if at least the two
forefingers be stretched out, the hair long and uncut, and have three rays
about the crown of the head. For who can conceive these things, unless he has
spent at least six and thirty years in the philosophical and supercelestial
whims of Aristotle and the Schoolmen?
In like manner, the apostles press to us grace; but which of them distinguishes
between free grace and grace that makes a man acceptable? They exhort us to
good works, and yet determine not what is the work working, and what a resting
in the work done. They incite us to charity, and yet make no difference between
charity infused and charity wrought in us by our own endeavors. Nor do they
declare whether it be an accident or a substance, a thing created or uncreated.
They detest and abominate sin, but let me not live if they could define
according to art what that is which we call sin, unless perhaps they were
inspired by the spirit of the Scotists. Nor can I be brought to believe that
Paul, by whose learning you may judge the rest, would have so often condemned
questions, disputes, genealogies, and, as himself calls them, "strifes of
words," if he had thoroughly understood those subtleties, especially when all
the debates and controversies of those times were rude and blockish in
comparison of the more than Chrysippean subtleties of our masters. Although yet
the gentlemen are so modest that if they meet with anything written by the
apostles not so smooth and even as might be expected from a master, they do not
presently condemn it but handsomely bend it to their own purpose, so great
respect and honor do they give, partly to antiquity and partly to the name of
apostle. And truly 'twas a kind of injustice to require so great things of them
that never heard the least word from their masters concerning it. And so if the
like happen in Chrysostom, Basil, Jerome, they think it enough to say they are
not obliged by it.
The apostles also confuted the heathen philosophers and Jews, a people than
whom none more obstinate, but rather by their good lives and miracles than
syllogisms: and yet there was scarce one among them that was capable of
understanding the least "quodlibet" of the Scotists. But now, where is that
heathen or heretic that must not presently stoop to such wire-drawn subtleties,
unless he be so thickskulled that he can't apprehend them, or so impudent as to
hiss them down, or, being furnished with the same tricks, be able to make his
party good with them? As if a man should set a conjurer on work against a
conjurer, or fight with one hallowed sword against another, which would prove
no other than a work to no purpose. For my own part I conceive the Christians
would do much better if instead of those dull troops and companies of soldiers
with which they have managed their war with such doubtful success, they would
send the bawling Scotists, the most obstinate Occamists, and invincible
Albertists to war against the Turks and Saracens; and they would see, I guess,
a most pleasant combat and such a victory as was never before. For who is so
faint whom their devices will not enliven? who so stupid whom such spurs can't
quicken? or who so quicksighted before whose eyes they can't cast a mist?
But you'll say, I jest. Nor are you without cause, since even among divines
themselves there are some that have learned better and are ready to turn their
stomachs at those foolish subtleties of the others. There are some that detest
them as a kind of sacrilege and count it the height of impiety to speak so
irreverently of such hidden things, rather to be adored than explicated; to
dispute of them with such profane and heathenish niceties; to define them so
arrogantly and pollute the majesty of divinity with such pithless and sordid
terms and opinions. Meantime the others please, nay hug themselves in their
happiness, and are so taken up with these pleasant trifles that they have not
so much leisure as to cast the least eye on the Gospel or St. Paul's epistles.
And while they play the fool at this rate in their schools, they make account
the universal church would otherwise perish, unless, as the poets fancied of
Atlas that he supported heaven with his shoulders, they underpropped the other
with their syllogistical buttresses. And how great a happiness is this, think
you? while, as if Holy Writ were a nose of wax, they fashion and refashion it
according to their pleasure; while they require that their own conclusions,
subscribed by two or three Schoolmen, be accounted greater than Solon's laws
and preferred before the papal decretals; while, as censors of the world, they
force everyone to a recantation that differs but a hair's breadth from the
least of their explicit or implicit determinations. And those too they
pronounce like oracles. This proposition is scandalous; this irreverent; this
has a smack of heresy; this no very good sound: so that neither baptism, nor
the Gospel, nor Paul, nor Peter, nor St. Jerome, nor St. Augustine, no nor most
Aristotelian Thomas himself can make a man a Christian, without these bachelors
too be pleased to give him his grace. And the like in their subtlety in
judging; for who would think he were no Christian that should say these two
speeches "matula putes" and "matula putet," or "ollae fervere" and "ollam
fervere" were not both good Latin, unless their wisdoms had taught us the
contrary? who had delivered the church from such mists of error, which yet no
one ever met with, had they not come out with some university seal for it? And
are they not most happy while they do these things?
Then for what concerns hell, how exactly they describe everything, as if they
had been conversant in that commonwealth most part of their time! Again, how do
they frame in their fancy new orbs, adding to those we have already an eighth!
a goodly one, no doubt, and spacious enough, lest perhaps their happy souls
might lack room to walk in, entertain their friends, and now and then play at
football. And with these and a thousand the like fopperies their heads are so
full stuffed and stretched that I believe Jupiter's brain was not near so big
when, being in labor with Pallas, he was beholding to the midwifery of Vulcan's
ax. And therefore you must not wonder if in their public disputes they are so
bound about the head, lest otherwise perhaps their brains might leap out. Nay,
I have sometimes laughed myself to see them so tower in their own opinion when
they speak most barbarously; and when they humh and hawh so pitifully that none
but one of their own tribe can understand them, they call it heights which the
vulgar can't reach; for they say 'tis beneath the dignity of divine mysteries
to be cramped and tied up to the narrow rules of grammarians: from whence we
may conjecture the great prerogative of divines, if they only have the
privilege of speaking corruptly, in which yet every cobbler thinks himself
concerned for his share. Lastly, they look upon themselves as somewhat more
than men as often as they are devoutly saluted by the name of "Our Masters," in
which they fancy there lies as much as in the Jews' "Jehovah;" and therefore
they reckon it a crime if "Magister Noster" be written other than in capital
letters; and if anyone should preposterously say "Noster Magister," he has at
once overturned the whole body of divinity.
And next these come those that commonly call themselves the religious and
monks, most false in both titles, when both a great part of them are farthest
from religion, and no men swarm thicker in all places than themselves. Nor can
I think of anything that could be more miserable did not I support them so many
several ways. For whereas all men detest them to that height, that they take it
for ill luck to meet one of them by chance, yet such is their happiness that
they flatter themselves. For first, they reckon it one of the main points of
piety if they are so illiterate that they can't so much as read. And then when
they run over their offices, which they carry about them, rather by tale than
understanding, they believe the gods more than ordinarily pleased with their
braying. And some there are among them that put off their trumperies at vast
rates, yet rove up and down for the bread they eat; nay, there is scarce an
inn, wagon, or ship into which they intrude not, to the no small damage of the
commonwealth of beggars. And yet, like pleasant fellows, with all this
vileness, ignorance, rudeness, and impudence, they represent to us, for so they
call it, the lives of the apostles. Yet what is more pleasant than that they do
all things by rule and, as it were, a kind of mathematics, the least swerving
from which were a crime beyond forgiveness--as how many knots their shoes must
be tied with, of what color everything is, what distinction of habits, of what
stuff made, how many straws broad their girdles and of what fashion, how many
bushels wide their cowl, how many fingers long their hair, and how many hours
sleep; which exact equality, how disproportionate it is, among such variety of
bodies and tempers, who is there that does not perceive it? And yet by reason
of these fooleries they not only set slight by others, but each different
order, men otherwise professing apostolical charity, despise one another, and
for the different wearing of a habit, or that 'tis of darker color, they put
all things in combustion. And among these there are some so rigidly religious
that their upper garment is haircloth, their inner of the finest linen; and, on
the contrary, others wear linen without and hair next their skins. Others,
again, are as afraid to touch money as poison, and yet neither forbear wine nor
dallying with women. In a word, 'tis their only care that none of them come
near one another in their manner of living, nor do they endeavor how they may
be like Christ, but how they may differ among themselves.
And another great happiness they conceive in their names, while they call
themselves Cordiliers, and among these too, some are Colletes, some Minors,
some Minims, some Crossed; and again, these are Benedictines, those
Bernardines; these Carmelites. those Augustines: these Williamites. and those
Jacobines; as if it were not worth the while to be called Christians. And of
these, a great part build so much on their ceremonies and petty traditions of
men that they think one heaven is too poor a reward for so great merit, little
dreaming that the time will come when Christ, not regarding any of these
trifles, will call them to account for His precept of charity. One shall show
you a large trough full of all kinds of fish; another tumble you out so many
bushels of prayers; another reckon you so many myriads of fasts, and fetch them
up again in one dinner by eating till he cracks again; another produces more
bundles of ceremonies than seven of the stoutest ships would be able to carry;
another brags he has not touched a penny these three score years without two
pair of gloves at least upon his hands; another wears a cowl so lined with
grease that the poorest tarpaulin would not stoop to take it up; another will
tell you he has lived these fifty-five years like a sponge, continually
fastened to the same place; another is grown hoarse with his daily chanting;
another has contracted a lethargy by his solitary living; and another the palsy
in his tongue for want of speaking. But Christ, interrupting them in their
vanities, which otherwise were endless, will ask them, "Whence this new kind of
Jews? I acknowledge one commandment, which is truly mine, of which alone I hear
nothing. I promised, 'tis true, my Father's heritage, and that without
parables, not to cowls, odd prayers, and fastings, but to the duties of faith
and charity. Nor can I acknowledge them that least acknowledge their faults.
They that would seem holier than myself, let them if they like possess to
themselves those three hundred sixty-five heavens of Basilides the heretic's
invention, or command them whose foolish traditions they have preferred before
my precepts to erect them a new one." When they shall hear these things and see
common ordinary persons preferred before them, with what countenance, think
you, will they behold one another? In the meantime they are happy in their
hopes, and for this also they are beholding to me.
And yet these kind of people, though they are as it were of another
commonwealth, no man dares despise, especially those begging friars, because
they are privy to all men's secrets by means of confessions, as they call them.
Which yet were no less than treason to discover, unless, being got drunk, they
have a mind to be pleasant, and then all comes out, that is to say by hints and
conjectures but suppressing the names. But if anyone should anger these wasps,
they'll sufficiently revenge themselves in their public sermons and so point
out their enemy by circumlocutions that there's no one but understands whom
'tis they mean, unless he understand nothing at all; nor will they give over
their barking till you throw the dogs a bone. And now tell me, what juggler or
mountebank you had rather behold than hear them rhetorically play the fool in
their preachments, and yet most sweetly imitating what rhetoricians have
written touching the art of good speaking? Good God! what several postures they
have! How they shift their voice, sing out their words, skip up and down, and
are ever and anon making such new faces that they confound all things with
noise! And yet this knack of theirs is no less a mystery that runs in
succession from one brother to another; which though it be not lawful for me to
know, however I'll venture at it by conjectures. And first they invoke whatever
they have scraped from the poets; and in the next place, if they are to
discourse of charity, they take their rise from the river Nilus; or to set out
the mystery of the cross, from bell and the dragon; or to dispute of fasting,
from the twelve signs of the zodiac; or, being to preach of faith, ground their
matter on the square of a circle.
I have heard myself one, and he no small fool--I was mistaken, I would have
said scholar--that being in a famous assembly explaining the mystery of the
Trinity, that he might both let them see his learning was not ordinary and
withal satisfy some theological ears, he took a new way, to wit from the
letters, syllables, and the word itself; then from the coherence of the
nominative case and the verb, and the adjective and substantive: and while most
of the audience wondered, and some of them muttered that of Horace, "What does
all this trumpery drive at?" at last he brought the matter to this head, that
he would demonstrate that the mystery of the Trinity was so clearly expressed
in the very rudiments of grammar that the best mathematician could not chalk it
out more plainly. And in this discourse did this most superlative theologian
beat his brains for eight whole months that at this hour he's as blind as a
beetle, to wit, all the sight of his eyes being run into the sharpness of his
wit. But for all that he thinks nothing of his blindness, rather taking the
same for too cheap a price of such a glory as he won thereby.
And besides him I met with another, some eighty years of age, and such a divine
that you'd have sworn Scotus himself was revived in him. He, being upon the
point of unfolding the mystery of the name Jesus, did with wonderful subtlety
demonstrate that there lay hidden in those letters whatever could be said of
him; for that it was only declined with three cases, he said, it was a manifest
token of the Divine Trinity; and then, that the first ended in S, the second in
M, the third in U, there was in it an ineffable mystery, to wit, those three
letters declaring to us that he was the beginning, middle, and end (summum,
medium, et ultimum) of all. Nay, the mystery was yet more abstruse; for he so
mathematically split the word Jesus into two equal parts that he left the
middle letter by itself, and then told us that that letter in Hebrew was schin
or sin, and that sin in the Scotch tongue, as he remembered, signified as much
as sin; from whence he gathered that it was Jesus that took away the sins of
the world. At which new exposition the audience were so wonderfully intent and
struck with admiration, especially the theologians, that there wanted little
but that Niobe-like they had been turned to stones; whereas the like had almost
happened to me, as befell the Priapus in Horace. And not without cause, for
when were the Grecian Demosthenes or Roman Cicero ever guilty of the like? They
thought that introduction faulty that was wide of the matter, as if it were not
the way of carters and swineherds that have no more wit than God sent them. But
these learned men think their preamble, for so they call it, then chiefly
rhetorical when it has least coherence with the rest of the argument, that the
admiring audience may in the meanwhile whisper to themselves, "What will he be
at now?" In the third place, they bring in instead of narration some texts of
Scripture, but handle them cursorily, and as it were by the bye, when yet it is
the only thing they should have insisted on. And fourthly, as it were changing
a part in the play, they bolt out with some question in divinity, and many
times relating neither to earth nor heaven, and this they look upon as a piece
of art. Here they erect their theological crests and beat into the people's
ears those magnificent titles of illustrious doctors, subtle doctors, most
subtle doctors, seraphic doctors, cherubic doctors, holy doctors,
unquestionable doctors, and the like; and then throw abroad among the ignorant
people syllogisms, majors, minors, conclusions, corollaries, suppositions, and
those so weak and foolish that they are below pedantry. There remains yet the
fifth act in which one would think they should show their mastery. And here
they bring in some foolish insipid fable out of Speculum Historiae or Gesta
Romanorum and expound it allegorically, tropologically, and anagogically. And
after this manner do they and their chimera, and such as Horace despaired of
compassing when he wrote "Humano capiti," etc.
But they have heard from somebody, I know not whom, that the beginning of a
speech should be sober and grave and least given to noise. And therefore they
begin theirs at that rate they can scarce hear themselves, as if it were not
matter whether anyone understood them. They have learned somewhere that to move
the affections a louder voice is requisite. Whereupon they that otherwise would
speak like a mouse in a cheese start out of a sudden into a downright fury,
even there too, where there's the least need of it. A man would swear they were
past the power of hellebore, so little do they consider where 'tis they run
out. Again, because they have heard that as a speech comes up to something, a
man should press it more earnestly, they, however they begin, use a strange
contention of voice in every part, though the matter itself be never so flat,
and end in that manner as if they'd run themselves out of breath. Lastly, they
have learned that among rhetoricians there is some mention of laughter, and
therefore they study to prick in a jest here and there; but, O Venus! so void
of wit and so little to the purpose that it may be truly called an ass's
playing on the harp. And sometimes also they use somewhat of a sting, but so
nevertheless that they rather tickle than wound; nor do they ever more truly
flatter than when they would seem to use the greatest freedom of speech.
Lastly, such is their whole action that a man would swear they had learned it
from our common tumblers, though yet they come short of them in every respect.
However, they are both so like that no man will dispute but that either these
learned their rhetoric from them, or they theirs from these. And yet they light
on some that, when they hear them, conceive they hear very Demosthenes and
Ciceroes: of which sort chiefly are our merchants and women, whose ears only
they endeavor to please, because as to the first, if they stroke them
handsomely, some part or other of their ill-gotten goods is wont to fall to
their share. And the women, though for many other things they favor this order,
this is not the least, that they commit to their breasts whatever discontents
they have against their husbands. And now, I conceive me, you see how much this
kind of people are beholding to me, that with their petty ceremonies,
ridiculous trifles, and noise exercise a kind of tyranny among mankind,
believing themselves very Pauls and Anthonies.
But I willingly give over these stage-players that are such ingrateful
dissemblers of the courtesies I have done them and such impudent pretenders to
religion which they haven't. And now I have a mind to give some small touches
of princes and courts, of whom I am had in reverence, aboveboard and, as it
becomes gentlemen, frankly. And truly, if they had the least proportion of
sound judgment, what life were more unpleasant than theirs, or so much to be
avoided? For whoever did but truly weigh with himself how great a burden lies
upon his shoulders that would truly discharge the duty of a prince, he would
not think it worth his while to make his way to a crown by perjury and
parricide. He would consider that he that takes a scepter in his hand should
manage the public, not his private, interest; study nothing but the common
good; and not in the least go contrary to those laws whereof himself is both
the author and exactor: that he is to take an account of the good or evil
administration of all his magistrates and subordinate officers; that, though he
is but one, all men's eyes are upon him, and in his power it is, either like a
good planet to give life and safety to mankind by his harmless influence, or
like a fatal comet to send mischief and destruction; that the vices of other
men are not alike felt, nor so generally communicated; and that a prince stands
in that place that his least deviation from the rule of honesty and honor
reaches farther than himself and opens a gap to many men's ruin. Besides, that
the fortune of princes has many things attending it that are but too apt to
train them out of the way, as pleasure, liberty, flattery, excess; for which
cause he should the more diligently endeavor and set a watch over himself, lest
perhaps he be led aside and fail in his duty. Lastly, to say nothing of
treasons, ill will, and such other mischiefs he's in jeopardy of, that that
True King is over his head, who in a short time will call him to account for
every the least trespass, and that so much the more severely by how much more
mighty was the empire committed to his charge. These and the like if a prince
should duly weigh, and weigh it he would if he were wise, he would neither be
able to sleep nor take any hearty repast.
But now by my courtesy they leave all this care to the gods and are only taken
up with themselves, not admitting anyone to their ear but such as know how to
speak pleasant things and not trouble them with business. They believe they
have discharged all the duty of a prince if they hunt every day, keep a stable
of fine horses, sell dignities and commanderies, and invent new ways of
draining the citizens' purses and bringing it into their own exchequer; but
under such dainty new-found names that though the thing be most unjust in
itself, it carries yet some face of equity; adding to this some little
sweetening that whatever happens, they may be secure of the common people. And
now suppose someone, such as they sometimes are, a man ignorant of laws, little
less than an enemy to the public good, and minding nothing but his own, given
up to pleasure, a hater of learning, liberty, and justice, studying nothing
less than the public safety, but measuring everything by his own will and
profit; and then put on him a golden chain that declares the accord of all
virtues linked one to another; a crown set with diamonds, that should put him
in mind how he ought to excel all others in heroic virtues; besides a scepter,
the emblem of justice and an untainted heart; and lastly, a purple robe, a
badge of that charity he owes the commonwealth. All which if a prince should
compare them with his own life, he would, I believe, be clearly ashamed of his
bravery, and be afraid lest some or other gibing expounder turn all this
tragical furniture into a ridiculous laughingstock.
And as to the court lords, what should I mention them? than most of whom though
there be nothing more indebted, more servile, more witless, more contemptible,
yet they would seem as they were the most excellent of all others. And yet in
this only thing no men more modest, in that they are contented to wear about
them gold, jewels, purple, and those other marks of virtue and wisdom; but for
the study of the things themselves, they remit it to others, thinking it
happiness enough for them that they can call the king master, have learned the
cringe a la mode, know when and where to use those titles of Your Grace, My
Lord, Your Magnificence; in a word that they are past all shame and can flatter
pleasantly. For these are the arts that speak a man truly noble and an exact
courtier. But if you look into their manner of life you'll find them mere sots,
as debauched as Penelope's wooers; you know the other part of the verse, which
the echo will better tell you than I can. They sleep till noon and have their
mercenary Levite come to their bedside, where he chops over his matins before
they are half up. Then to breakfast, which is scarce done but dinner stays for
them. From thence they go to dice, tables, cards, or entertain themselves with
jesters, fools, gambols, and horse tricks. In the meantime they have one or two
beverages, and then supper, and after that a banquet, and 'twere well, by
Jupiter, there were no more than one. And in this manner do their hours, days,
months, years, age slide away without the least irksomeness. Nay, I have
sometimes gone away many inches fatter, to see them speak big words; while each
of the ladies believes herself so much nearer to the gods by how much the
longer train she trails after her; while one nobleman edges out another, that
he may get the nearer to Jupiter himself; and everyone of them pleases himself
the more by how much more massive is the chain he swags on his shoulders, as if
he meant to show his strength as well as his wealth.
Nor are princes by themselves in their manner of life, since popes, cardinals,
and bishops have so diligently followed their steps that they've almost got the
start of them. For if any of them would consider what their alb should put them
in mind of, to wit a blameless life; what is meant by their forked miters,
whose each point is held in by the same knot, we'll suppose it a perfect
knowledge of the Old and New Testaments; what those gloves on their hands, but
a sincere administration of the Sacraments, and free from all touch of worldly
business; what their crosier, but a careful looking after the flock committed
to their charge; what the cross born before them, but victory over all earthly
affections--these, I say, and many of the like kind should anyone truly
consider, would he not live a sad and troublesome life? Whereas now they do
well enough while they feed themselves only, and for the care of their flock
either put it over to Christ or lay it all on their suffragans, as they call
them, or some poor vicars. Nor do they so much as remember their name, or what
the word bishop signifies, to wit, labor, care, and trouble. But in racking to
gather money they truly act the part of bishops, and herein acquit themselves
to be no blind seers.
In like manner cardinals, if they thought themselves the successors of the
apostles, they would likewise imagine that the same things the other did are
required of them, and that they are not lords but dispensers of spiritual
things of which they must shortly give an exact account. But if they also would
a little philosophize on their habit and think with themselves what's the
meaning of their linen rochet, is it not a remarkable and singular integrity of
life? What that inner purple; is it not an earnest and fervent love of God? Or
what that outward, whose loose plaits and long train fall round his Reverence's
mule and are large enough to cover a camel; is it not charity that spreads
itself so wide to the succor of all men? that is, to instruct, exhort, comfort,
reprehend, admonish, compose wars, resist wicked princes, and willingly expend
not only their wealth but their very lives for the flock of Christ: though yet
what need at all of wealth to them that supply the room of the poor apostles?
these things, I say, did they but duly consider, they would not be so ambitious
of that dignity; or, if they were, they would willingly leave it and live a
laborious, careful life, such as was that of the ancient apostles.
And for popes, that supply the place of Christ, if they should endeavor to
imitate His life, to wit His poverty, labor, doctrine, cross, and contempt of
life, or should they consider what the name pope, that is father, or holiness,
imports, who would live more disconsolate than themselves? or who would
purchase that chair with all his substance? or defend it, so purchased, with
swords, poisons, and all force imaginable? so great a profit would the access
of wisdom deprive him of--wisdom did I say? nay, the least corn of that salt
which Christ speaks of: so much wealth, so much honor, so much riches, so many
victories, so many offices, so many dispensations, so much tribute, so many
pardons; such horses, such mules, such guards, and so much pleasure would it
lose them. You see how much I have comprehended in a little: instead of which
it would bring in watchings, fastings, tears, prayers, sermons, good endeavors,
sighs, and a thousand the like troublesome exercises. Nor is this least
considerable: so many scribes, so many copying clerks, so many notaries, so
many advocates, so many promoters, so many secretaries, so many muleteers, so
many grooms, so many bankers: in short, that vast multitude of men that
overcharge the Roman See--I mistook, I meant honor--might beg their bread.
A most inhuman and economical thing, and more to be execrated, that those great
princes of the Church and true lights of the world should be reduced to a staff
and a wallet. Whereas now, if there be anything that requires their pains, they
leave that to Peter and Paul that have leisure enough; but if there be anything
of honor or pleasure, they take that to themselves. By which means it is, yet
by my courtesy, that scarce any kind of men live more voluptuously or with less
trouble; as believing that Christ will be well enough pleased if in their
mystical and almost mimical pontificality, ceremonies, titles of holiness and
the like, and blessing and cursing, they play the parts of bishops. To work
miracles is old and antiquated, and not in fashion now; to instruct the people,
troublesome; to interpret the Scripture, pedantic; to pray, a sign one has
little else to do; to shed tears, silly and womanish; to be poor, base; to be
vanquished, dishonorable and little becoming him that scarce admits even kings
to kiss his slipper; and lastly, to die, uncouth; and to be stretched on a
cross, infamous.
Theirs are only those weapons and sweet blessings which Paul mentions, and of
these truly they are bountiful enough: as interdictions, hangings, heavy
burdens, reproofs, anathemas, executions in effigy, and that terrible
thunderbolt of excommunication, with the very sight of which they sink men's
souls beneath the bottom of hell: which yet these most holy fathers in Christ
and His vicars hurl with more fierceness against none than against such as, by
the instigation of the devil, attempt to lessen or rob them of Peter's
patrimony. When, though those words in the Gospel, "We have left all, and
followed Thee," were his, yet they call his patrimony lands, cities, tribute,
imposts, riches; for which, being enflamed with the love of Christ, they
contend with fire and sword, and not without loss of much Christian blood, and
believe they have then most apostolically defended the Church, the spouse of
Christ, when the enemy, as they call them, are valiantly routed. As if the
Church had any deadlier enemies than wicked prelates, who not only suffer
Christ to run out of request for want of preaching him, but hinder his
spreading by their multitudes of laws merely contrived for their own profit,
corrupt him by their forced expositions, and murder him by the evil example of
their pestilent life.
Nay, further, whereas the Church of Christ was founded in blood, confirmed by
blood, and augmented by blood, now, as if Christ, who after his wonted manner
defends his people, were lost, they govern all by the sword. And whereas war is
so savage a thing that it rather befits beasts than men, so outrageous that the
very poets feigned it came from the Furies, so pestilent that it corrupts all
men's manners, so unjust that it is best executed by the worst of men, so
wicked that it has no agreement with Christ; and yet, omitting all the other,
they make this their only business. Here you'll see decrepit old fellows acting
the parts of young men, neither troubled at their costs, nor wearied with their
labors, nor discouraged at anything, so they may have the liberty of turning
laws, religion, peace, and all things else quite topsy-turvy. Nor are they
destitute of their learned flatterers that call that palpable madness zeal,
piety, and valor, having found out a new way by which a man may kill his
brother without the least breach of that charity which, by the command of
Christ, one Christian owes another. And here, in troth, I'm a little at a stand
whether the ecclesiastical German electors gave them this example, or rather
took it from them; who, laying aside their habit, benedictions, and all the
like ceremonies, so act the part of commanders that they think it a mean thing,
and least beseeming a bishop, to show the least courage to Godward unless it be
in a battle.
And as to the common herd of priests, they account it a crime to degenerate
from the sanctity of their prelates. Heidah! How soldier-like they bustle about
the jus divinum of titles, and how quicksighted they are to pick the least
thing out of the writings of the ancients wherewith they may fright the common
people and convince them, if possible, that more than a tenth is due! Yet in
the meantime it least comes in their heads how many things are everywhere
extant concerning that duty which they owe the people. Nor does their shorn
crown in the least admonish them that a priest should be free from all worldly
desires and think of nothing but heavenly things. Whereas on the contrary,
these jolly fellows say they have sufficiently discharged their offices if they
but anyhow mumble over a few odd prayers, which, so help me, Hercules! I wonder
if any god either hear or understand, since they do neither themselves,
especially when they thunder them out in that manner they are wont. But this
they have in common with those of the heathens, that they are vigilant enough
to the harvest of their profit, nor is there any of them that is not better
read in those laws than the Scripture. Whereas if there be anything burdensome,
they prudently lay that on other men's shoulders and shift it from one to the
other, as men toss a ball from hand to hand, following herein the example of
lay princes who commit the government of their kingdoms to their grand
ministers, and they again to others, and leave all study of piety to the common
people. In like manner the common people put it over to those they call
ecclesiastics, as if themselves were no part of the Church, or that their vow
in baptism had lost its obligation. Again, the priests that call themselves
secular, as if they were initiated to the world, not to Christ, lay the burden
on the regulars; the regulars on the monks; the monks that have more liberty on
those that have less; and all of them on the mendicants; the mendicants on the
Carthusians, among whom, if anywhere, this piety lies buried, but yet so close
that scarce anyone can perceive it. In like manner the popes, the most diligent
of all others in gathering in the harvest of money, refer all their apostolical
work to the bishops, the bishops to the parsons, the parsons to the vicars, the
vicars to their brother mendicants, and they again throw back the care of the
flock on those that take the wool.
But it is not my business to sift too narrowly the lives of prelates and
priests for fear I seem to have intended rather a satire than an oration, and
be thought to tax good princes while I praise the bad. And therefore, what I
slightly taught before has been to no other end but that it might appear that
there's no man can live pleasantly unless he be initiated to my rites and have
me propitious to him. For how can it be otherwise when Fortune, the great
directress of all human affairs, and myself are so all one that she was always
an enemy to those wise men, and on the contrary so favorable to fools and
careless fellows that all things hit luckily to them?
You have heard of that Timotheus, the most fortunate general of the Athenians,
of whom came that proverb, "His net caught fish, though he were asleep;" and
that "The owl flies;" whereas these others hit properly, wise men "born in the
fourth month;" and again, "He rides Sejanus's his horse;" and "gold of
Toulouse," signifying thereby the extremity of ill fortune. But I forbear the
further threading of proverbs, lest I seem to have pilfered my friend Erasmus'
adages. Fortune loves those that have least wit and most confidence and such as
like that saying of Caesar, "The die is thrown." But wisdom makes men bashful,
which is the reason that those wise men have so little to do, unless it be with
poverty, hunger, and chimney corners; that they live such neglected, unknown,
and hated lives: whereas fools abound in money, have the chief commands in the
commonwealth, and in a word, flourish every way. For if it be happiness to
please princes and to be conversant among those golden and diamond gods, what
is more unprofitable than wisdom, or what is it these kind of men have, may
more justly be censured? If wealth is to be got, how little good at it is that
merchant like to do, if following the precepts of wisdom, he should boggle at
perjury; or being taken in a lie, blush; or in the least regard the sad
scruples of those wise men touching rapine and usury. Again, if a man sue for
honors or church preferments, an ass or wild ox shall sooner get them than a
wise man. If a man's in love with a young wench, none of the least humors in
this comedy, they are wholly addicted to fools and are afraid of a wise man and
flee him as they would a scorpion. Lastly, whoever intend to live merry and
frolic, shut their doors against wise men and admit anything sooner. In brief,
go whither you will, among prelates, princes, judges, magistrates, friends,
enemies, from highest to lowest, and you'll find all things done by money;
which, as a wise man condemns it, so it takes a special care not to come near
him. What shall I say? There is no measure or end of my praises, and yet 'tis
fit my oration have an end. And therefore I'll even break off; and yet, before
I do it, 'twill not be amiss if I briefly show you that there has not been
wanting even great authors that have made me famous, both by their writings and
actions, lest perhaps otherwise I may seem to have foolishly pleased myself
only, or that the lawyers charge me that I have proved nothing. After their
example, therefore, will I allege my proofs, that is to say, nothing to the
point.
And first, every man allows this proverb, "That where a man wants matter, he
may best frame some." And to this purpose is that verse which we teach
children, " 'Tis the greatest wisdom to know when and where to counterfeit the
fool." And now judge yourselves what an excellent thing this folly is, whose
very counterfeit and semblance only has got such praise from the learned. But
more candidly does that fat plump "Epicurean bacon-hog," Horace, for so he
calls himself, bid us "mingle our purposes with folly;" and whereas he adds the
word bravem, short, perhaps to help out the verse, he might as well have let it
alone; and again, " 'Tis a pleasant thing to play the fool in the right
season;" and in another place, he had rather "be accounted a dotterel and sot
than to be wise and made mouths at." And Telemachus in Homer, whom the poet
praises so much, is now and then called nepios, fool: and by the same name, as
if there were some good fortune in it, are the tragedians wont to call boys and
striplings. And what does that sacred book of Iliads contain but a kind of
counter-scuffle between foolish kings and foolish people? Besides, how absolute
is that praise that Cicero gives of it! "All things are full of fools." For who
does not know that every good, the more diffusive it is, by so much the better
it is?
But perhaps their authority may be of small credit among Christians. We'll
therefore, if you please, support our praises with some testimonies of Holy
Writ also, in the first place, nevertheless, having forespoke our theologians
that they'll give us leave to do it without offense. And in the next, forasmuch
as we attempt a matter of some difficulty and it may be perhaps a little too
saucy to call back again the Muses from Helicon to so great a journey,
especially in a matter they are wholly strangers to, it will be more suitable,
perhaps, while I play the divine and make my way through such prickly
quiddities, that I entreat the soul of Scotus, a thing more bristly than either
porcupine or hedgehog, to leave his scorebone awhile and come into my breast,
and then let him go whither he pleases, or to the dogs. I could wish also that
I might change my countenance, or that I had on the square cap and the cassock,
for fear some or other should impeach me of theft as if I had privily rifled
our masters' desks in that I have got so much divinity. But it ought not to
seem so strange if after so long and intimate an acquaintance and converse with
them I have picked up somewhat; when as that fig-tree-god Priapus hearing his
owner read certain Greek words took so much notice of them that he got them by
heart, and that cock in Lucian by having lived long among men became at last a
master of their language.
But to the point under a fortunate direction. Ecclesiastes says in his first
chapter, "The number of fools is infinite;" and when he calls it infinite, does
he not seem to comprehend all men, unless it be some few whom yet 'tis a
question whether any man ever saw? But more ingeniously does Jeremiah in his
tenth chapter confess it, saying, "Every man is made a fool through his own
wisdom;" attributing wisdom to God alone and leaving folly to all men else, and
again, "Let not man glory in his wisdom." And why, good Jeremiah, would you not
have a man glory in his wisdom? Because, he'll say, he has none at all. But to
return to Ecclesiastes, who, when he cries out, "Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity!" what other thoughts had he, do you believe, than that, as I said
before, the life of man is nothing else but an interlude of folly? In which he
has added one voice more to that justly received praise of Cicero's which I
quoted before, viz., "All things are full of fools." Again, that wise preacher
that said, "A fool changes as the moon, but a wise man is permanent as the
sun," what else did he hint at in it but that all mankind are fools and the
name of wise only proper to God? For by the moon interpreters understand human
nature, and by the sun, God, the only fountain of light; with which agrees that
which Christ himself in the Gospel denies, that anyone is to be called good but
one, and that is God. And then if he is a fool that is not wise, and every good
man according to the Stoics is a wise man, it is no wonder if all mankind be
concluded under folly. Again Solomon, Chapter 15, "Foolishness," says he, "is
joy to the fool," thereby plainly confessing that without folly there is no
pleasure in life. To which is pertinent that other, "He that increases
knowledge, increases grief; and in much understanding there is much
indignation." And does he not plainly confess as much, Chapter 7, "The heart of
the wise is where sadness is, but the heart of fools follows mirth"? by which
you see, he thought it not enough to have learned wisdom without he had added
the knowledge of me also. And if you will not believe me, take his own words,
Chapter 1, ''I gave my heart to know wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly."
Where, by the way, 'tis worth your remark that he intended me somewhat
extraordinary that he named me last. A preacher wrote it, and this you know is
the order among churchmen, that he that is first in dignity comes last in
place, as mindful, no doubt, whatever they do in other things, herein at least
to observe the evangelical precept.
Besides, that folly is more excellent than wisdom the son of Sirach, whoever he
was, clearly witnesses, Chapter 44, whose words, so help me, Hercules! I shall
not once utter before you meet my induction with a suitable answer, according
to the manner of those in Plato that dispute with Socrates. What things are
more proper to be laid up with care, such as are rare and precious, or such as
are common and of no account? Why do you give me no answer? Well, though you
should dissemble, the Greek proverb will answer for you, "Foul water is thrown
out of doors;" which, if any man shall be so ungracious as to condemn, let him
know 'tis Aristotle's, the god of our masters. Is there any of you so very a
fool as to leave jewels and gold in the street? In truth, I think not; in the
most secret part of your house; nor is that enough; if there be any drawer in
your iron chests more private than other, there you lay them; but dirt you
throw out of doors. And therefore, if you so carefully lay up such things as
you value and throw away what's vile and of no worth, is it not plain that
wisdom, which he forbids a man to hide, is of less account than folly, which he
commands him to cover? Take his own words, "Better is the man that hideth his
folly than he that hideth his wisdom." Or what is that, when he attributes an
upright mind without craft or malice to a fool, when a wise man the while
thinks no man like himself? For so I understand that in his tenth chapter, "A
fool walking by the way, being a fool himself, supposes all men to be fools
like him." And is it not a sign of great integrity to esteem every man as good
as himself, and when there is no one that leans not too much to other way, to
be so frank yet as to divide his praises with another? Nor was this great king
ashamed of the name when he says of himself that he is more foolish than any
man. Nor did Paul, that great doctor of the Gentiles, writing to the
Corinthians, unwillingly acknowledge it; "I speak," says he, "like a fool. I am
more." As if it could be any dishonor to excel in folly.
But here I meet with a great noise of some that endeavor to peck out the crows'
eyes; that is, to blind the doctors of our times and smoke out their eyes with
new annotations; among whom my friend Erasmus, whom for honor's sake I often
mention, deserves if not the first place yet certainly the second. O most
foolish instance, they cry, and well becoming Folly herself! The apostle's
meaning was wide enough from what you dream; for he spoke it not in this sense,
that he would have them believe him a greater fool than the rest, but when he
had said, "They are ministers of Christ, the same am I," and by way of boasting
herein had equaled himself with to others, he added this by way of correction
or checking himself, "I am more," as meaning that he was not only equal to the
rest of the apostles in the work of the Gospel, but somewhat superior. And
therefore, while he would have this received as a truth, lest nevertheless it
might not relish their ears as being spoken with too much arrogance, he
foreshortened his argument with the vizard of folly, "I speak like a fool,"
because he knew it was the prerogative of fools to speak what they like, and
that too without offense. Whatever he thought when he wrote this, I leave it to
them to discuss; for my own part, I follow those fat, fleshy, and vulgarly
approved doctors, with whom, by Jupiter! a great part of the learned had rather
err than follow them that understand the tongues, though they are never so much
in the right. Not any of them make greater account of those smatterers at Greek
than if they were daws. Especially when a no small professor, whose name I
wittingly conceal lest those choughs should chatter at me that Greek proverb I
have so often mentioned, "an ass at a harp," discoursing magisterially and
theologically on this text, "I speak as a fool, I am more," drew a new thesis;
and, which without the height of logic he could never have done, made this new
subdivision--for I'll give you his own words, not only in form but matter
also--"I speak like a fool," that is, if you look upon me as a fool for
comparing myself with those false apostles, I shall seem yet a greater fool by
esteeming myself before them; though the same person a little after, as
forgetting himself, runs off to another matter.
But why do I thus staggeringly defend myself with one single instance? As if it
were not the common privilege of divines to stretch heaven, that is Holy Writ,
like a cheverel; and when there are many things in St. Paul that thwart
themselves, which yet in their proper place do well enough if there be any
credit to be given to St. Jerome that was master of five tongues. Such was that
of his at Athens when having casually espied the inscription of that altar, he
wrested it into an argument to prove the Christian faith, and leaving out all
the other words because they made against him, took notice only of the two
last, viz., "To the unknown God;" and those too not without some alteration,
for the whole inscription was thus: "To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa;
To the unknown and strange Gods." And according to his example do the sons of
the prophets, who, forcing out here and there four or five expressions and if
need be corrupting the sense, wrest it to their own purpose; though what goes
before and follows after make nothing to the matter in hand, nay, be quite
against it. Which yet they do with so happy an impudence that oftentimes the
civilians envy them that faculty.
For what is it in a manner they may not hope for success in, when this great
doctor (I had almost bolted out his name, but that I once again stand in fear
of the Greek proverb) has made a construction on an expression of Luke, so
agreeable to the mind of Christ as are fire and water to one another. For when
the last point of danger was at hand, at which time retainers and dependents
are wont in a more special manner to attend their protectors, to examine what
strength they have, and prepare for the encounter, Christ, intending to take
out of his disciples' minds all trust and confidence in such like defense,
demands of them whether they wanted anything when he sent them forth so
unprovided for a journey that they had neither shoes to defend their feet from
the injuries of stones and briars nor the provision of a scrip to preserve them
from hunger. And when they had denied that they wanted anything, he adds, "But
now, he that hath a bag, let him take it, and likewise a scrip; and he that
hath none, let him sell his coat and buy a sword." And now when the sum of all
that Christ taught pressed only meekness, suffering, and contempt of life, who
does not clearly perceive what he means in this place? to wit, that he might
the more disarm his ministers, that neglecting not only shoes and scrip but
throwing away their very coat, they might, being in a manner naked, the more
readily and with less hindrance take in hand the work of the Gospel, and
provide themselves of nothing but a sword, not such as thieves and murderers go
up and down with, but the sword of the spirit that pierces the most inward
parts, and so cuts off as it were at one blow all earthly affections, that they
mind nothing but their duty to God. But see, I pray, whither this famous
theologian wrests it. By the sword he interprets defense against persecution,
and by the bag sufficient provision to carry it on. As if Christ having altered
his mind, in that he sent out his disciples not so royally attended as he
should have done, repented himself of his former instructions: or as forgetting
that he had said, "Blessed are ye when ye are evil spoken of, despised, and
persecuted, etc.," and forbade them to resist evil; for that the meek in
spirit, not the proud, are blessed: or, lest remembering, I say, that he had
compared them to sparrows and lilies, thereby minding them what small care they
should take for the things of this life, was so far now from having them go
forth without a sword that he commanded them to get one, though with the sale
of their coat, and had rather they should go naked than want a brawling-iron by
their sides. And to this, as under the word "sword" he conceives to be
comprehended whatever appertains to the repelling of injuries, so under that of
"scrip" he takes in whatever is necessary to the support of life. And so does
this deep interpreter of the divine meaning bring forth the apostles to preach
the doctrine of a crucified Christ, but furnished at all points with lances,
slings, quarterstaffs, and bombards; lading them also with bag and baggage,
lest perhaps it might not be lawful for them to leave their inn unless they
were empty and fasting. Nor does he take the least notice of this, that he so
willed the sword to be bought, reprehends it a little after and commands it to
be sheathed; and that it was never heard that the apostles ever used or swords
or bucklers against the Gentiles, though 'tis likely they had done it, if
Christ had ever intended, as this doctor interprets.
There is another, too, whose name out of respect I pass by, a man of no small
repute, who from those tents which Habakkuk mentions, "The tents of the land of
Midian shall tremble," drew this exposition, that it was prophesied of the skin
of Saint Bartholomew who was flayed alive. And why, forsooth, but because those
tents were covered with skins? I was lately myself at a theological dispute,
for I am often there, where when one was demanding what authority there was in
Holy Writ that commands heretics to be convinced by fire rather than reclaimed
by argument; a crabbed old fellow, and one whose supercilious gravity spoke him
at least a doctor, answered in a great fume that Saint Paul had decreed it, who
said, "Reject him that is a heretic, after once or twice admonition." And when
he had sundry times, one after another, thundered out the same thing, and most
men wondered what ailed the man, at last he explained it thus, making two words
of one. "A heretic must be put to death." Some laughed, and yet there wanted
not others to whom this exposition seemed plainly theological; which, when
some, though those very few, opposed, they cut off the dispute, as we say, with
a hatchet, and the credit of so uncontrollable an author. "Pray conceive me,"
said he, "it is written, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' But every
heretic bewitches the people; therefore, etc." And now, as many as were present
admired the man's wit, and consequently submitted to his decision of the
question. Nor came it into any of their heads that that law concerned only
fortunetellers, enchanters, and magicians, whom the Hebrews call in their
tongue "Mecaschephim," witches or sorcerers: for otherwise, perhaps, by the
same reason it might as well have extended to fornication and drunkenness.
But I foolishly run on in these matters, though yet there are so many of them
that neither Chrysippus, nor Didymus, volumes are large enough to contain them.
I would only desire you to consider this, that if so great doctors may be
allowed this liberty, you may the more reasonably pardon even me also, a raw,
effeminate divine, if I quote not everything so exactly as I should. And so at
last I return to Paul. "Ye willingly," says he, "suffer my foolishness," and
again, "Take me as a fool," and further, "I speak it not after the Lord, but as
it were foolishly," and in another place, "We are fools for Christ's sake." You
have heard from how great an author how great praises of folly; and to what
other end, but that without doubt he looked upon it as that one thing both
necessary and profitable. "If anyone among ye," says he, "seem to be wise, let
him be a fool that he may be wise." And in Luke, Jesus called those two
disciples with whom he joined himself upon the way, "fools." Nor can I give you
any reason why it should seem so strange when Saint Paul imputes a kind of
folly even to God himself. "The foolishness of God," says he, "is wiser than
men." Though yet I must confess that Origen upon the place denies that this
foolishness may be resembled to the uncertain judgment of men; of which kind
is, that "the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness."
But why am I so careful to no purpose that I thus run on to prove my matter by
so many testimonies? when in those mystical Psalms Christ speaking to the
Father says openly, "Thou knowest my foolishness." Nor is it without ground
that fools are so acceptable to God. The reason perhaps may be this, that as
princes carry a suspicious eye upon those that are over-wise, and consequently
hate them--as Caesar did Brutus and Cassius, when he feared not in the least
drunken Antony; so Nero, Seneca; and Dionysius, Plato--and on the contrary are
delighted in those blunter and unlabored wits, in like manner Christ ever
abhors and condemns those wise men and such as put confidence in their own
wisdom. And this Paul makes clearly out when he said, "God hath chosen the
foolish things of this world," as well knowing it had been impossible to have
reformed it by wisdom. Which also he sufficiently declares himself, crying out
by the mouth of his prophet, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and cast
away the understanding of the prudent."
And again, when Christ gives Him thanks that He had concealed the mystery of
salvation from the wise, but revealed it to babes and sucklings, that is to
say, fools. For the Greek word for babes is fools, which he opposes to the word
wise men. To this appertains that throughout the Gospel you find him ever
accusing the Scribes and Pharisees and doctors of the law, but diligently
defending the ignorant multitude (for what other is that "Woe to ye Scribes and
Pharisees" than woe to you, you wise men?), but seems chiefly delighted in
little children, women, and fishers. Besides, among brute beasts he is best
pleased with those that have least in them of the foxes' subtlety. And
therefore he chose rather to ride upon an ass when, if he had pleased, he might
have bestrode the lion without danger. And the Holy Ghost came down in the
shape of a dove, not of an eagle or kite. Add to this that in Scripture there
is frequent mention of harts, hinds, and lambs; and such as are destined to
eternal life are called sheep, than which creature there is not anything more
foolish, if we may believe that proverb of Aristotle "sheepish manners," which
he tells us is taken from the foolishness of that creature and is used to be
applied to dull-headed people and lack-wits. And yet Christ professes to be the
shepherd of this flock and is himself delighted with the name of a lamb;
according to Saint John, "Behold the Lamb of God!" Of which also there is much
mention in the Revelation. And what does all this drive at, but that all
mankind are fools--nay, even the very best?
And Christ himself, that he might the better relieve this folly, being the
wisdom of the Father, yet in some manner became a fool when taking upon him the
nature of man, he was found in shape as a man; as in like manner he was made
sin that he might heal sinners. Nor did he work this cure any other way than by
the foolishness of the cross and a company of fat apostles, not much better, to
whom also he carefully recommended folly but gave them a caution against wisdom
and drew them together by the example of little children, lilies, mustard-seed,
and sparrows, things senseless and inconsiderable, living only by the dictates
of nature and without either craft or care. Besides, when he forbade them to be
troubled about what they should say before governors and straightly charged
them not to inquire after times and seasons, to wit, that they might not trust
to their own wisdom but wholly depend on him. And to the same purpose is it
that that great Architect of the World, God, gave man an injunction against his
eating of the Tree of Knowledge, as if knowledge were the bane of happiness;
according to which also, St. Paul disallows it as puffing up and destructive;
whence also St. Bernard seems in my opinion to follow when he interprets that
mountain whereon Lucifer had fixed his habitation to be the mountain of
knowledge.
Nor perhaps ought I to omit this other argument, that Folly is so gracious
above that her errors are only pardoned, those of wise men never. Whence it is
that they that ask forgiveness, though they offend never so wittingly, cloak it
yet with the excuse of folly. So Aaron, in Numbers, if I mistake not the book,
when he sues unto Moses concerning his sister's leprosy, "I beseech thee, my
Lord, not to lay this sin upon us, which we have foolishly committed." So Saul
makes his excuse of David, "For behold," says he, "I did it foolishly." And
again, David himself thus sweetens God, "And therefore I beseech thee, O Lord,
to take away the trespass of thy servant, for I have done foolishly," as if he
knew there was no pardon to be obtained unless he had colored his offense with
folly and ignorance. And stronger is that of Christ upon the cross when he
prayed for his enemies, "Father, forgive them," nor does he cover their crime
with any other excuse than that of unwittingness--because, says he, "they know
not what they do." In like manner Paul, writing to Timothy, "But therefore I
obtained mercy, for that I did it ignorantly through unbelief." And what is the
meaning of "I did it ignorantly" but that I did it out of folly, not malice?
And what of "Therefore I received mercy" but that I had not obtained it had I
not been made more allowable through the covert of folly? For us also makes
that mystical Psalmist, though I remembered it not in its right place,
"Remember not the sins of my youth nor my ignorances." You see what two things
he pretends, to wit, youth, whose companion I ever am, and ignorances, and that
in the plural number, a number of multitude, whereby we are to understand that
there was no small company of them.
But not to run too far in that which is infinite. To speak briefly, all
Christian religion seems to have a kind of alliance with folly and in no
respect to have any accord with wisdom. Of which if you expect proofs, consider
first that boys, old men, women, and fools are more delighted with religious
and sacred things than others, and to that purpose are ever next the altars;
and this they do by mere impulse of nature. And in the next place, you see that
those first founders of it were plain, simple persons and most bitter enemies
of learning. Lastly there are no sort of fools seem more out of the way than
are these whom the zeal of Christian religion has once swallowed up; so that
they waste their estates, neglect injuries, suffer themselves to be cheated,
put no difference between friends and enemies, abhor pleasure, are crammed with
poverty, watchings, tears, labors, reproaches, loathe life, and wish death
above all things; in short, they seem senseless to common understanding, as if
their minds lived elsewhere and not in their own bodies; which, what else is it
than to be mad? For which reason you must not think it so strange if the
apostles seemed to be drunk with new wine, and if Paul appeared to Festus to be
mad.
But now, having once gotten on the lion's skin, go to, and I'll show you that
this happiness of Christians, which they pursue with so much toil, is nothing
else but a kind of madness and folly; far be it that my words should give any
offense, rather consider my matter. And first, the Christians and Platonists do
as good as agree in this, that the soul is plunged and fettered in the prison
of the body, by the grossness of which it is so tied up and hindered that it
cannot take a view of or enjoy things as they truly are; and for that cause
their master defines philosophy to be a contemplation of death, because it
takes off the mind from visible and corporeal objects, than which death does no
more. And therefore, as long as the soul uses the organs of the body in that
right manner it ought, so long it is said to be in good state and condition;
but when, having broken its fetters, it endeavors to get loose and assays, as
it were, a flight out of that prison that holds it in, they call it madness;
and if this happen through any distemper or indisposition of the organs, then,
by the common consent of every man, 'tis downright madness. And yet we see such
kind of men foretell things to come, understand tongues and letters they never
learned before, and seem, as it were, big with a kind of divinity. Nor is it to
be doubted but that it proceeds from hence, that the mind, being somewhat at
liberty from the infection of the body, begins to put forth itself in its
native vigor. And I conceive 'tis from the same cause that the like often
happens to sick men a little before their death, that they discourse in strain
above mortality as if they were inspired. Again, if this happens upon the score
of religion, though perhaps it may not be the same kind of madness, yet 'tis so
near it that a great many men would judge it no better, especially when a few
inconsiderable people shall differ from the rest of the world in the whole
course of their life. And therefore it fares with them as, according to the
fiction of Plato, happens to those that being cooped up in a cave stand gaping
with admiration at the shadows of things; and that fugitive who, having broke
from them and returning to them again, told them he had seen things truly as
they were, and that they were the most mistaken in believing there was nothing
but pitiful shadows. For as this wise man pitied and bewailed their palpable
madness that were possessed with so gross an error, so they in return laughed
at him as a doting fool and cast him out of their company. In like manner the
common sort of men chiefly admire those things that are most corporeal and
almost believe there is nothing beyond them. Whereas on the contrary, these
devout persons, by how much the nearer anything concerns the body, by so much
more they neglect it and are wholly hurried away with the contemplation of
things invisible. For the one give the first place to riches, the next to their
corporeal pleasures, leaving the last place to their soul, which yet most of
them do scarce believe, because they can't see it with their eyes. On the
contrary, the others first rely wholly on God, the most unchangeable of all
things; and next him, yet on this that comes nearest him, they bestow the
second on their soul; and lastly, for their body, they neglect that care and
condemn and flee money as superfluity that may be well spared; or if they are
forced to meddle with any of these things, they do it carelessly and much
against their wills, having as if they had it not, and possessing as if they
possessed it not.
There are also in each several things several degrees wherein they disagree
among themselves. And first as to the senses, though all of them have more or
less affinity with the body, yet of these some are more gross and blockish, as
tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, touching; some more removed from the body,
as memory, intellect, and the will. And therefore to which of these the mind
applies itself, in that lies its force. But holy men, because the whole bent of
their minds is taken up with those things that are most repugnant to these
grosser senses, they seem brutish and stupid in the common use of them. Whereas
on the contrary, the ordinary sort of people are best at these, and can do
least at the other; from whence it is, as we have heard, that some of these
holy men have by mistake drunk oil for wine. Again, in the affections of the
mind, some have a greater commerce with the body than others, as lust, desire
of meat and sleep, anger, pride, envy; with which holy men are at
irreconcilable enmity, and contrary, the common people think there's no living
without them. And lastly there are certain middle kind of affections, and as it
were natural to every man, as the love of one's country, children, parents,
friends, and to which the common people attribute no small matter; whereas the
other strive to pluck them out of their mind: unless insomuch as they arrive to
that highest part of the soul, that they love their parents not as parents--for
what did they get but the body? though yet we owe it to God, not them--but as
good men or women and in whom shines the image of that highest wisdom which
alone they call the chiefest good, and out of which, they say, there is nothing
to be beloved or desired.
And by the same rule do they measure all things else, so that they make less
account of whatever is visible, unless it be altogether contemptible, than of
those things which they cannot see. But they say that in Sacraments and other
religious duties there is both body and spirit. As in fasting they count it not
enough for a man to abstain from eating, which the common people take for an
absolute fast, unless there be also a lessening of his depraved affections: as
that he be less angry, less proud, than he was wont, that the spirit, being
less clogged with its bodily weight, may be the more intent upon heavenly
things. In like manner, in the Eucharist, though, say they, it is not to be
esteemed the less that 'tis administered with ceremonies, yet of itself 'tis of
little effect, if not hurtful, unless that which is spiritual be added to it,
to wit, that which is represented under those visible signs. Now the death of
Christ is represented by it, which all men, vanquishing, abolishing, and, as it
were, burying their carnal affections, ought to express in their lives and
conversations that they may grow up to a newness of life and be one with him
and the same one among another. This a holy man does, and in this is his only
meditation. Whereas on the contrary, the common people think there's no more in
that sacrifice than to be present at the altar and crowd next it, to have a
noise of words and look upon the ceremonies. Nor in this alone, which we only
proposed by way of example, but in all his life, and without hypocrisy, does a
holy man fly those things that have any alliance with the body and is wholly
ravished with things eternal, invisible, and spiritual. For which cause there's
so great contrarity of opinion between them, and that too in everything, that
each party thinks the other out of their wits; though that character, in my
judgment, better agrees with those holy men than the common people: which yet
will be more clear if, as I promised, I briefly show you that that great reward
they so much fancy is nothing else but a kind of madness.
And therefore suppose that Plato dreamed of somewhat like it when he called the
madness of lovers the most happy condition of all others. For he that's
violently in love lives not in his own body but in the thing he loves; and by
how much the farther he runs from himself into another, by so much the greater
is his pleasure. And then, when the mind strives to rove from its body and does
not rightly use its own organs, without doubt you may say 'tis downright
madness and not be mistaken, or otherwise what's the meaning of those common
sayings, "He does not dwell at home," "Come to yourself," "He's his own man
again"? Besides, the more perfect and true his love is, the more pleasant is
his madness. And therefore, what is that life hereafter, after which these holy
minds so pantingly breathe, like to be? To wit, the spirit shall swallow up the
body, as conqueror and more durable; and this it shall do with the greater ease
because heretofore, in its lifetime, it had chanced and thinned it into such
another nothing as itself. And then the spirit again shall be wonderfully
swallowed up by the highest mind, as being more powerful than infinite parts;
so that the whole man is to be out of himself nor to be otherwise happy in any
respect, but that being stripped of himself, he shall participate of somewhat
ineffable from that chiefest good that draws all things into itself. And this
happiness though 'tis only then perfected when souls being joined to their
former bodies shall be made immortal, yet forasmuch as the life of holy men is
nothing but a continued meditation and, as it were, shadow of that life, it so
happens that at length they have some taste or relish of it; which, though it
be but as the smallest drop in comparison of that fountain of eternal
happiness, yet it far surpasses all worldly delight, though all the pleasures
of all mankind were all joined together. So much better are things spiritual
than things corporeal, and things invisible than things visible; which
doubtless is that which the prophet promises: "The eye hath not seen, nor the
ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man to consider what God has
provided for them that love Him." And this is that Mary's better part which is
not taken away by change of life, but perfected.
And therefore they that are sensible of it, and few there are to whom this
happens, suffer a kind of somewhat little differing from madness; for they
utter many things that do not hang together, and that too not after the manner
of men but make a kind of sound which they neither heed themselves, nor is it
understood by others, and change the whole figure of their countenance, one
while jocund, another while dejected, now weeping, then laughing, and again
sighing. And when they come to themselves, tell you they know not where they
have been, whether in the body or out of the body, or sleeping; nor do they
remember what they have heard, seen, spoken, or done, and only know this, as it
were in a mist or dream, that they were the most happy while they were so out
of their wits. And therefore they are sorry they are come to themselves again
and desire nothing more than this kind of madness, to be perpetually mad. And
this is a small taste of that future happiness.
But I forget myself and run beyond my bounds. Though yet, if I shall seem to
have spoken anything more boldly or impertinently than I ought, be pleased to
consider that not only Folly but a woman said it; remembering in the meantime
that Greek proverb, "Sometimes a fool may speak a word in season," unless
perhaps you expect an epilogue, but give me leave to tell you you are mistaken
if you think I remember anything of what I have said, having foolishly bolted
out such a hodgepodge of words. 'Tis an old proverb, "I hate one that remembers
what's done over the cup." This is a new one of my own making: I hate a man
that remembers what he hears. Wherefore farewell, clap your hands, live and
drink lustily, my most excellent disciples of Folly.
Finis
Desiserius Erasmus was the "Prince of Humanists". If the Roman church at the time had followed Erasmus' scholarship, there would have been no need for the Protestant Reformation.
In Praise of Folly
Desiderius Erasmus
Translated by John Wilson
1688
[03, 07, 59, 61, 69, 70, 77, 152, 206]
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