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START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAISE OF FOLLY ***
Produced
by Robert Shimmin and PG Distributed Proofreaders
Translated
by John Wilson
1668
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 clear 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, nor altogether insipid, and in
the whole course of your life have played the part of a Democritus. And though
such is the excellence of your judgment that it was ever contrary to that of
the people’s, yet such is your incredible affability 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.
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 another 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, and they that
do not will admire it the more by how much the less they understand it. Nor is
this way of ours of admiring what seems most foreign without its particular
grace; for if there happen to be any more 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. Nor 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 Philantia,
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 Eegretos 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 cloud-gathering 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 flat, 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 worshiped 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 affinity 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 rest 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 far 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 Priapus 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 vizard
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 right, 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 wart 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
sweeter-kin 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, nor any man of his
own country; so that a Highlander has no desire to change with an Italian, a
Thracian with an Athenian, nor 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 more 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 admiring 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
emperor; 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 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, or 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, gray-haired, 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 hear 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 quick-witted, 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 made 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 imposter,
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 great-grandfathers 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 well-bred 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 flattery. 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
worshiped 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, favors,
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 worshiped 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 worshiped 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.