 1. Erasmus of Rotterdam, to his friend Thomas Moore, health As I was coming a while 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 Maul, 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 Moore, 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 one 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 democratus. And though such is the excellence of your judgment, that it was ever contrary to that of the peoples, yet such is your incredible affability and sweetens of temper, that you both can and delight to carry yourself to all man and man of all ours. Wherefore you will not only with good will accept this small declamation, but take upon you the defence 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 wrangless that may cavill and charge me, partly that these toys are lighter than may become at divine, and partly more biting than may be seen 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 practised even by great authors, when Homer, so many ages since, did the like with a battle of frogs and mice, Virgil with a gnad and puddings, Ovid with a nut, when Polycratus and his corrector Isocratus extolled tyranny, Glauco injustice, Favorinus deformity and the quarton egg, Sinescus boldness, Lucian the fly and flattery, when Seneca made such sport with Claudius canonisations, Plutarch with his dialogue between Ulysses and Grilles, Lucian and Apolaeus with the ass, and some other, I know not who, with the hog that made his last will and testament, of which also even Saint 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 wrote on a hobby-horse. 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 sculled, may reap more benefit from it than from some men's cravish 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 panagiric 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, that other man 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 cavel 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 offence, as long as this liberty does not run into licentiousness, which makes me the more admired the tender ears of the man 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 scuffs even against Christ himself than hear the pope or prince be touched in the least, especially if it be anything that concerns their prophet, whereas he that sowed Texas the lives of man 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 text myself? Besides, he that spares no sort of man cannot be said to be angry with anyone in particular but devises 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 endeavours herein were rather to make mirth than bite. Nor have I, after the example of juvenile, raked up that forgotten sink of filth and ribaldry that 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 dishonour to be discommanded 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 fifth of the Ides of June, end of the dedication, part one of the praise of folly by Erasmus, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Anasimum, the praise of folly by Desiderius Erasmus, translated by John Wilson. Part one, an oration of faint matter spoken by folly in her own person, at what rates 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 know sooner stepped up to speak to this full assembly, than all your faces put on a kind of new and unwanted pleasantness. So suddenly have you cleared your brows, and with so follic and heartier laughter given me your applause, that in truth as many of you as I behold on every side of me, seemed to me no less than Homer's gods drunk with nectar and nipend. 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 its 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 affect, 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, you please lend me your ears, and I'll tell you. Not those ears I mean you carry to church, but abroad with you, such as your want to prick up to jugglers, fools and buffoons, and such as our friend Midas once gave to Pan. For I am disposed a while to play the sophist with you, not of their sword, who nowadays booze all 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 sofai, or wise, chose rather to be called sophists. Their business was to celebrate the praises of the gods and valiant man, and the like and comium 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 oneself, 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's 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 direct 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 holier stranger to it, sets out a pitiful jay in others' feathers, washes the blacker more 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 neighbours. Though, by the way, I cannot but wonder at the increditude, shall I say, or negligence, of men who notwithstanding they honour 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 endeavours have extolled tyrants, aches, flies, boldness, 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've 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 compose 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 returations I should go about to define what I am, much less use any division, for I hold it equally unlucky to circumscribe her whose deities 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 stoutitia, and are 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 count of it, 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 disemble me, who arrogate to themselves the appearance and title of wise man, 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 holy given up to my party, are yet publicly ashamed of the name, as taking it for a reproach, for which cause, since in truth there are morotatoi, fools, and yet would appear to the world to be wise man and thalus, will even call them morosophus, 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 warm-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 neighbours. 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 endeavour to satisfy you. But yet neither the first chaos, Orcus, Saturn, or Jaffet, nor any of those threadbare, musty gods were my father, but Plutus, riches, that only he that is in spite of Hesiod, Homer, Ney, and Jupiter himself, Divum, Pater, at Quahomenum Rex, the father of gods and man, at whose single back as here to fall so at present all things sacred and profane are turned topsy-turvy, according to whose pleasure, war, peace, empire, councils, 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 themselves, and to whomsoever he is an enemy, it is not Pallas herself that can befriend him, as on the contrary, he whom he favours 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, it was not that blind and decrepit Plutus and Aristophanus that got me, but such as he was in his full strength and pride of joy, 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 at those extraordinary. And as to the place of my birth, for as much as nowadays that is looked upon as a main point of nobility, it was neither like Apollos in the floating Delos, nor Venus-like on the rolling sea, nor in any of blind homas as blind caves, but in the fortunate islands where all things grew without plowing or sowing, where neither labour nor old age nor disease was ever heard of, and in whose fields neither defedil, mellows, onions, beans, and such contemptible things would ever grow, but on the contrary, rue, angelica, buckloss, marjoram, terfoils, 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 I want with crying, but straight perched up and smiled on my mother, nor do I envy to the great Jupiter the goat his nurse for as much 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 Phalencia, self-love, she with a smiling countenance that is ever in and on clapping her hands, is Colakia, flattery. She that looks as if she were half asleep is Letha, oblivion. She that sits leaning on both elbows with her hands clutched together is Missaponia, laziness. She with a garland on her head and that smells so strong of perfumes is Hedony, pleasure. She with those staring eyes, moving here and there is Anoia, madness. She with a smooth skin and full pampered body is Triffy, wantoness. And as to the two gauze that you see with them, the one is Comos, in temperance, the other Eigratos Hypnos, deep 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 and rolled 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 of 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 palace 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 back 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, neither various, bigger 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, and find 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 news of wetlock, 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 childbearing, or the trouble of bringing them up? So then, if you owe your beings to wetlock, you owe that wetlock to this, my follower, madness, and what you owe to me I've 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 rooms have succeeded a kind of people, the world calls monks, cardinals, priests, and the most holy popes. And lastly, all that rebel of the poet's 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 enjoyed themselves. But tell me, by Jupiter, what part of man's lives is that that is not sad, crapped, 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 succour, but this rich craft 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 flutter the care and diligence of their nurses? And then for youth which is in such reputation everywhere, how do all men favour 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 savour something like man, if in the same instant that beauty does not fade, its liveliness decay, its pleasantness grow flat, and its bristness 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 want to assist such as were dying with some pleasant metamorphosis, help their decrepitness as much as immilies 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 spring-head 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, just 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, where 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 not with standing is this doted exempt from all those cares that distract a wise man. He is not 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 plotters 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 man as he has it in another place, Florida, in which respect also they have this advantage of children, in that they want the only pleasure of the other's life, will suppose it prattling, add to this that old man are more eagerly delighted with children, and they again with old man. 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 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. End of part one. Part two of The Praise of Folly. This lipofrox recording is in a public domain, recording by Anosimum. The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus, translated by John Wilson. Part two. And now, let him that will compare the benefits they receive by me with the metamorphoses of the gods, of whom I shall not mention what they have done in their pettish humours, but where they've 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 man 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 solid themselves with a perpetual youth. Do but observe our grim philosophers that are perpetually beating their brains on naughty 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 of, and that is verified in the Brabunders, of whom there goes this common saying, that age which is one to run their other man wiser makes them the greater fools. And yet there is scarce any nation of a more jokened 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 pecking and seek out medias, curkeys, 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. To his eye alone that of that wonderful juice with which Memnon's daughter prolonged the youth of her grandfather Tython. I am that Venus by whose favour Phaeon 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 shed out so great an evil. But why do I altogether spend my breath in speaking of mortals? Few have enround 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 Baches is always as tripling 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 palas. And lastly he is so far from desiring to be accounted wise that he delights to be worshipped with sports and gambles, nor is he displeased with the proverb that gave him the surname of Ful, a greater Ful than Baches, which name of his was changed to Moricus. For that sitting before the gates of his temple the wanton country people were want to bedop 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 sought always marry every young and making sport for other people, than either Homer's Jupiter with his crooked councils, terrible to every one, or old Pan with his hubbups, or smutty Vulcan half-covered with sinness, or even Palas herself so dreadful with her gorgon's head and spear and accountants like bull-beef. 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 when 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 founders of all pleasure? Nay, if you should but diligently serve 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'd rather they should hear these things from Momus, from whom, here to fall, they were want to have their shares, till in one of their angry humus they tumbled him, together with Eiti, goddess of mischief, down headlong to the earth, because his wisdom, forsooth, unseasonably disturbed their happiness. Nor since that there's any mortal give him harbour, 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 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 leisure domains with which Mercury does not cloak his thefts? What buffoonery that Vulcan is not guilty of, while one with his poult foot, another with his smudged muzzle, another with his impertinences, he makes sport for the rest of the gods? As also that old Salinas with his country dances, polyphemus footing time to his cyclops hammers, the nymphs with their jigs, and setires with their antics, while Pan makes them all twitter with some coarse ballad, which yet they had rather hear than them uses themselves, and chiefly when they are all well witted with nectar. Besides, what should I mention that 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, to a better 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 at 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 disconsoleed and hard to away with, of how much more passion than reason as 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, too as it were, marcellous 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, in as much as she, which yet is all she can do, may call out to us, till she be whores 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 worried, he suffer himself to be carried whether they pleased to hurry him. But for as much 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-what, 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 set out, and the 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 any one should put a disguise upon nature, or endeavor to bring her to that, she will in no wise bear, according to that proverb the Greeks, an ape is an ape, though clad in scarlet, so a woman is a woman still, that is to say foolish, that her put on whatever visit she please. But, by the way, I hope that sex is not so foolish as to take offence at this, that I myself, being a woman, and folly too, have attributed folly to them. For if they wait 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 man 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 gambles pass between a man and this woman, as often as yet 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 and 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. In so much that if they find no occasion of laughter, they send for one that may make it, or hire some buffoon flutterer 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, merements, 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 health, 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 a 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, sorrites, dilemmas, or other 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 this this only that joins friends together and continues them so joined? I speak of ordinary man, 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, it is unpleasant and reserved, and that too, but among a very few, to a crime to say none. For that the greatest part of mankind are fools, nay, there's 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 eagles-sighted into his friend's faults, but so blare-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 argous, so much as one hour, were it not for that which the Greeks excellently call you athean? 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 collars 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. Whoap holiday, how few marriages should we have if the husband should but thoroughly examine how many tricks his pretty little mob of modesty has played before she was married, and how fewer of them would hold together to dot most of the wife's actions, escape the husband's knowledge, through his neglect or sodishness. 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 apart 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 governess, nor the servant his master, nor the master his footmen, 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 radish of folly. And now you'd think I'd 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 is no man but would be so far from enduring another that he would stink in his own nostrils, be nauseated by his own actions, and himself become odious to himself. For as much as nature, in too many things rather a step-dame than apparent to us, has imprinted that evil in man, especially such as of least judgment, that everyone repents him of his own condition and admires that of others, whence it comes to pause 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 a fictation? 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 mean. 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 country, that a man does against the hair? Take away this salt of life, and the orator may even sit still with his action. The magician, 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'll 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 command himself to himself before he can be commanded by others. Lastly, since it is the chief point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is, you are 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 Skitian for the fortunate islands. Oh, 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 a 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. End of Part 2 Part 3 of The Praise of Folly This LibriVox recording is a public domain. The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus, translated by John Wilson. Part 3 is not war the very root and matter of all famed enterprises, and yet what more foolish than to undertake it, for I know not 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 demonstriness for a soldier, who, following the example of Archilochius, threw away his arms and betook him to his heels ever yet 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, pandas, thieves, cutthroats, plowmen, sots, spendthrips, and such other dregs of mankind, not philosophers. Who, how unep they are even for common converse, let Socrates, whom the Oracle of Apollo, though not so wisely dutched 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 afterward sentenced him to the drinking of his poisoned cup. For a while, as you find him in Aristophanus, 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 color-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 cow-hearted that he dared never attempt it, or telly 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 hiccup, 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, thank 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 for sooth that goodly sentence of Plato's. Happy is that Commonwealth where a philosopher is prince, or whose prince is addicted to philosophy. One yet, if you consult historians, you'll find no princes more prescient to the Commonwealth than where the empire has fallen to some smatter in philosophy or one given to lettuce, to the truth of which I think the Cato's can 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. After this, the Brute, Cassi, Ne, Cicero himself, that was no less pernicious to the Commonwealth of Rome than was democlenous to that of Athens. Besides Marcus 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 a subject upon no other school 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 why Socrates' children, as one as 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 so 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 as he to himself, country or friends, and all because he is wholly ignorant of common things and lives a cause of life quite different from the people, by which means it is impossible but that he contract a popular odium to it by reason of the great diversity of their life and souls. For what is there at all done among man 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 Taimon 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 thermisticlass in his of the fox and hedgehog. What wise man's oration could ever have done so much with the people as sartorious invention of his wide hind, or his ridiculous emblem of pulling off a horse's tail hair by hair? Or as Lycurgus his example of his two welps? To say nothing of Minos and Numa, both of which ruled their foolish multitudes with fabulous inventions, with which kind of toys that great and powerful beast the people are led away? Again, what city ever received Plato's or Aristotle's laws or Socrates' precepts? But, on the contrary, what made the decai devote themselves the infernal gods, or Q.Curtius to leap into the gulf, but an empty vein-glory, a most bewitching siren? And yet this 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 favour with gifts, to court the applause 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 honours 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 democratise, 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 man'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 man thought to purchase themselves a kind of I know not what fame, then which nothing can be more vain. And yet notwithstanding he owe this advantage to folly, and which is the most delectable of all other, that he reap the benefit of other man'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 burned 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 fully 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 it is evident that all human things, like alcibiades, Silenai, 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 jacquant, sad, what noble, base, what lucky, unfortunate, what friendly, an enemy, and what healthful, noisome. In short, view the inside of these Silenai, 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, an abundant in everything, but yet, being so ill-furnished with the gifts of the mind, and ever thinking he shall never have enough, he is the poorest of all men? And then, for his mind so given up to vice, there's 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 fantastical 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 senior, now a king, and presently a peasant, now a guard, 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 count of it, and yet without this there was no living. And here, if any wise man as if word dropped from heaven, should start up and cry this great thing whom the world looks upon for a guard, 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, in as much 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 gotten the state, 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 be gone, undertakes to disprove a common received opinion. Whereas on the contrary, this is 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 apart 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 is 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 offers of a tutor, though 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 liked 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 tantalist 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 at love or pity than if he were a flint or rock, whose Sanger nothing escapes, that commits no errors himself, but has a links his 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 let me pray, if the thing were to be carried by most voices, what city would choose him for his governor, or what army desire him for their general? What woman would have such a husband, what good fellow 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 pleases like, does 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 wary of this wise man, and therefore I'll proceed to some other advantages. Go to then. Suppose a man is some lofty high tower, and that he could look around him, as the poets say Jupiter was now and then want. To how many misfortunes would he find the life of man subject? How miserable to say no words, 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 goal? To say nothing of those evils one man brings upon another, as poverty, imprisonment, infamy, dishonesty, wrecks, snares, treachery, reproaches, actions, deceits. But I'm got into as endless a work as numbering the sands. For what offences 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 wary of life, have hastened their own fate? Were they not the next neighbours to wisdom, among whom, to say nothing of Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato, Cassius, Brutus, that wise man Charon, 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 it it were necessary we got another kind of clay and some better potter, but I, partly through ignorance, partly on advisedness, 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 wearesomeness of life. Of my gift it is, that you have so many old nesters everywhere, that have scarce left them, so much of the shape of a man. Stutterers, dotets, toothless, grey-haired, bold, or rather, to use the words of Aristophanus, nasty, crumpled, miserable, shriveled, bold, toothless, and wanting their baubles. Yet so delighted with life, and to be thought young, that one dies his grey hairs, another covers his boldness 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 man almost expected to be commanded for it. But the best sport of all is to see our old women, even dead with age, and such scuttons 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 catawalling, 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 curtsy. 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 sin, 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 full 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, me things, I hear the philosophers opposing it, and saying there's 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, for as much 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 of 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 cheesecakes, and the bull miserable because it makes 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 its 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 could be 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 Thuth, 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, will 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 then double meaning words? What need of rhetoric, where there were no lawsuits? Or to what purpose laws, where there were no ill menace? From which, without doubt, good laws first came. Besides, they were more religious, than with an empire's 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 two 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. Devines are half-staffed, 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 physics, 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 lord-drivers, if not the first, whose profession, though I say it myself, most men laugh at as the ass of philosophy. Yet there is 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 lies 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 leased 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 colouring, and is ever best where she is least adulterated with art. Go to them, 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 be, 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 is a shame to lose the race, it often happens that he cracks his wind, and in the battle, while he contends for victory, he is cut down himself, and, together with his rider, lies biting the earth. Not to mention, those strong bits, sharp spurs, closed 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. Then which, how much more, whether 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 any time they chance to be taken, and being shut up in cages and devoured to imitate our speaking, it is 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 and devils to exceed them, and again among man he gives the presidency not to the learned or the great, but the fool, nor had that griless less wit than Ulysses with his many councils, who chose rather to lie grunting in a hoax-tie 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 man wretched and full of calamity, but often his great pattern of wisdom Ulysses miserable. Paris, Ajax, and Akers 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 palace. In a word he was too wise, and by that means ran wide of nature. As therefore among man they are least happy that study wisdom, as being in this twice fools, that when they are born man 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 gym-cracks make a war upon nature. So they on the other side seem as little miserable as possible, who come nearest to beasts and never attempt anything beyond man. Go to, then, let's try how demonstrable it is, not by anthememes 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 man we commonly call fools, idiots, liquids, and dults, 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-day any man. And lastly, if they should come nearer even to the very ignorance of brutes, they could not sin, for so halt 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've 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. Once 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 offence, 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 consecrated to the gods, and therefore, and not without cause, do men have them in such esteem. Once is it else that they are in so great requests 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 alight in, as jests, laughter, abuses of other men, wanton pastimes, and alike. Again take notice of this no contemptable blessing which nature has given fools, that they are the only plain honest man, and such a speak truth. And what is more commendable than truth? For though that proverb of Alcubiades 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 extent 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, some one may say, the ears of princes are strangers to truth, and for this reason they avoid those wise men, because they fear less 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 truth but even open reproaches are heard with pleasure, so that the same thing which, if it came through 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 man as being more propensed 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 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 pilliness, 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 a 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 a muses good favour, will take this syllogism in pieces. Soutly 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 Horus had never called his poetical fury a beloved madness. Nor Plato plays the raptures of poets, prophets, and lovers among the chiefest blessings of his life. Nor that cybil in Virgil, called Ines travels mad labours. 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 parasite, 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 jokent. 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 Horus 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 for 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 hella-ball, 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 pray 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 turns 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 judged in the case, he should be range in that class of folly that is peculiarly mine, which in truth is so large and universal, that I scarce know any one 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 yells 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 weather, to a crime to have this done by anything less than a gentleman, who with his head 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 posters lays open the several parts in their respective order, while they that have 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 odds undertake to change the forms of things, and hunt all about after a certain fifth essence. Man 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 there is 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 clogs, scarce got a life to show. They choose rather to cheat any man of their just debts, than not pay the money they lost. Lest otherwise, far sooth, they be thought no man 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 man are holy hours, who love to hear or tell faint miracles and strange lies, and are never wary 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 partners. 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 halls most religiously set out with trappings and bosses, there once little but they worship. However, they endeavour 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 hurt 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 by some pious imposter, either for a soul's health or profit's sake, promise to themselves everything, wealth, honour, 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 repines, parts with some small piece of money? His trait 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 school. 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 the same burnet, 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 avow to themselves their peculiar saint, and as every one 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 a sheep of the rod, 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 sun. 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 acknowledgement from anyone that had left his folly, or grown a hand's breath the wiser? One escapes his shipwreck, and he gets saved ashore. Another, run through in a jewel, recovers. Another, while the rest were fighting, ran out of the field, no less luckily than valiantly. Another, condemned to be hanged by the favour 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 labour and a charge. Another's card 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 tongs 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 wisefellow should step up and speak things as they are, as to live worlds 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 favour you if you imitate his life. These, I say, and alike, 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 ashamed to them, that their corpse were not honourably interred? So curious are they herein, as if, like the e-dials 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 they're scarcely credible how they flattered themselves with the empty title of nobility. One derives his pedigree from Aeneas, another from Brutus, a third from the star by the tale of Urza 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 all 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 man, as if this self-love had not the same effect everywhere and rendered most men super abundantly 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 hoars as a dung-hell cock shall yet conceive himself another homogenous. But of all madness that's the most pleasant when a man, seeing another anyway excellent in what he pretends to himself, makes his boasts of it as confidently as if it were his own, as 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, for as much 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 plays, fitless, orators, and poets of which the more ignorant each of them is, the more insolently he pleases himself, that is to say, vans and spreads out his plumes, and like lips find like lettuce, nay, the more foolish anything is, the more it is 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 man, but even in every nation, and scares any city is there without it, a kind of common self-love, and hence is it that the English, besides other things, particularly challenged 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 man, the Parisians, excluding all others, irrigate to themselves the only knowledge of divinity. The Italians affirm they are the only masses 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 sync of the truly barbarous challenged to themselves the only glory of religion, and love at Christians as superstitious, and much more pleasantly the Jews expect to this day the coming of the Messiah, and so obstinately content 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, man 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 a brightness 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, release the distressed, encourages the fainting, awakens the stupid, refreshes the sick, supplies the intractable, joins loves together, and keeps them so joined. It entices children to take their learning, makes old man frolic, and, under the colour of praise, does without offence, 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 the main part of physics 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 colours 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 wary of it. But, if the preacher, pardon my mistake, I would have said, declaimer. As too often it happens, fall but into an old wife's 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, the George, a Christopher, or a Barbara, you shall see him more religiously worshipped than Peter, Paul, or even Christ himself. But these things are not for this place. And now, at how cheaper rate is this happiness purchased? For as much as said the thing itself, a man's whole endeavour 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-favoured 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, thank 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 roll, persuaded her that they were not only right, but of an inestimable prize. 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, thank 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 man, 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 flavour 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 often times favours 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, plutos, ateas, punishments, favours, and the like, not gods, but executioners. I am that only fully, that so readily and indifferently bestows my benefits on all. Nor do I look to be untreated, 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 omitted 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 with all so ready to do mischief, that it is better be a stranger than have any familiarity with them. End of part 5