The Praise of Folly
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Desiderius Erasmus >> The Praise of Folly
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For whereas among the many praises of Bacchus they reckon this the chief,
that he washes away cares, and that too in an instant, do but sleep off
his weak spirits, and they come on again, as we say, on horseback. But
how much larger and more present is the benefit you receive by me, since,
as it were with a perpetual drunkenness I fill your minds with mirth,
fancies, and jollities, and that too without any trouble? Nor is there
any man living whom I let be without it; whereas the gifts of the gods
are scrambled, some to one and some to another. The sprightly delicious
wine that drives away cares and leaves such a flavor behind it grows not
everywhere. Beauty, the gift of Venus, happens to few; and to fewer gives
Mercury eloquence. Hercules makes not everyone rich. Homer's Jupiter
bestows not empire on all men. Mars oftentimes favors neither side. Many
return sad from Apollo's oracle. Phoebus sometimes shoots a plague among
us. Neptune drowns more than he saves: to say nothing of those
mischievous gods, Plutoes, Ates, punishments, favors, and the like, not
gods but executioners. I am that only Folly that so readily and
indifferently bestows my benefits on all. Nor do I look to be entreated,
or am I subject to take pet, and require an expiatory sacrifice if some
ceremony be omitted. Nor do I beat heaven and earth together if, when the
rest of the gods are invited, I am passed by or not admitted to the
stream of their sacrifices. For the rest of the gods are so curious in
this point that such an omission may chance to spoil a man's business;
and therefore one has as good even let them alone as worship them: just
like some men, who are so hard to please, and withall so ready to do
mischief, that 'tis better be a stranger than have any familiarity
with them.
But no man, you'll say, ever sacrificed to Folly or built me a temple.
And troth, as I said before, I cannot but wonder at the ingratitude; yet
because I am easily to be entreated, I take this also in good part,
though truly I can scarce request it. For why should I require incense,
wafers, a goat, or sow when all men pay me that worship everywhere which
is so much approved even by our very divines? Unless perhaps I should
envy Diana that her sacrifices are mingled with human blood. Then do I
conceive myself most religiously worshiped when everywhere, as 'tis
generally done, men embrace me in their minds, express me in their
manners, and represent me in their lives, which worship of the saints is
not so ordinary among Christians. How many are there that burn candles to
the Virgin Mother, and that too at noonday when there's no need of them!
But how few are there that study to imitate her in pureness of life,
humility and love of heavenly things, which is the true worship and most
acceptable to heaven! Besides why should I desire a temple when the whole
world is my temple, and I'm deceived or 'tis a goodly one? Nor can I want
priests but in a land where there are no men. Nor am I yet so foolish as
to require statues or painted images, which do often obstruct my worship,
since among the stupid and gross multitude those figures are worshiped
for the saints themselves. And so it would fare with me, as it does with
them that are turned out of doors by their substitutes. No, I have
statues enough, and as many as there are men, everyone bearing my lively
resemblance in his face, how unwilling so ever he be to the contrary. And
therefore there is no reason why I should envy the rest of the gods if in
particular places they have their particular worship, and that too on set
days--as Phoebus at Rhodes; at Cyprus, Venus; at Argos, Juno; at Athens,
Minerva; in Olympus, Jupiter; at Tarentum, Neptune; and near the
Hellespont, Priapus--as long as the world in general performs me every
day much better sacrifices.
Wherein notwithstanding if I shall seem to anyone to have spoken more
boldly than truly, let us, if you please, look a little into the lives of
men, and it will easily appear not only how much they owe to me, but how
much they esteem me even from the highest to the lowest. And yet we will
not run over the lives of everyone, for that would be too long, but only
some few of the great ones, from whence we shall easily conjecture the
rest. For to what purpose is it to say anything of the common people, who
without dispute are wholly mine? For they abound everywhere with so many
several sorts of folly, and are every day so busy in inventing new, that
a thousand Democriti are too few for so general a laughter though there
were another Democritus to laugh at them too. 'Tis almost incredible what
sport and pastime they daily make the gods; for though they set aside
their sober forenoon hours to dispatch business and receive prayers, yet
when they begin to be well whittled with nectar and cannot think of
anything that's serious, they get them up into some part of heaven that
has better prospect than other and thence look down upon the actions of
men. Nor is there anything that pleases them better. Good, good! what an
excellent sight it is! How many several hurly-burlies of fools! for I
myself sometimes sit among those poetical gods.
Here's one desperately in love with a young wench, and the more she
slights him the more outrageously he loves her. Another marries a woman's
money, not herself. Another's jealousy keeps more eyes on her than Argos.
Another becomes a mourner, and how foolishly he carries it! nay, hires
others to bear him company to make it more ridiculous. Another weeps over
his mother-in-law's grave. Another spends all he can rap and run on his
belly, to be the more hungry after it. Another thinks there is no
happiness but in sleep and idleness. Another turmoils himself about other
men's business and neglects his own. Another thinks himself rich in
taking up moneys and changing securities, as we say borrowing of Peter to
pay Paul, and in a short time becomes bankrupt. Another starves himself
to enrich his heir. Another for a small and uncertain gain exposes his
life to the casualties of seas and winds, which yet no money can restore.
Another had rather get riches by war than live peaceably at home. And
some there are that think them easiest attained by courting old childless
men with presents; and others again by making rich old women believe they
love them; both which afford the gods most excellent pastime, to see them
cheated by those persons they thought to have over-caught. But the most
foolish and basest of all others are our merchants, to wit such as
venture on everything be it never so dishonest, and manage it no better;
who though they lie by no allowance, swear and forswear, steal, cozen,
and cheat, yet shuffle themselves into the first rank, and all because
they have gold rings on their fingers. Nor are they without their
flattering friars that admire them and give them openly the title of
honorable, in hopes, no doubt, to get some small snip of it themselves.
There are also a kind of Pythagoreans with whom all things are so common
that if they get anything under their cloaks, they make no more scruple
of carrying it away than if it were their own by inheritance. There are
others too that are only rich in conceit, and while they fancy to
themselves pleasant dreams, conceive that enough to make them happy. Some
desire to be accounted wealthy abroad and are yet ready to starve at
home. One makes what haste he can to set all going, and another rakes it
together by right or wrong. This man is ever laboring for public honors,
and another lies sleeping in a chimney corner. A great many undertake
endless suits and outvie one another who shall most enrich the dilatory
judge or corrupt advocate. One is all for innovations and another for
some great he-knows-not-what. Another leaves his wife and children at
home and goes to Jerusalem, Rome, or in pilgrimage to St. James's where
he has no business. In short, if a man like Menippus of old could look
down from the moon and behold those innumerable rufflings of mankind, he
would think he saw a swarm of flies and gnats quarreling among
themselves, fighting, laying traps for one another, snatching, playing,
wantoning, growing up, falling, and dying. Nor is it to be believed what
stir, what broils, this little creature raises, and yet in how short a
time it comes to nothing itself; while sometimes war, other times
pestilence, sweeps off many thousands of them together.
But let me be most foolish myself, and one whom Democritus may not only
laugh at but flout, if I go one foot further in the discovery of the
follies and madnesses of the common people. I'll betake me to them that
carry the reputation of wise men and hunt after that golden bough, as
says the proverb. Among whom the grammarians hold the first place, a
generation of men than whom nothing would be more miserable, nothing more
perplexed, nothing more hated of the gods, did not I allay the troubles
of that pitiful profession with a certain kind of pleasant madness. For
they are not only subject to those five curses with which Home begins his
Iliads, as says the Greek epigram, but six hundred; as being ever
hunger-starved and slovens in their schools--schools, did I say? Nay,
rather cloisters, bridewells, or slaughterhouses--grown old among a
company of boys, deaf with their noise, and pined away with stench and
nastiness. And yet by my courtesy it is that they think themselves the
most excellent of all men, so greatly do they please themselves in
frighting a company of fearful boys with a thundering voice and big looks,
tormenting them with ferules, rods, and whips; and, laying about them
without fear or wit, imitate the ass in the lion's skin. In the meantime
all that nastiness seems absolute spruceness, that stench a perfume, and
that miserable slavery a kingdom, and such too as they would not change
their tyranny for Phalaris' or Dionysius' empire. Nor are they less happy
in that new opinion they have taken up of being learned; for whereas most
of them beat into boys' heads nothing but foolish toys, yet, you good
gods! what Palemon, what Donatus, do they not scorn in comparison of
themselves? And so, I know not by what tricks, they bring it about that
to their boys' foolish mothers and dolt-headed fathers they pass for such
as they fancy themselves. Add to this that other pleasure of theirs, that
if any of them happen to find out who was Anchises' mother, or pick out
of some worm-eaten manuscript a word not commonly known--as suppose it
bubsequa for a cowherd, bovinator for a wrangler, manticulator for a
cutpurse--or dig up the ruins of some ancient monument with the letters
half eaten out; O Jupiter! what towerings! what triumphs! what
commendations! as if they had conquered Africa or taken in Babylon.
But what of this when they give up and down their foolish insipid verses,
and there wants not others that admire them as much? They believe
presently that Virgil's soul is transmigrated into them! But nothing like
this, when with mutual compliments they praise, admire, and claw one
another. Whereas if another do but slip a word and one more quick-sighted
than the rest discover it by accident, O Hercules! what uproars, what
bickerings, what taunts, what invectives! If I lie, let me have the ill
will of all the grammarians. I knew in my time one of many arts, a
Grecian, a Latinist, a mathematician, a philosopher, a physician, a man
master of them all, and sixty years of age, who, laying by all the rest,
perplexed and tormented himself for above twenty years in the study of
grammar, fully reckoning himself a prince if he might but live so long
till he could certainly determine how the eight parts of speech were to
be distinguished, which none of the Greeks or Latins had yet fully
cleared: as if it were a matter to be decided by the sword if a man made
an adverb of a conjunction. And for this cause is it that we have as many
grammars as grammarians; nay more, forasmuch as my friend Aldus has given
us above five, not passing by any kind of grammar, how barbarously or
tediously soever compiled, which he has not turned over and examined;
envying every man's attempts in this kind, how to be pitied than happy,
as persons that are ever tormenting themselves; adding, changing, putting
in, blotting out, revising, reprinting, showing it to friends, and nine
years in correcting, yet never fully satisfied; at so great a rate do
they purchase this vain reward, to wit, praise, and that too of a very
few, with so many watchings, so much sweat, so much vexation and loss of
sleep, the most precious of all things. Add to this the waste of health,
spoil of complexion, weakness of eyes or rather blindness, poverty, envy,
abstinence from pleasure, over-hasty old age, untimely death, and the
like; so highly does this wise man value the approbation of one or two
blear-eyed fellows. But how much happier is this my writer's dotage who
never studies for anything but puts in writing whatever he pleases or
what comes first in his head, though it be but his dreams; and all this
with small waste of paper, as well knowing that the vainer those trifles
are, the higher esteem they will have with the greater number, that is to
say all the fools and unlearned. And what matter is it to slight those
few learned if yet they ever read them? Or of what authority will the
censure of so few wise men be against so great a cloud of gainsayers?
But they are the wiser that put out other men's works for their own, and
transfer that glory which others with great pains have obtained to
themselves; relying on this, that they conceive, though it should so
happen that their theft be never so plainly detected, that yet they
should enjoy the pleasure of it for the present. And 'tis worth one's
while to consider how they please themselves when they are applauded by
the common people, pointed at in a crowd, "This is that excellent
person;" lie on booksellers' stalls; and in the top of every page have
three hard words read, but chiefly exotic and next degree to conjuring;
which, by the immortal gods! what are they but mere words? And again, if
you consider the world, by how few understood, and praised by fewer! for
even among the unlearned there are different palates. Or what is it that
their own very names are often counterfeit or borrowed from some books of
the ancients? When one styles himself Telemachus, another Sthenelus, a
third Laertes, a fourth Polycrates, a fifth Thrasymachus. So that there
is no difference whether they title their books with the "Tale of a Tub,"
or, according to the philosophers, by alpha, beta.
But the most pleasant of all is to see them praise one another with
reciprocal epistles, verses, and encomiums; fools their fellow fools, and
dunces their brother dunces. This, in the other's opinion, is an absolute
Alcaeus; and the other, in his, a very Callimachus. He looks upon Tully
as nothing to the other, and the other again pronounces him more learned
than Plato. And sometimes too they pick out their antagonist and think to
raise themselves a fame by writing one against the other; while the giddy
multitude are so long divided to whether of the two they shall determine
the victory, till each goes off conqueror, and, as if he had done some
great action, fancies himself a triumph. And now wise men laugh at these
things as foolish, as indeed they are. Who denies it? Yet in the
meantime, such is my kindness to them, they live a merry life and would
not change their imaginary triumphs, no, not with the Scipioes. While yet
those learned men, though they laugh their fill and reap the benefit of
the other's folly, cannot without ingratitude deny but that even they too
are not a little beholding to me themselves.
And among them our advocates challenge the first place, nor is there any
sort of people that please themselves like them: for while they daily
roll Sisyphus his stone, and quote you a thousand cases, as it were, in a
breath no matter how little to the purpose, and heap glosses upon
glosses, and opinions on the neck of opinions, they bring it at last to
this pass, that that study of all other seems the most difficult. Add to
these our logicians and sophists, a generation of men more prattling than
an echo and the worst of them able to outchat a hundred of the best
picked gossips. And yet their condition would be much better were they
only full of words and not so given to scolding that they most
obstinately hack and hew one another about a matter of nothing and make
such a sputter about terms and words till they have quite lost the sense.
And yet they are so happy in the good opinion of themselves that as soon
as they are furnished with two or three syllogisms, they dare boldly
enter the lists against any man upon any point, as not doubting but to
run him down with noise, though the opponent were another Stentor.
And next these come our philosophers, so much reverenced for their furred
gowns and starched beards that they look upon themselves as the only wise
men and all others as shadows. And yet how pleasantly do they dote while
they frame in their heads innumerable worlds; measure out the sun, the
moon, the stars, nay and heaven itself, as it were, with a pair of
compasses; lay down the causes of lightning, winds, eclipses, and other
the like inexplicable matters; and all this too without the least
doubting, as if they were Nature's secretaries, or dropped down among us
from the council of the gods; while in the meantime Nature laughs at them
and all their blind conjectures. For that they know nothing, even this is
a sufficient argument, that they don't agree among themselves and so are
incomprehensible touching every particular. These, though they have not
the least degree of knowledge, profess yet that they have mastered all;
nay, though they neither know themselves, nor perceive a ditch or block
that lies in their way, for that perhaps most of them are half blind, or
their wits a wool-gathering, yet give out that they have discovered
ideas, universalities, separated forms, first matters, quiddities,
haecceities, formalities, and the like stuff; things so thin and bodiless
that I believe even Lynceus himself was not able to perceive them. But
then chiefly do they disdain the unhallowed crowd as often as with their
triangles, quadrangles, circles, and the like mathematical devices, more
confounded than a labyrinth, and letters disposed one against the other,
as it were in battle array, they cast a mist before the eyes of the
ignorant. Nor is there wanting of this kind some that pretend to
foretell things by the stars and make promises of miracles beyond
all things of soothsaying, and are so fortunate as to meet with people
that believe them.
But perhaps I had better pass over our divines in silence and not stir
this pool or touch this fair but unsavory plant, as a kind of men that
are supercilious beyond comparison, and to that too, implacable; lest
setting them about my ears, they attack me by troops and force me to a
recantation sermon, which if I refuse, they straight pronounce me a
heretic. For this is the thunderbolt with which they fright those whom
they are resolved not to favor. And truly, though there are few others
that less willingly acknowledge the kindnesses I have done them, yet even
these too stand fast bound to me upon no ordinary accounts; while being
happy in their own opinion, and as if they dwelt in the third heaven,
they look with haughtiness on all others as poor creeping things and
could almost find in their hearts to pity them; while hedged in with so
many magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions
explicit and implicit, they abound with so many starting-holes that
Vulcan's net cannot hold them so fast, but they'll slip through with
their distinctions, with which they so easily cut all knots asunder that
a hatchet could not have done it better, so plentiful are they in their
new-found words and prodigious terms. Besides, while they explicate the
most hidden mysteries according to their own fancy--as how the world was
first made; how original sin is derived to posterity; in what manner, how
much room, and how long time Christ lay in the Virgin's womb; how
accidents subsist in the Eucharist without their subject.
But these are common and threadbare; these are worthy of our great and
illuminated divines, as the world calls them! At these, if ever they fall
athwart them, they prick up--as whether there was any instant of time in
the generation of the Second Person; whether there be more than one
filiation in Christ; whether it be a possible proposition that God the
Father hates the Son; or whether it was possible that Christ could have
taken upon Him the likeness of a woman, or of the devil, or of an ass, or
of a stone, or of a gourd; and then how that gourd should have preached,
wrought miracles, or been hung on the cross; and what Peter had
consecrated if he had administered the Sacrament at what time the body of
Christ hung upon the cross; or whether at the same time he might be said
to be man; whether after the Resurrection there will be any eating and
drinking, since we are so much afraid of hunger and thirst in this world.
There are infinite of these subtle trifles, and others more subtle than
these, of notions, relations, instants, formalities, quiddities,
haecceities, which no one can perceive without a Lynceus whose eyes could
look through a stone wall and discover those things through the thickest
darkness that never were.
Add to this those their other determinations, and those too so contrary
to common opinion that those oracles of the Stoics, which they call
paradoxes, seem in comparison of these but blockish and idle--as 'tis a
lesser crime to kill a thousand men than to set a stitch on a poor man's
shoe on the Sabbath day; and that a man should rather choose that the
whole world with all food and raiment, as they say, should perish, than
tell a lie, though never so inconsiderable. And these most subtle
subtleties are rendered yet more subtle by the several methods of so many
Schoolmen, that one might sooner wind himself out of a labyrinth than the
entanglements of the realists, nominalists, Thomists, Albertists,
Occamists, Scotists. Nor have I named all the several sects, but only
some of the chief; in all which there is so much doctrine and so much
difficulty that I may well conceive the apostles, had they been to deal
with these new kind of divines, had needed to have prayed in aid of some
other spirit.
Paul knew what faith was, and yet when he said, "Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen," he did not
define it doctor-like. And as he understood charity well himself, so he
did as illogically divide and define it to others in his first Epistle to
the Corinthians, Chapter the thirteenth. And devoutly, no doubt, did the
apostles consecrate the Eucharist; yet, had they been asked the question
touching the "terminus a quo" and the "terminus ad quem" of
transubstantiation; of the manner how the same body can be in several
places at one and the same time; of the difference the body of Christ has
in heaven from that of the cross, or this in the Sacrament; in what point
of time transubstantiation is, whereas prayer, by means of which it is,
as being a discrete quantity, is transient; they would not, I conceive,
have answered with the same subtlety as the Scotists dispute and define
it. They knew the mother of Jesus, but which of them has so
philosophically demonstrated how she was preserved from original sin as
have done our divines? Peter received the keys, and from Him too that
would not have trusted them with a person unworthy; yet whether he had
understanding or no, I know not, for certainly he never attained to that
subtlety to determine how he could have the key of knowledge that had no
knowledge himself. They baptized far and near, and yet taught nowhere
what was the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of baptism, nor
made the least mention of delible and indelible characters. They
worshiped, 'tis true, but in spirit, following herein no other than that
of the Gospel, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship, must worship him
in spirit and truth;" yet it does not appear it was at that time revealed
to them that an image sketched on the wall with a coal was to be
worshiped with the same worship as Christ Himself, if at least the two
forefingers be stretched out, the hair long and uncut, and have three
rays about the crown of the head. For who can conceive these things,
unless he has spent at least six and thirty years in the philosophical
and supercelestial whims of Aristotle and the Schoolmen?
In like manner, the apostles press to us grace; but which of them
distinguishes between free grace and grace that makes a man acceptable?
They exhort us to good works, and yet determine not what is the work
working, and what a resting in the work done. They incite us to charity,
and yet make no difference between charity infused and charity wrought in
us by our own endeavors. Nor do they declare whether it be an accident or
a substance, a thing created or uncreated. They detest and abominate sin,
but let me not live if they could define according to art what that is
which we call sin, unless perhaps they were inspired by the spirit of the
Scotists. Nor can I be brought to believe that Paul, by whose learning
you may judge the rest, would have so often condemned questions,
disputes, genealogies, and, as himself calls them, "strifes of words," if
he had thoroughly understood those subtleties, especially when all the
debates and controversies of those times were rude and blockish in
comparison of the more than Chrysippean subtleties of our masters.
Although yet the gentlemen are so modest that if they meet with anything
written by the apostles not so smooth and even as might be expected from
a master, they do not presently condemn it but handsomely bend it to
their own purpose, so great respect and honor do they give, partly to
antiquity and partly to the name of apostle. And truly 'twas a kind of
injustice to require so great things of them that never heard the least
word from their masters concerning it. And so if the like happen in
Chrysostom, Basil, Jerome, they think it enough to say they are not
obliged by it.
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