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2015-VI B R.AR.Y

OF THE
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Of ILLINOIS

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ErlmEc.THE

PRAISE OF FOLLY.the

PRAISE OF FOLLY.

Translated from the Latin of

ERASMUS,

With Explanatory Notes,

by

JAMES COPNER, M.A.,

Vicar of Eh tow.

" The older I grow, the more tolerant I get, and believe that
Wisdom is justified of all her children, and poor dear old Folly
of some of hers likewise."—Charles Kingslcy.

WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,

14, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London;
and 20, South Frederick Street, Edinburgh.

1878.JiEDroliD

PRINTED AT THE MEllCUltY PRESS, HIGH ST11EET.PREFACE.

" Perhaps," says Dean Milman, " no satire
was ever received with greater applause than the
Praise of Folly." It was read with avidity
throughout Europe, and no less than twenty-seven
large editions of it were called for during the
life-time of its author. Of course, the fact of
its having been written in Latin, which was then
the language of literature, materially promoted
its currency ; but, admitting this, its circulation
for those days was enormous. However, the
extraordinary^ cleverness and originality of the
brochure; its good-humoured, bantering, ridicule
of the various weaknesses of mankind ; and,
above all, its trenchant boldness in attacking the
ecclesiastical abuses which prevailed throughout
Christendom at the time, are amply sufficient to
account for it.

That the present translation may contribute
towards reviving public interest in this remarkable
work, which ought, and deserves, to be better
known, is the translator's earnest desire. At
the same time he is far too conscious of his
own short-comings to be very sanguine in the
matter; for to translate the Praise of Folly into
readable English is no easy task. The Latin
is frequently so terse and epigrammatic that it(vi-)

is difficult fully to express its meaning in a
modern tongue. The translator, however, has
done his best to represent correctly the sense
of the original, and if occasionally with some
freedom and expansion, yet invariably with the
object in view of bringing out the Author's
meaning with substantial fidelity.

Stultitia's lengthy declamation, which in the
Latin is unrelieved by either section or para-
graph, has here, for the reader's convenience, been
broken up into chapters, with descriptive headings.

It has been wondered that Erasmus, alive
as he was to the need of ecclesiastical reform,
should never have joined the party of Luther,
but should have remained to the end of his
days an adherent of the Roman Church. The
Praise of Folly to some extent affords an answer.
Erasmus was no enthusiast like his younger
compeer, but a calm observer of the irrationalities
of the worjxi.

And wise men still are few in number, whilst
Folly's votaries abound. We see them everywhere
in secular society, and we see them even within
the sacred portals of the church !—Cesium ipsum
petimus Stidtitia. There is room then, it is hoped,
for such a tractate as the following amongst the
manifold productions of our time.

J. c.

The Crescent, Bedford.CONTENTS

Dedication of Erasmus to Thomas More....................... 9

Chapter I.

Stultitia's Exordium—Her Cheering Influence—Her Subject

Propounded—Morosophs—Bilinguists....................... 19

Chapter II.

Stultitia's Origin—Her Parents—Her Birthplace—Her Retinue
—Her Claim to be Regarded as a Goddess—Her Benefits to
Men and Gods............................................. 30

Chapter III.

Reason and Impulse—The Origin of "Women—Why More Favoured
than Men—Jesters—Convivial Customs—Friendship—Love—
Stultitia the Mainstay of Society—Importance of Self-Esteem
—Folly of War—Wise Men Unfit for it. .................. 59

Chapter IV.

Wisdom a Disadvantage to Statesmen—Wise Men out of Place
in Society—The Commonwealth Supported by the Silliest
Expedients—Desire of Glory—True Prudence Indebted to
Folly—A Wise Man Depicted...................................86

Chapter V.

Folly Regenerates the World—Old Dons—Old Dames—School-
Knowledge Hell-Born—The Golden Age—Physicians why
Popular—Lawyers—Happiness of Simpletons—Women Partial
to Fools—A Wise Man a Wretched Creature.....................108( viii. )

Chapter YL

Insanity op two Kinds—Sportsmen—House-Builders—Alchemists
—Gamblers—Miracle-Mongers—Superstitions—Indulgences—

Absolutions—Saints—Pompous Funerals—Pedigrees—Self-
Esteem—Flattery, ........................................... 134

Chapter VII.

Popularity of Falsehood—Stultitia's Bounties—Her Worship
—Her Temple—Her Priests—Her Images—The Gods Amused
at the Doings of Mankind—Traders—Pilgrims—Schoolmasters
—Grammarians. .......................................<>.... 166

Chapter VIII.

The Poets—[Rhetoricians—Authors—Plagiarists—Controver-
sialists—Judges—Barristers—Philosophers—Mathematicians
Astrologers—Parsons and Schoolmen....................... 195

Chapter IX.

1?he Monks and their Doings—Specimens of their Sermons and
Style of Oratory.................................................235

Chapter X.

Kings and Princes—Courtiers—Bishops—Cardinals—Popes—
Priests. .................................................... 261

Chapter XI.

Fortune Favours Fools................................................291

Chapter XII,

Stultitia Backs up her Opinions .by Profane and Sacred
Authorities, and Gives Instances of the Fallacious Argu-
ments of Divines........................................... 298

Chapter XIII.

Stultitia's most Eager Devotees—The Beatific Happiness that
Awaits them—Conclusion. .,..,......,...........................339DEDICATION.

H« ERASMUS ROTERODAMUS

TO HIS FRIEND

THOMAS MORE.

As I was recently* prosecuting my journey
from Italy to England, rather than fritter away
the whole of the time that I had necessarily
to spend on horseback in prosy and illiterate

* Superioribus diebus. This expression usually means " in
former days," referring to days long ago past. I have translated
it here " recently," since the journey referred to was of compara-
tively recent date, having occurred only during the antecedent
year. It was performed in the spring of 1510, and shortly after
its completion our author commenced writing his Praise of Folly,
which, though so clever, was still a most hasty production, as the
rough, unpolished Latin in which it is written abundantly bears
witness. Erasmus in his letter to Dorpius speaks of its com-
position as having occupied him "about a week"—septem plus
minus dies—though, of course, he had well thought out previously
the subject-matter of the satire. It was transmitted to Paris to
be printed in the summer of the year 1511. This, no doubt,
was the date of the writing of the present " dedication " in
which the author speaks of his journey as having occurred
superioribus diebus—meaning rather more than a year before,IO

road-talk,* I preferred, as often as occasion
served, either to meditate silently to myself
over the studies which you and I pursue in
common, or to enjoy the vivid recollection that
possessed me of the very learned and most
delightful friends that I had left behind me
here. And amongst them, dear More,f you
were always uppermost in my thoughts. Indeed
I used to delight in the remembrance of you
when absent as I had appreciated your intimacy
when present. The latter, I solemnly assure
you, I ever look back upon as the most honied
retrospect of my life. Well ; since I thought
that I ought to employ myself while travelling
in some way or another, as the time was little
opportune for serious head-work, I resolved to
amuse myself by composing a playful tractate
on the Praise of Folly. What goddess, you
will ask, could have put such a strange re-
solution into my mind ? Well; I will tell you.
Your family name More, which is as much like
\^Moria (Folly) as you yourself, by the suffrages

* Fabulis. The author similarly uses the word fabulor
elsewhere in the sense of to "chat," or talk familiarly.

| Afterwards Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England.11

of all, are unlike it, first gave me the hint.
And then, again, I had an idea that this little
jeu d' esprit of mine would be especially pleas-
ing to you, because, if I mistake you not,
a joke which has a tinge of scholarship in it,
without being hackneyed, you relish as highly
as any one, and, in short, in your everyday
intercourse with mankind play the part of a
Democritus. Notwithstanding, indeed, that in
consequence of the singular brilliancy of your
intelligence, you are so infinitely superior to
the ordinary run of men, yet at the same time
so winsome and facile is your disposition that
you are able and willing to make yourself
agreeable in any company. I am sure, there-
fore, not only that you will accept my little
brochure with pleasure, as a memento of your
old comrade, but also that being dedicated to
you, and so being your property and not mine,
you will be ready, if need be, to speak up for
it against all detractors, for abuse enough it
will no doubt get. Some will say that it ill
becomes a theologian to have penned such
trifling nonsense; others will aver that a modest
Christian man could never have written with12

such ill-natured sarcasm, and will lay the sin at
my door of reintroducing- the spirit of ancient
comedy, of bringing back Lucian, and of snap-
ping and snarling at everythingi

First then—in reply to those whom the
lightness and playfulness of my tractate offends
—let me say that I am in no sense the
originator of this species of literature, but that
it has been adopted over and over again by
celebrated authors of antiquity. Homer, for
instance, ages and ages ago, introduced his
readers to frogs and mice engaged in battle ;
Virgil has his salad-gnat, and Ovid his nut-
tree \ Polycrates lavishes his humorous lauda-
tions on the unspeakable enormities of Busiris,*
and Isocrates, of course, like a matter-of-fact
noodle, censures him severely for so doing.
Glauco, again, descants on the merits of in-
justice ; Favorinus on the beauty of Thersites,f
and on the advantages men reap from the
quartan ague. Synesius wrote an essay in
commendation of baldness, and Lucian bepraises

* A King of Egypt, most inhuman in his treatment of
foreigners. He is fabled to have been slain by Hercules.

f The most deformed of the Greeks who took part in the
Trojan War,13

toad-eatefs as happy sugar-loving flies. Sefleca
in a similarly satirical vein details the apotheosis
of Claudius. Plutarch wrote the Gryllus-Ulysses
dialogue,* and Apuleius the Ass.f Who may
have written the Last Will and Testament of
Grunnius Corocatta the Pig I don't know, but at
any rate it is mentioned by no less an authority
than St. Jerome.

Let my detractors, then, say, if they will*
that this treatise of mine is a frivolous pro-
duction. Let them say too, if they like it,
that I am a frivolous fellow myself, that I pass
my time for the sake of diversion in mere
boys' games, in playing at banditti, riding oft
a stick, or doing no matter what. I simply
ask, why should I not do so if I like it ?
Surely it is but bare justice, when men of all
other classes are allowed to amuse themselves
in their leisure hours according to their tastes,
that the same liberty should be accorded to

* Gryllus is said to have accompanied Ulysses on his
return from the Trojan War, and to have been transformed by
Circe into a pig. He is represented as arguing in a conversation
With Ulysses that the condition of pigs is much happier thaft
that of human beings.

f An allegory entitled the Golden Ass, still extant in eleverl
books, and replete with moral instruction*14

men of letters. And a still more cogent reason
is there why this liberty should be granted
them,' if, while they divert themselves by writing
their literary facetiae, they so do it as, under
cover of them, to convey serious lessons to
mankind ; if they so expose the absurdities of
the day that a reader who is not dull of com-
prehension indeed may derive more real benefit
from their playful irony than from studying the
pages of some of our gloomy and pretentious
writers. What, for example, can be more un-
profitable than to waste time in wading through
a volume of closely packed verbiage in empty
laudation of rhetoric and philosophy ? What,
again, can be the use of poring over a book
containing nothing better than a fulsome enu-
meration of some prince's virtues, or fanatically
advocating a fresh crusade against the Turks ?
And then, again, there are the works of our
astrological pretenders which presumptuously pre-
dict future events, and those, again, of our
schoolmen which are made up of a hodge-podge
of nasty little speculations about questions of
no earthly importance at all.

Now as nothing is more frivolous than to!5

treat serious things frivolously, so nothing affords
a feast of more wholesome fun than so to treat
frivolous things that you may appear really to
be defending them in sober seriousness. Whether
or not in the following tractate I have accom-
plished this successfully is of course for others
to judge. At the same time I will venture to
express a hope, if my good opinion of myself
does not grievously deceive me, that you will
rise from the perusal of my little work with the
conviction that I am no fool, albeit indeed the
author of the Praise of Folly.

And next, in reply to those who would
accuse me of writing in a strain of biting
sarcasm, I would simply state, in my defence,
that wits have always enjoyed with impunity
full liberty to bespatter with the salt of their
ridicule the various foibles of mankind, provided
only that the licence which is allowed them is
exercised in a good-tempered way. I am there-
fore the more astonished at the people of the
present day that they are so abnormally touchy,
have ears so keenly sensitive to the least sound
of disrespect, that if you were to insinuate,
however playfully, that all the solemn and im-i6

posing titles* which are conventionally assigned
to our magnates, do not of necessity correctly
describe the men to whom they belong, you
would instantly be deemed guilty of a serious
breach of propriety. Indeed, some men you
may see whose religion is of so perverted a
kind that they would complacently listen to the
most glaring blasphemies against Christ rather
than the very lightest of jests at the expense
either of Pope or King ; and especially is this
the case with those who happen to have any
reason to suppose that their bread and butter
in any degree depends on the patronage of
either of the above-named exalted personages.

But if, in attacking the imbecilities of the
world, a writer studiously avoids attacking any
individuals by their names, then I would ask
if, instead of being reprobated as a caviller, he
ought not rather to be thanked for his whole-
some instructions and admonition. And con-
trariwise, if I, in the following treatise, had
censured a number of individuals by their names,
I should certainly by so doing, have laid myself

* Such as, His Serene Highness, Most Reverend, His
Holiness, His Grace, His Worship, Venerable, &c., &c.i7

justly open to the charge of ill-natured sarcasm
which I now indignantly repel.

And another reason why I should not be
accused of ill-natured sarcasm is this. A writer
who launches his invectives at no particular
individuals at all, but at all classes of men
without exception, is surely, on the very face
of it, a foe to vices, and not to individual men.
If then there should be any one who thinks
that I have pointed my censures at him indi-
vidually, mind it is not I, but either his own
conscience, or at any rate his own fear, that
tells him so. St. Jerome, who was a master of
this sort of denunciation, was far more free in
his language, and far more acrimonious, than I
have ever been, not unfrequently mentioning
pointedly by name the victims of his obloquy,
whereas I have not only abstained from using
names, but have adopted, moreover, a style so
sportive that any reader of average comprehen-
sion will easily perceive that I have sought more
to afford amusement than to cause annoyance.
Nor, again, have I ever in the following pages,
like Juvenal of old, stirred up the mud of that

hidden sink of iniquity in which some base

Bcreatures wallow, but have endeavoured to pass
under my review what is ridiculous in the ways
of men rather than what is disgusting-.

And now, lastly, should there be any one
whose wrath these preliminary apologies of mine
may fail to appease, I would offer him for his
consolation the reflection that after all he is only
railed at by Folly, and he may take that, if he
pleases, for commendation ; for I have made
Folly the speaker throughout, and have invariably
put into her mouth words in keeping with her
character.

But wherefore all these excuses for my work ?
for have I not in you a singularly able patron
—one who can advocate to perfection even causes
which, like this tractate of mine, are very far
from perfection themselves ? Thus I bid you
farewell, most eloquent More, and to your skill
I leave it to defend your Moria.

Written from the country this <$th day of June,
in the year 1508.*

* The date of the year is evidently incorrect. Erasmus
left England for Italy in 1506 and returned in 1510.PRAISE

THE

OF

FOLLY.

-#-

STULTITIA'S DECLAMATION*

Chapter I.

Stultitia's Exordium—Her Cheering Influence—Her
Subject Propounded—Morosophs—Bilinguists.

In what manner soever mortals generally
speak of me, and I am by no means unaware of
the evil things that are said of me by even the
greatest of fools, yet I assert, and I assert it
emphatically that it is from me, from my in-
fluence only, that gods and men derive all mirth
and cheerfulness. You laugh, I see. Well ;
even that is a telling argument in my favour.
Actually now, as soon as ever I have opened my
mouth in this most numerous assembly, the coun-
tenances of you all have instantly brightened
up with fresh and unwonted hilarity ; you have

* Stultitia, in costume, comes forward to deliver her oration.
Her cap, bells, and gewgaws proclaim her the Patroness of Folly.20

suddenly relaxed your features, and have ap-
plauded my appearance with such joyful and
hearty glee, that, verily the whole vast number
of you that I see before me seem as if enlivened
by the nectar and nepenthe of the Homeric
gods, whereas, but a few moments ago, you were
all looking as demure and woebegone as if you
had just returned from the Cave of Trophonius!* ,
Indeed, I am to you like the sun, when first that
beautiful and golden luminary displays to the
earth its orb at the dawn of day. I am to you
like the primal spring-tide coming with softly-
breathing zephyrs after stern winter. All nature
forthwith puts on a new face, a new colour, a
kind of unmistakeable youthfulness. And so it is
with you when I appear. Your countenances
change immediately. What your great rhetori-
cians can scarcely do with their prolix and long
cogitated orations, namely, drive troublesome
cares out of men's minds, I have effected at
once by a mere look! If then you wish to know

* The cave of Trophonius was one of the most celebrated
oracles of Greece. Suppliants were usually pale and dejected
on their return from it ; and hence it became proverbial to
speak of a melancholy man as one who looked as if he had just
returned from the Cave of Trophonius.2 I

why I have presented myself before you in this
strange costume to-day, I will presently tell you,
provided you will give me your attention. And
I don't expect, remember, to get from you the
sort of attention that you pay to your reverend
preachers, but rather the kind of attention that
you pay to a quack doctor in the market-place,
to a buffoon or to a jester, in short such atten-
tion as my apt scholar Midas* once paid to Pan.
That is the sort of attention I anticipate you
will afford me ; for it is my intention now, for
a short time, to act towards you the part of a
lecturer; f of a lecturer, however, of a very different
type from that of your modern lecturers,$ who
drum a lot of tiresome rubbish into the heads of
boys, and train them up to be more obstinately
disputatious than women. No, no; the lecturers
I will set before me as my patterns shall be
those celebrated lecturers of antiquity who, in
order to avoid the infamous imputation of being

* He is said to have listened with such absorbed attention
to Pan playing on his flute that Apollo in derision developed his
ears to the size of those of a donkey. Hence to listen with the
ears of Midas became a proverbial saying.

f Literally " of a sophist.""

\ Professors at the Universities and elsewhere.22

wise men (Sophoi), preferred to assume the name
of wiseacres (Sophists).* The aim of these men
was to lavish panegyrics on gods and heroes-
And, therefore, you shall have from me a pane-
gyric, not indeed in praise of Hercules or of
Solon, but in praise of myself, in other words,
of Folly ! Not a snap do I care for those
sapient individuals who protest that it is a most
foolish and most unbecoming proceeding for
anybody to sound his own praises. Well ; let
it be as foolish as they may be pleased to call
it, it matters nought to me, provided they con-
fess that I act my part consistently, f And surely
for Folly to blow her own trumpet, and pipe her
own praises, squares with her character to per-
fection. Certainly no one, unless so lucky as
to know more of me (Folly) than I know of
myself, can be a more competent expounder, of
my virtues.

And in speaking in laudation of myself, I
act, I flatter myself, with considerably greater

* Stultitia, consistently with her character, has the folly
here to admit that she is going to weave a mere sophistical
tirade !

f Listrius thus explains the words, modo decorum esse fateantur.23

modesty than your vulgar herd of magnates and
literary men often do, who with all their pre-
tended reluctance to glorify themselves, have
nevertheless no scruples whatever about suborning
some frothy rhetorician, or word-spinning rhym-
ster, whose services are bought and paid for, to
sound their lying praises for them. Men of
modesty indeed ! Why, whilst their impudent
flatterers are comparing these worthless drivellers
to the gods, proposing them as exemplifications
of all virtues, of which their own consciences
can tell them they have few enough ; whilst
they are clothing these insignificant crows with
borrowed plumes, scrubbing these foul-skinned
blackamoors white, and making elephants out of
these contemptible flies, they are all the while
strutting about with wings and crest erect like
very peacocks. I scorn such cozenage. I believe
in the trite old proverb that " a man is right to
praise himself if he can find no one else to
praise him," and I therefore do it. Nevertheless
I at the same time confess that I marvel very
much—shall I say at the ingratitude or the
laziness of mortals ?—that, notwithstanding they
so diligently copy me, and so readily take ad-24

vantage of my services, not one of them has
yet existed during all these ages who has had
the grace with one word of approval to celebrate
my worth. And especially is this remarkable
when it is considered that writers have not been
wanting who have wasted their midnight oil, and
deprived themselves of needful slumber in order
to lavish fulsome and elaborated praises on such
utterly unpraiseworthy objects as are tyrants like
Busiris and Phalaris,* or things like quartan
fevers, flies, bald pates, and goodness knows
what else. You will get indeed but an extem-
poraneous and offhand effusion from me, but my
words at any rate will be all the truer in
consequence. I have no wish to be thought
like your everyday spouters who, in order to
show off their cleverness, prepare beforehand
what they have to say. Indeed, as you well
know, when they produce a speech which has
cost them thirty whole yearsf to concoct, and
is not unfrequently none of their own at all,
they yet have the effrontery to swear that its

* Phalaris, a tyrant of Agrigentum, notorious for his
inhuman cruelties.

f " Thirty whole years,:" as being the space of a genera-
tion or an average lifetime.preparation afforded them but a three days'
amusement, that they wrote it off without effort,
or dictated it to an amanuensis who took down
their words. But my oration really is extem-
poraneous in the fullest sense of the expression ;
for it is a habit I invariably delight in to say
just what comes first to my tongue. Therefore
with the rhetorical rules which ordinary speakers
are guided by let none of you expect me to
comply. Definition and division forsooth! De-
pend upon it I don't mean to begin by defining
myself, (my subject "Folly"), and still less to
go on to cut myself up into numerous divisions.
To attempt to do either would assuredly be a
work of ill omen. What ! Can Folly whose
influence is unbounded be defined and circum-
scribed herself ? Can she, in whose worship
every kind of thing is united, be herself divided
into sections ? Besides, of what use to define,
as it were, my shadow, when in substance I
stand before you ? Yes; here you see me large
as life—Folly herself and no other—the very
same identical dispenser of bounties whom the
Latins were devoted to as Stultitia, and the
Greeks as Moria.But wherefore should I explain all this ? for
surely who I am is sufficiently apparent. My
very face bewrays me. On my very brow, as
they say, is my name written. No one would
take me for a Minerva. No one would
contend that I am the Goddess of Wisdom.
The mere expression of my countenance tells its
own tale. No need whatever of deceptive words
from me, although indeed, in my case, words
are never deceptive at all, but always the true
mirror of my mind. There is no hypocrisy about
me. I do not pretend by my countenance to be
one thing whilst in my heart I am another. In
fact so consistent with myself I invariably am ;
so true is my external expression to my internal
character, that not only am I incapable of deceit
myself, but even those who are under my in-
fluence are incapable of deceit likewise. Let
them try to deceive ; let them endeavour ever
so much to make the world imagine that they
are not what they really are (namely, fools), and
assuredly they will fail in the attempt. They
may lay claim to the name, and affect the
demeanour of men of wisdom; but nevertheless,
all the while, they do but strut about the world27

like apes in fine clothing,—like asses in the
garb of lions! They may endeavour as they will
to keep up the sham, but, as sure as fate, out
will pop the ass's ears* at one point or another.
Ungrateful, by Hercules, is this class of men to
me. I am their special patron, and yet so
ashamed are they of my name (Fool), because
forsooth the vulgar herd of men happen to
despise it, that they repudiate it as belonging
to themselves, and actually apply it to others as
a term of marked offensiveness ! I would sug-
gest, therefore, as a most appropriate appellation
to accord to them, since they are so averse to
be styled by the name of fools, that we dub
them with the cognomen of morosophs (fool-
sages), a title unquestionably belonging to them
jure optima, indicating, as it does, that although
they wish to pass themselves off as men of
wisdom, yea as very Thaletes,f they are nought
in reality but the starkest specimens of folly.

And there is another particular in which it
has seemed good to me to imitate the folly of

* Literally, " Their prominent ears betray a Midas."

f " Very Thaletes "—i.e., wise as Thales, one of the seven
wise men of Greece.28

the learned declaimers of our day. They evi-
dently regard themselves as akin for sapience to
the gods in proportion as they can make it
appear that they have two tongues like horse-
leeches !* And a remarkable feat of cleverness
indeed do they flatter themselves that they ac-
complish, if into the midst of a Latin tirade they
dovetail, like cubes in a mosaic, a few perfectly-
out-of-place Greek termsf to show off their
scholarship. Should such exotic words fail them,
they have an easy remedy at hand. From the
pages of some musty tome they cull four or five
antique phrases by which they hope to succeed
so admirably in throwing dust into their readers'
eyes that those who comprehend what their
foreign jargon means may plume themselves
mightily on their wisdom, and, on the other hand,
that those to whom such outlandish lingo is un-
intelligible may wonder in proportion to their
ignorance at the stupendous erudition of their
guides. And indeed this delight of my votaries

* Pliny describes horse-leeches as having two tongues.

f Thus, throughout this Latin tractate, Erasmus repeatedly
puts Greek words into the mouth of Folly. They are inter-
spersed every here and there in a most ridiculous way, which
cannot be shown in a translation.29

in language according as it is far-fetched is a no
inelegant description of pleasure. Should, how-
ever, any of them be a little too ambitious
(ambitious, that is, of appearing learned whilst
unable to call to remembrance any learned words
to use), they still have it in their power thus to
carry out the deception. If addressed on a
subject, or in words, that they don't the least
understand they may smile and applaud, and
move their ears, so to speak, like donkeys do,
and thus convey an impression to those about
them that they so far fully comprehend every-
thing the speaker says.Chapter il

Stultitia's Origin—Her Parents—Her Birthplace—Her
Retinue—-Her Claim to be Regarded as a Goddess—
Her Benefits to Men and Gods.

But now to return to my subject. Of my
name, then, 0 ye men fvirij I have informed
you. " O ye men " did I say ? Ah ! through
inadvertence I have omitted to add your proper
epithet. I should, of course, have addressed you
at* stultissimi® (men of egregious folly) ; for in-
deed. by no more honourable appellation can the
great goddess Stultitia command the attention
of her devotees. Well then, O ye viri stultissimi,
O ye superlative fools—my name I have told
you. The next thing I have to endeavour, the
.. Muses helping me, to explain is what is known
to few—namely my birth and parentage. And
here I would impress upon you that neither
Chaos, nor Saturn, nor any other of your effete

% Orators usually addressed their hearers as viri docti, viri
fortissimi, and so forth. Stultitia adopts as a more appropriate
formula viri stultissimi !3i

and worn out divinities was father to me. The
great progenitor of gods and men was Plutus
(Wealth or Money) and no other, and I care
not what Homer or Hesiod, or even Jupiter
himself may maintain to the contrary. Every-
thing, I affirm, is subjected to the control of
Plutus. All sacred and profane things are now,
and have ever been, entirely and indiscriminately
at the mercy of his nod. War, peace, empires,
designs, judicial decisions, political cabals, wed-
dings, treaties, alliances, laws, arts, things ludi-
crous, and things serious—in a word, for I am
already getting out of breath—all the affairs of
mortals that can possibly be named, whether
public or private, are administered in obedience
to his sovereign will and arbitration. And
without his aid what could even the gods do ?
What would become of all our petty poetical
divinities ; nay—to be bolder—what even of our
gods of primaiy magnitude, if they had not his
help to trust to ? Either they would soon cease
to be, or if they lived on, would at best eke
out but an uncommonly ungodlike existence of
it in a condition of poverty and discomfort.

Even the gods of heaven, then, have Plutus32

to thank for their well-being. How much more
so must this be the case with the sons of earth !
Let a man but make Plutus (Wealth) his enemy,
and then—alas for him !—not even could Pallas
(Wisdom) herself render him efficient service.
Whereas, on the other hand, let but Plutus smile
upon him, and he may snap his fingers at Jupiter
with all his thunderbolts !*

From this illustrious sire I glory to be
sprung. And he indeed begat me, not from
the recesses of his brains,t as Jupiter begat
that ugly yellow-faced creature Pallas (Wisdom)J,
but from the beauteous Neotes (Youth), the
fairest and most sportive of the nymphs. And
bound was he to her not (like Jupiter to Juno)
by the shackles of a loveless matrimony re-
sulting in the birth of a crippled smith (Vulcan),

*	" dat census honores

Census amicitias ; pauper ubique jacet."

Ovid. Fast. i. 217.

f Pallas or Minerva was said to have sprung from the
brains of Jupiter. The esoteric meaning of the old myth is
plain enough. It is simply an allegorical mode of expressing
the belief, which has been held by mankind in all ages, that
wisdom originates with God.

{ Stultitia's special aversion, whose countenance

" Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."33

but—oh how far sweeter !—" by endearing en-
tanglements," as Homer expresses it, combining
into one two kindred souls !

But, that you may not err, let me plainly
tell you that it was no Aristophanic Plutus, no
used-up, blind old dotard that brought me into
being, but Plutus as he was in the early vigour
of his prime, flushed by youthful impulse, and
by nectar still more, which then, probably,
in a carousal of the gods he had been
quaffing unmixed and in more than his wonted
draughts.*

And perhaps, since people in these days are
so wonderfully curious to know where any dis-
tinguished noodle uttered his first squalls, you
may wish to know my birthplace. I would tell
you then, that it was neither in erratic Delos,
nor in the wavy sea, nor in some wretched
hollow of a cavern that I first saw the light
of day, but in those isles which Fortune smiles
upon where all things spontaneously come forth

* What a clever vein of satire runs through all this !
Wealth and Neotes the fruitful parents of Folly! How often
seen to be true! Inexperienced Neotes united to Wealth in the
first freshness of early possession ! Of what extravagancies are
they often guilty ! Plutus when old grows more discreet.

D34

without either sowing or tillage.* No need
there for labour, no growing old, no diseases.
In the fields no asphodel, no mallows, leeks, or
lupines. No bean there, nor any herb of trivial
kind is seen. But everywhere to charm you is
the molu,f to cure all maladies the panacea, to
ease all sorrows the nepenthe. Everywhere
flourishes the amaracus, everywhere the ambrosia
and the lotus. Everywhere roses, violets, and
hyacinths. Everywhere, in fine, to delight your
eyes, and to gratify your nostrils, are the
beauteous gardens of Adonis.

Born amidst such ecstatic pleasures I com-

^ Fohy is thus represented as born, not amidst hardships
by land x. sea? :>.ot in the homes of poverty, but in the lap of
luxury, and without any stimulus to exertion. The Fortunate
Islands, the fuucapiw in'jcroi of mythology, were creations of the
early Greek poets, who, supplementing their scanty geographical
knowledge by giving rein to their fancy, imagined their existence
in some unknown region of the Western Ocean. Horace makes
a spirited allusion to them in the sixteenth of his Epodes, in
which he playfully exhorts his countrymen to leave their own
distracted country to its fate, and be off to the Isles of Fortune,
Nos manet oceanus circumvagus ! arva, beata

Petamus arva, divites et insulas !

Reddit ubi Cererem tellus inarata quotannis
Et imputata &c., &c,

f A fabulous herb said to have been given to Ulysses by
Mercury to protect him from the witchcrafts of Circe,35

menced my life, not, as other children do,, with
the cries of infancy; for no sooner was I brought
into the world than, gazing upwards at my
mother, I forthwith blandly smiled. I envy not
the goat-nurse of Jove, since I for my foster-
mothers had two very blooming nymphs—Methe
(Wine ad libitumj, child of Bacchus, and Apsedia
(want of proper training), daughter of Pan.
These you see even now before you in the
varied number of my companions and attendants,
whose names, by Hercules, if you wish to know
you shall not hear from me but in a Greek
shape. This one here, then, whom you see
lifting up her eyebrows is Philantia (Self-love).
That one there with smiles on her countenance,
and apparently clapping her hands is Kolakia
(Flattery). And that drowsy-looking creature
over there, seeming too sleepy to attend to
anything is Lethe (Forgetfulness). That other
one there, leaning on her elbows, and with her
hands clasped, is Misoponia (Indolence). The
one with a garland of roses on her head, and
scented all over with perfumes, is Hedone
(Pleasure). The one that you see there gazing
about her, with her eyes rolling unsteadily hither36

and thither, is called Anoia (Little Sense). And
the name of that buxom lass over there, with
glittering skin and well rounded bust, is Truphe
(Luxuriousness). You see also two gods in com-
pany with the girls. One of these they name
Comus (Love of Play), and the other Somnus
(Love of Sleep). By means of the faithful
services of all these minions of mine, I subject
every kind of thing to my sway, and rule the
very rulers of the world.

I have now sufficiently informed you about
my birth, education and companions. Next, lest
you should imagine that I have claimed without
good reason the name of goddess, let me ask
your earnest attention whilst I point out to you
what singular advantages both gods and men
derive from me, and how widely my influence is
extended. Now if it be true, as a certain writer
has said, that godship consists in usefulness to
mortals ; and if those who have shown them
how to make wine, or bread, or any other
serviceable commodity, have been deservedly
reckoned as belonging to the conclave of the
gods, why should not I, who alone bestow on
all mortals without exception benefits of every37

kind, and with lavish prodigality, be rightly
called and regarded as the very alpha (chief)
of all divinities ?

To begin with. What can be sweeter or
more precious than life ? And yet to what, in
any man's case, is the inception of life con-
fessedly to be traced but to me ? Neither the
spear of nobly-born Pallas, nor the shield of
cloud-gathering Jove, are of any avail to produce
the race of men. The very father of the gods,
and King of men, who makes the whole of
Olympus to tremble at his nod, if he wishes—
and when does he not ?—to multiply the scions
of his lineage,* must perforce lay aside all his
dignity, all his three-forked lightning, and that
terribly grim, Titanic face of his, with which
he scares the celestials, and must condescend
(miserable god !) just like any common stage-
player to personate the' character of another !

And then there are your stoics—those philo-
sophers and learned doctors of yours who fancy
themselves such divinities. Give me, however, a
stoic, and I care not how dry a chip he may
be. Let him be three times, four times—nay,

waiftoTToleiv*38

if you like it, six hundred times more lugubrious
than the gravest of them ; even he will have
to discard, I will not say his beard, that un-
erring badge of superior wisdom—though, by
the way, goats have beards as well as he!—
yet certainly even he will have to lay aside his
conventional hauteur, to unfold his wrinkled brow,
to repudiate his hard adamantine dogmata, to
toy and trifle, and make for a little while a
madcap of himself. In short, this very sapient
individual will have to send for me, if he aspires
to the honours of a sire.*

But to chat to you, as is my wont, somewhat
more freely. I would ask you then, whether the
head, or the face, or the breast, or the hand ;
whether, in short, any parts of the body which
are esteemed honourable progenerant deos aut
homines. Non opinor. Imo ea pars adeo stulta
adeoque ridicula ut nec nominari citra risum possit
humani generis est propagatrix.f Yes indeed that,
far more truly than the quarternion of Pythagoras^

* " Si modo pater velit esse."

f I give this passage in the Latin for obvious reasons.

J Pythagoras promulgated the doctrine of the " quarter-
nion"—namely, that the four so-called "elements"—earth, air,
fire, and water, constituted the radical matter of the universe.39

is the sacred fountain from which all things derive
existence,

And tell me, too, I beseech you, where is
a man to be found who, if he were to weigh
thoroughly beforehand, as wise men do, the
numerous troubles and inconveniences of married
life would ever be induced to put his head into
the matrimonial noose. And what woman, did
she but know and consider previously the cares
and bothers of motherhood, would ever desire
the honours of a spouse ?

Since then you owe your existence to mar-
riages, and marriages to my constant attendant
Anoia (Little Thought), you can plainly see how
very much it is that you are indebted to me !

Again, but for the ever present influence of
Lethe (Forgetfulness), what woman who had once
gone through the experiences of matrimony
would ever wish to repeat them ? With all due
deference to Lucretius, not even can Venus her-
self deny that, but for my (Folly's) assistance,
her power over men would be null and void.
Yes; even grave and supercilious philosophers
—whose position, by the way, is now occupied
by men commonly called monks ; even kings4°

robed in purple ; even pious priests, and Most
Holy, Holy, Holy, Pontiffs—all, without excep-
tion, derive their mundane existence from an
antecedent lusus* of so besotted and ridiculous
a kind as to have no author but myself.

And lastly, from me similarly is derived the
whole collection of the gods of poetry—a crowd
so vast that Heaven itself, spacious though it
be, hardly suffices to afford accommodation for
their multitude.

But to prove that I am the author and
originator of life is insufficient, unless I can
moreover show that whatever advantages life has
are also entirely conferred by me. Life indeed!
Why life without pleasure is unworthy to be
called life at all (applause). You have applauded
me. I thought you would. I felt sure that
none of you were so wise—and I say this as
a compliment to you, for the more foolish you
are, so much the wiser you are in my estima-

* As any physical monstrosity may be said to result from a
lusus naturcz, so Folly would describe every child of man as the
result of a lusus stultitia. She would say of all men whether
great or small, whether lowly paupers or such exalted dignitaries
as even kings and popes, " ex nostro illo temulento ridiculoque
lusu proveniunt."41

tion—I felt sure then, I say, that none of you
were so wise as to hold a different opinion.
So wise, did I say ? And yet look at your
reputed wise men, the stoics (the monks, divines,
&c., of the time). It is true they vilify pleasure;
but, depend upon it, it is all pretence. The
thousand objurgations that they heap upon it,
and with which, so to speak, they tear it to
pieces in the sight of the multitude, are mere
scarecrow-invectives, intended, forsooth, to frighten
off other people from it that they may have the
opportunity of enjoying it so much the more
plentifully themselves. For, by Jove, let them
tell me, if they can, what part of life is not
sad, is not joyless, is not full of gloom, full
of insipidity, is not, in fact, utterly burdensome
and oppressive, unless you add to it pleasure—
in other words, the grateful condiment of Folly.
And in favour of this view, possibly you may
deem Sophocles, a writer who cannot be too
highly commended, to be a tolerably competent
authority. And what does he say ? Why he
avers, in that very beautiful poem of his which
is extant, and in which he eulogises me, that

Our life is most jolly

When seasoned with Folly,

E42

And this I will go on now to point out
in detail. Take then the first, the earliest stage
of life. Who does not know that this is to
every man by far the happiest and most agree-
able portion of his existence ? And yet, why
should it be so ? What is there in a whining,
puling infant that is so delightful as to make
us wish to smother it with kisses, to dandle it
in our arms, and so fondly to rear it up ?
Why is it that even a foe would befriend such
a witless brat ? Why but that benignant Nature,
coming to their aid, has the prudence to impart
to those newly-born bantlings some of Folly's
witchery—a witchery so fascinating, so provoca-
tive of a sense of pleasure, that those who
educate them find their labours sweet, and those,
under whose care they are, are, nolentes volentes,
constrained to allow all sorts of indulgences to
be wheedled out of them.

And as to the season of early youth, which
comes after childhood, in what universal favour
is it held! How kindly disposed are all men to
it; how eagerly do they promote its interests ;
and with what alacrity do they stretch out to it
their helping hands ! But from whence, I ask,43

does youth acquire all this partiality, if not from
me? I (Folly), surely, am the beneficent foun-
tain of its lack of wisdom. I, therefore, am the
cause that its heart-aches are so few. And that
I tell no lies in this matter is evident; for no
sooner has youth developed in stature, and by
worldly experience and training has acquired
some amount of the wisdom that belongs to
manhood, than forthwith the lustre of its bloom-
ing beauty begins to fade away; its vivacity
gradually gives place to langour, its sunny
mirthfulness to cold and frozen formality, and
its pristine vigour to a nerveless and incapable
decrepitude. In fact, the further from my in-
fluence any one is withdrawn, as he advances
on the pilgrimage of life, the less and less does
he enjoy his existence, until at length old age—
woebegone old age, which I hate as much as
anybody—comes upon him, and crushes him to
the earth with its load of cares. Indeed it
would be bearable by no mortal being were it
not that I am propitiously at hand to compas-
sionate its troubles. Like the gods of the poets
who are wont to succour the perishing by
effecting in them a metamorphosis, I take pity44

on the wretched old sufferers tottering on the
brink of the grave, and, so far as may be, call
them back to childhood. Hence, not without
good reason is old age popularly spoken of as
a second childhood.

And, if any one wishes to learn how it
is I accomplish this wonderful transformation, I
will tell him. I take them, then, to the Foun-
tain of Lethe (Forgetfulness), which rises in the
Fortunate Isles. Though fabled to be a rivulet
in Hell, depend upon it there is uncommonly
little of it to be found flowing there. Well ;
they drink deep draughts of oblivion from this
grateful spring, until by degrees, the cares of
their souls having become diluted by its waters,
they grow young again. "Grow young again!"
I fancy I hear people say. " How can that be ?
How can they be young again, when they are
actually doting and bereft of their wits?" Yes;
that is the very point. That is the very thing
that their renewed boyhood consists in. For
what is to be a boy, but to be silly and brain-
less ? In fact, the chief charm of this period of
life is its know-nothingness; and a boy who has
a man's head upon his shoulders is universally45

detested and execrated as a monster. It is agreed

on all hands—in short, it is proverbial,—that

An urchin who precocious is
A nuisance most atrocious is

to everybody about him. And so would an old

man be, if he retained his vigour of mind, and

shrewdness of judgment, unimpaired in his senility.

People, feeling that he had wits in proportion to

his lengthened experience of the world's crooked

ways, would studiously shun him, and would be

afraid of having any dealings or transactions

with him at all. Thanks, however, to me, the

old crone whom I patronise dotes. But dotard

though he be, he is at any rate free from all

those wretched, carking, cares that cruciate your

man of wisdom.

And then, again, he is no bad drinking-
companion, since he feels nothing of that tedium
vitce,. that weariness of existence, which to men
of robuster age is so barely tolerable.

Sometimes too, if he is unfortunate enough
to relish such a thing, like the old man in the
Plays of Plautus, he will fall in love !* But in

* Literally, " he reverts to the three letters"; for Plautus
represents the old man, beginning to fall in love in second
childhood, as having learnt the three letters—A M O46

the intervals of his love-fits, by my kind influence
over him, he will be quite happy, perfectly
agreeable to his friends, and not at all, as under
such circumstances you might expect him to be,
an uncongenial messmate at the festive board.
As cases in point, you will remember, perhaps,
how Homer* represents the language flowing
from the lips of old Nestor as sweeter than
honey, whilst he describes that of Achilles as
bitter like -gall ; and how he depicts old grey-
beards sitting together on the walls of Troy
and uttering lily-sweet words. Indeed, tried by
the test of a capacity for talking, old age is
superior even to babyhood. Babyhood is cer-
tainly a supremely delightful age ; but then it
is an infant age—an age, that is, of inability
to talk (infans), and therefore destitute, remember
you, of that prime solace of an old man's life
—garrulity !

But old men and children who have got
over the time of their speechless babyhood, are
preeminently alike ; and, as is consequently
natural—for God makes like consort with like—
they delight extravagantly the one in the other.

* In the Iliad.47

With the exception that the former have more
birthdays in their reckoning, and more wrinkles
on their brows, there is little or no difference
between them. Hairs of white hue, teeth of
defective number, and bodies beneath the full-
grown size are common to both of them. Both,
too, have a partiality for milk-food, and a pro-
pensity for babbling and chattering in an in-
ordinate degree. Both, moreover, are alike silly,
thoughtless, and forgetful, and—to be brief—in
all other respects, they singularly resemble one
another.

And this resemblance of age to childhood
becomes greater in proportion as age advances.
Men return, ever more and more, to what they
were in infancy, until at length, restored to the
blissful condition of new-born babes, they pass
their days in a state of happy slumbering. And
thus finally, at the close of all, without experi-
encing any weariness of life, or possessing any
consciousness of approaching death, they quietly
sleep themselves away.*

* " By the hand of nature," says Dr. B. W. Richardson,
" death were a painless portion. The cycle of life completed,
the living being sleeps into death when Nature has her way."

—,Diseases of Modem Life, />. 4,And now let any one who pleases go and
compare this blessed transformation which I bring-
about in men with the monstrous metamorphoses
which have been wrought upon them by other
deities. And I speak not, remember, of what
these gods have done to men in their anger, for
it would be too distasteful a subject to dwell
upon, but of how, in their most propitious moods,
they have changed one man into a tree, another
into a bird, another into a grasshopper, or even,
it may be, into a serpent. Now surely it is
plain that such changes as these involve a total
destruction of identity. A man so changed is
essentially a different being, and it would have
been as well, or better for him, had he been
annihilated at once. I change men in a much
more felicitous way than this—not by transmo-
grifying them into heterogeneous anythings, but
by bringing them back, with their identity fully
preserved, to the best and happiest season of
their existence.

Ah ! if mortals would but keep clear alto-
gether of any dealings with wisdom ; if they
would but spend their days uninterruptedly under
my auspices, then would there be for them no49

such thing as growing old at all, but youth
with all its happiness would be theirs perpetually
to enjoy. Ah! see you not, from their sad and
wizen faces, how those who addict themselves
to literary pursuits, or to hard and serious work,
begin, almost before they are young men, to
look like old ones ? And what is the cause of
this ? Why their cares forsooth, their constant
and severe taxing of their thoughts, perceptibly
exhausting their souls, and draining the very
life-juice out of them.* On the other hand,
behold my disciples the favoured sons of Moria
(Folly), how plump, how blooming, how sleek-
skinned they are ! In plain words, what con-
tented Acarnanian pigs they are! Never indeed
would they be destined to feel at all the weight
of years, were it not that, unfortunately, as time
goes on, they are sure to become infected by
contact with men of wisdom. And hence, it

* " There's many a true word spoken in jest." When Erasmus
was little more than thirty years of age, " the shadows of evening-
were falling upon his path. The sunken eye, the wan and wasted
countenance, the form bent as if from the infirmities of old age,
showed very plainly that he had known that 'weariness of the
flesh' which springs from excessive study."—Pennington's Life
of Erasmus, p. 35,

F5°

comes to pass, that the life of no man in this
world is uninterruptedly happy.

To these cqnsiderations a popular proverb
—no light testimony—adds additional weight.
Folly, by the familiar maxim I allude to, is
declared to be the one thing needful to retain
beyond their time the charms of youth—usually
so very fleeting, and to keep off to an indefinite
period the advent of detestable old age. It has
been applied very appropriately to the particular
case of the inhabitants of Brabant, who, it is
said, whilst all other people acquire prudence with
years, become on the contrary more and more
foolish the longer their lives continue. And yet
there is no race of men in the world more cheer-
ful than they are, more agreeable to deal with or
to meet in society, or who have less experience
of anything like sadness in their closing days.*

Closely connected with them, both by geo-

* It seems that in the time of Erasmus the inhabitants of the
old Duchy of Brabant were—much as the French are thought by
many to be as a nation now—such gay, cheerful and pleasant
people, and the elder members of their community such thorough
evergreens in wit and vivacity, that it ha,d come proverbially to
be said of them in jest that the older they got the more youthful
they grew, or, as the old Latinized proverb less complimentarily
puts it, " Brabantus quo natu grandior, hoc stultior."5«

graphical position and by prevailing customs are
my own Hollanders. I call them my own, for
mine indeed they are, being so full of zeal in.
my service that they preeminently merit the name:
(of fools) which by common consent has been;
assigned to them, and of which, not only are
they not ashamed, but are exceedingly proud.*
In these days those of mortals who are
preeminently foolish very rightly seek for a.
fountain to renew their youth- They go to their
Medeas, their Circes, their Venuses, their Auroras,
and I know not to whom besides, f All the
while, however, though they know it not, they
in reality come to me. The rejuvenating powers

* It is, of course, Folly who is throughout represented as
speaking. Nevertheless Erasmus, in putting the words " my
own Hollanders " into the mouth of Folly, probably intended to.
remind us by implication that he was a Dutchman himself. The
character he draws of his own countrymen is certainly not com-
plimentary to their wisdom, whatever it may be to their Arcadian
simplicity. Erasmus, however, did not live at the end of the
nineteenth century. Education has made wonderful progress*
and Holland is very far now from being a land of fools.

f Erasmus here severely satirizes the curious artifices people-
adopt to make themselves look young, how "they go to their
Medeas, See.," Medea, Venus, and Aurora being fabled to have
restored or prolonged youth by magical means, and the sorceress,
Circe with her wand and cup to have changed men's forms,
altogether.52

they avail themselves of I alone possess, and
alone am wont to exert. To me alone belongs
the wonder-working juice by which the daughter
of Memnon prolonged the youth of her grand-
father Tithonus. I alone am the Venus who so
restored old Phaon to the vigour of life that
Sappho fell violently in love with him. Mine
are the magical herbs, if any such there be;
mine that famous fountain which not only, avails
to recall youth's fleeting charms, but—better
far—to make them perpetual. Presuming then
that you all subscribe to the sentiment that
nothing is better than youth, nothing more
detestable than age, I take it for granted that
you perceive at once what a boon it is you
owe to me in dispensing to you, as I do, so
great a good, and in preserving you from so
great an evil.

But why do I speak of mortals only ?
Survey ye the whole of heaven, and I will
freely give leave to any one amongst you who
pleases to revile my name (Folly) to my very
face, if he can find therein a single god who
is not an ill-conditioned, odious being, unless
under the sway of my divinity. Take, for in-53

stance, Bacchus. He is always depicted as a
stripling with flowing hair. Why ? Because
he is a tippling simpleton ; because his whole
life is spent in dissipation, in feasting and
rollicking, dancing and buffooning. Certainly
no one would ever accuse him of having ever
had any intercourse with Pallas (Wisdom). In-
deed so very far is he from even the affectation
of such a thing that he revels in imbecilities
as the fittest homage that can be paid to him.

Nor is it any offence to him to be pro-
verbially befooled, as, for example when he is
familiarly spoken of as " more fool than Mory-
chus." Yea; by the nickname Moiychus people
usually dub him, because forsooth that egregious
idiot was wont to sit in front of the doors of
the temple of Bacchus fancying himself the god,
whilst a parcel of country fellows, making sport
of him, would, in mock solemnity, besmear him
all over with new wine, and the juice of freshly
picked figs.

And in an ancient comedy, again, how this
consummate jackanapes of a god is bantered!

O thou tipsy god of mirth,

jesting passers-by say to him,54

Thee suits well thy hipsy birth.#

And yet after all who would not rather be this
same hipsy-tipsy fool of a god, always festive,
always youthful, always bringing sports and
pleasures to everybody, than either that double-
dealing brute, that universal horror, Jupiter, or
than that old terror Pan, blighting with his
alarmsf all human happiness, or than Vulcan in
the midst of his cinders, and ever begrimed
by his labours at the forge, or even than Pallas
herself, looking so grandly terrible, and yet
withal so cross-grained, with her lance and her
Gorgon-shield ?

Again, why is Cupid always depicted as a
boy ? Why, but because he is a silly trifler,
and neither does nor thinks a sane thing ? And
why bloom for ever the charms of Venus ?
Forsooth, because of her affinity to me. Hence
she reflects in her countenance my father's

* Bacchus is represented in mythology to have sprung from
the hips of Jove. The ancient comedy alluded to is the Frogs
of Aristophanes.

f Pan is represented in mythology as a monster with horns
and hoofs, who used occasionally to appear, and cause the most
terrible alarms to shepherds and others. Hence the word panic,
meaning a groundless fear. The devil of vulgar superstition is
but a survival to these times of the old heathen notion of Pan.55

colour,* and is described consequently by Homer
as "the golden beauty."f Hence, too, she is
perpetually smiling like a simpleton ; at least,
so the poets, and their rivals, the statue-makers,
would lead us to believe. And then again there
is Flora, the parent of all kinds of frivolities.
What divinity have the Romans ever more de-
votedly served ? And as to the more solemn
sort of gods; if any one would but study with
a moderate amount of care what Homer and the
other poets say about their lives, he would find
all their doings characterised by folly. But why
talk of other gods ? Look at their great chief,
Jupiter—that august and terrible thunderer. His
amours and his escapades, I assume, you full
well know. Look, again, at Diana, severity
itself, yet so far forgetful of her sex as to be
always in the hunting field,$ unless philandering
with Endymion.

* That of gold, Plutus being the God of riches.

f As if Homer had styled Venus "golden" to compliment
her on the yellowness of her complexion! but, of course, the
assertion is that of Folly.

J In the days of Erasmus if a lady had taken to hunting, as
ladies do now, probably she would have been regarded as having
forgotten her sex. But time works wonderful changes. What56

I will, however, leave them and their pec-
cadilloes to the castigation of Momus, who in
olden times rated them rather oftener than they
liked. And a nice return did he get for it !
The gods in a burst of rage hurled him headlong
to the earth—and Ate into the bargain—for
sullying their happiness with his plaguey wisdom.f
Nor on earth is this truth-telling exile regarded

would then have been a portentous phenomenon is now a
common sight. Thanks, in some degree perhaps, to the intro-
duction from France of the riding-habit, against which the
Spectator (Nos. 121 and 499) protested in vain at the commence-
ment of the last century, there is now in every hunting field a
goodly sprinkling of Dianas. It may be truly said that in olden
times ladies of high degree often emulated their lords in their
devotion to falconry. But falconry was a much tamer sport than
hunting with hounds. The latter King James recommended, in
a book of advice, to his son Henry, Prince of Wales, as an
especially manly exercise ; whereas of falconry he says, " I must
praise it more sparingly, because it neither resembled the warres
so near as hunting doth, in making a man hardie and skilfully
ridden in all grounds, and is more uncertain and subject to
mischances."—(Quarterly Review, No. 277, p. 178.)

f Momus, the god of truth-telling satire, who ridiculed the
doings of the other gods, and Ate, the goddess of mischief-
making, are shrewdly represented in mythology as having been
expelled from heaven, and sent down to dwell on the earth.
That these sprites are abroad amongst us still, surely we need no
further evidence than our own experience. Satire flourishes in
varied shapes—good, bad, and indifferent—and mischief-making
in many communities is far rifer than it need be.57

with greater favour. All mortals avoid him, and
refuse him quarter. In the halls of princes he is
abominated. By the way, there my good attendant
Kolakia (Flattery) is always held in the highest
esteem, and as to Momus (Plain Truth), he is no
more fit company for her than a wolf would be
fit company for a lamb. Far happier have the
gods been since they got rid of him. They play
their pranks now with much more freedom than
before, and with much more enjoyment. In
truth, as Homer says of them, they live more
unrestrainedly than ever, forsooth because now
they are without a censor to reprove them. Oh,
what jokes do they crack over that hero of the
fig-tree, Priapus !* Oh, what fun do they enjoy
when Mercury plays off before them his thievish
tricks ! Oh, how hilarious are their banquets,
•at which even old Vulcan habitually gets tipsy,
and makes himself a standing laughing-stock !
What game does he afford them as—scarcely
able to keep on his legs—he limps more limp-
ingly than ever ! How he enlivens their com-
potations with his banters, and how heartily they
chuckle at his comic repartees !

* The allusion is to Hor. Sat. i., 5.

G58

And then there is with them Silenus, that
knowing old libertine, who, during their carousals,
dances with gusto the amorous cordax, and
Polyphemus, who at the same time trips it in
the wanton tetranel, whilst the frolicsome nymphs
enrapture them by displaying their nimble move-
ments and their pretty feet in that most volup-
tuous of ballets, the gymnopodia. And oh, what
fun again it is to them to watch the antics of
the satyrs—those incorrigible semi-goats—as they
cut their lascivious capers in dancing the dance
of Atella! And how merrily they all laugh at
old Pan with his pipe, as he essays meanwhile
some sorry jig-tune, to which nevertheless—
especially when the nectar is in them—they
would far rather listen than to the most finished
productions of the Muses!Chapter III.

Reason and Impulse—The Origin of Women—Why more
Favoured than Men—Jesters—Convivial Customs—
Friendship—-Love—Stultitia, the Mainstay of Society
—Importance of Self-Esteem—Folly of War—Wish
Men Unfit for it.

But I am dwelling too long on the after-
supper doings of these boosy gods—such egregious
fooleries, by Hercules ! that sometimes I cannot
even restrain my laughter at the very thought
of them. I must not forget,, however, that on
these matters to be as mum as Harpocrates
(the god of Silence) is the safe policy. At
this very moment, some eavesdropper of a god
may be at hand, and, for aught I know, may
be slily listening to alL I say. Should such be
the case, woe betide me I Momus. got a nice
reward for his freedom of speech, and I certainly
don't wish to incur a like one. So—for I ween
it is high time—with your permission I will now,
(anon and again as Homer does), leave the6o

Celestials and bend my steps to terra fir ma.
In other words, I will go on to show you that
on earth, as in heaven, there can be no
happiness or prosperity at all, unless I (Folly)
interpose my good services.

In the first place, then, notice the admirable
foresight which Nature—the parent and maker of
mankind, exercises in order to ensure that men
shall never be destitute of folly as the principal
ingredient in their constitution. Now wisdom,
as your Stoics (divines and moralists) define it,
consists in men's being guided by their reason ;
and folly, in their being actuated by their
passions. See then here what Jupiter has done.
In order to prevent the life of man from being
positively dreary and unbearable, he has endowed
him with reason in singularly small proportion
to his passions—only, so to speak, as a half-
ounce is to a pound. And whereas he has
dispersed his passions over every portion of his
body, he has confined his reason to a narrow
little crevice in the skull.

Moreover, reason is very unequally handi-
capped. The adverse powers which, as it were,
are arrayed against her are as two against one.6i

Two tyrannical antagonists are for ever disputing
her authority. There is anger which every now
and again gets possession of the Citadel of the
breast and thus controls the heart, the very
source of life and energy ; and there is con-
cupiscence, maintaining a very wide sway over
the lower organs. Against the united force of
these two passions how little reason avails the
common life of men sufficiently proves; for when
reason shouts out to them, again and again,
until she is hoarse, telling them what alone they
ought to do, and dictating to them the rules of
right conduct, they silence her- admonitions by
casting back the blame upon their king
(Jupiter).* And more odious accusations by
much than this do they rave out against him,
until, ere long, he too gets weary of them, and
yields them an easy victory.

And yet of these silly human beings the
male sex is born under the necessity of trans-
acting the business of the world. How is it
that they can do it ? Well ; I will tell you.

* The meaning is, Men contend that God made them what
they are, and that He, therefore, is responsible for their indulging
evil passions.62

Jupiter gave them just a little wee grain or so
of reason over and above the half-ounce I have
already spoken of—just enough, that is, to be
of practical use to them. And what was my
advice to him—for I was summoned, I may
inform you, to his counsel to advise about this
and other matters ? Why I was ready imme-
diately with an opinion, worthy of me. " Add
a woman to the man," said I to Jupiter, " a
creature, forsooth, foolish and frivolous enough,
but withal full of laughter and sweetness. She
by living with him in his home will assuredly
season and sweeten by her folly the sadness of
his manly intelligence!"

When Plato doubted whether or not he
should place women in the class of rational
animals, he really only wished to indicate the
remarkable silliness of that sex. And if, by
chance, a woman affects to be regarded wise,
she only makes herself doubly foolish, and acts,
so to speak, like one who would lead an ox to
the altar against the will and resistance of
Minerva. Yes, I say, she is doubly foolish, just
as a vicious man would be doubly vicious, if,
contrary to his natural bias, he were to put on63

the semblance of virtue, and otherwise practise
imposture on the judgment of mankind. As,
according to the Greek proverb, " an ape is
still an ape though decked in purple," so a
woman is still a woman—that is, silly—whatever
be the character she assumes.

But, in truth, though I say this, I yet, after
all, do not regard women as such an absolutely
senseless race of beings as to suppose for a
moment that they will be offended because I—
a woman myself—the goddess Stultitia, tell them
thus plainly that they are fools. No, no ; if
they look at the matter in the right way, they
will be flattered at it ; for they will perceive
that it is an accepted axiom with me that they
are by many degrees more favoured creatures
than men. In the first place they have beauty;
and, oh, what a gift is that! Justly indeed do
they value it beyond all other possessions. For
see what influence it gives them; what a power
it imparts ; how they rule the very rulers of the
world, even exercising over tyrants a tyranny
they in vain withstand.

On the other hand, what horribly ugly
beings men are ! What coarse skins they have!64-

What forests of hair render their faces hideous !
And how detestably old are their looks! It is
their besetting vice of prudence, depend upon
it, that does it all. Women are the very
reverse : their cheeks are exquisitely smooth,
their voices ever musically sweet, their skins
ever delicately soft. In short they are living
exemplifications of perpetual youthfulness.

And their supreme wish and aim in this
world is to win the admiration of the men.
Why all their multitudinous kinds of finery; why
all their numerous sorts of dye ; why all their
scrupulous lavations; why all their head-dressings,
their pomades, and their perfumes; why all those
clever artifices, by which they impart bloom to
their faces, brilliancy to their eyes, and fairness
to their skin ; why—but because this one object
is ever uppermost in their minds ?

It is pretty plain, I think, from all this that
women have no more effectual means than folly
to commend them to the admiration of men ;
and so to commend them to their admiration
that they can deny them nothing that they
wish for. Men, no doubt, will contend that it
Is the pleasure they have in women's society,65

and not their folly, that is the real object that
attracts them. I answer, however, that their
pleasure is folly, and nothing but folly, and that
therefore, of necessity, it must be folly, and folly
only, in which they take delight. And this,
assuredly, no one will dispute who has ever
reflected in his mind what utter nonsense men
talk to women, and what preposterously silly
things they do whenever they elect to enjoy the
charm of their companionship.

You see, then, from what fountain is derived

the highest and most exquisite enjoyment that

falls to man's lot in life. But there are some

men—waning old crones most of them—who love

their glasses better than the lasses, and who

place their chief delight in sociable tippling.

Now whether or not there can possibly be any

decent kinds of convivial meetings without the

presence of women I leave others to decide.

This, however, is certainly evident, that without

a spice of folly in them they are exceedingly

tame and insipid affairs. Hence, to compensate

for the lack of guests at a repast able, by

nature or artifice, to make sufficient fools of

themselves to raise a laugh, the orthodox plan

pi66

is to pay a jester,* or to invite, amongst the
rest, some brainless hanger-on who by his ludicrous
—that is to say silly—attempts at wit may impart
some animation to what would otherwise be but
a dull and silent entertainment. And indeed it
were a swinish business to load your carcases
with viands, and with delicacies no matter how
delectable, unless, at the same time, you can
feast your eyes, your ears—nay, your whole souls,
on laughter, fun and pleasantry—luxuries of which
I beg to state that I (Folly) am the sole purveyor.

And then, again, there are the customs in
vogue at your banquets, casting lots for the
King of the feast, tossing up who shall pay the
piper, pledging one another in the loving-cup,
drinking healths all round, singing songs to the
myrtle-branch, leaping, wrestling, and so forth.f

* Professional Fools or Jesters were at this time regarded as
necessary to the completeness of a great man's household.—See
Doran's Court Fools.

f Erasmus, somewhat pedantically, makes allusion here to
customs prevalent amongst the primitive Greeks, under cover of
which he really satirises those of his own day. At ancient Greek
entertainments a sprig of myrtle was commonly placed in the
hands of guests expected to sing, and they sang " to the myrtle
branch " as Erasmus quite correctly has it. After the songs were
over, the company adjourned to the open air for athletic sports
—leaping, wrestling, &c.—See Potter's Grecian Antiquities, ch. xx.67

Such practices, I need not tell you, were never
invented by the seven wise men of Greece :
their origin is due to me (Folly), and I flatter
myself that by establishing them I conferred a
very wholesome boon on the race of man. And
the greater their folly, the greater their boon ;
for it is an undoubted peculiarity of all such
customs that they make life glad in proportion
as they make it mad.

A life of sadness is not life : I take it,

'Tis nought but gladness that can vital make it.

In fine, no sad man could endure his existence,
were it not that this kind of evil—this constitu-
tional gloominess of his—admits of being dispelled
by the charms of festive recreation.

But there will probably be some who will
treat with neglect this kind of pleasure also, and
will place all their happiness in the love and
society of their friends. Now the burden of the
song of these people always is that friendship is
to be preferred to everything ; that it is as
absolutely necessary to human existence as air,
or fire, or water ; that it is so cheering that
to deprive the world of it would be like ex-
tinguishing the sun ; and, lastly—a fact, indeed,68

which I (Folly) care very little about—that it is
so essential a part of virtue that even philosophers
themselves hesitate not to describe it as one of
the principal attributes of goodness.

But what- if I can show that even of this
most excellent of qualities I am also the very
stern and prow?* And I will show it, not by
intricate crocodilitic or soritict arguments, or by
any other logical methods of a like kind, such
as your dialecticians delight to puzzle you with,
but in the plain homespun language of mother

* A proverbial expression meaning "the beginning and the
end," that is, 44 the very life and soul" of it.

f What a sorites is every handbook of Logic explains. As to
a crocodolites Gerard Listrius defines it to be " a kind of captious
syllogism," which derived its name from an old traditional tale
of a woman and a crocodile. A woman, so the story goes, had
her son snatched away from her by a crocodile. " Oh ! give me
back my son," cried she. "Yes," said the crocodile, "I will
give him back on condition that you tell me truly what I will
do." " You will eat him up," said the woman, " and that is the
truth ; therefore, according to your promise, you must give
him back." " No, no," said the crocodile, " if I give him back,
your words are false, therefore I must eat him ! "

But a simpler origin for the expression " crocodilitic argu-
ment," meaning an argument of labyrinthine intricacy, is to be
found in the fact that near the City of the Crocodiles in Egypt
was a famous labyrinth graphically described by Herodotus in
the second book of his history.69

wit, as the saying is ; in fact, I might point
it out to you on my fingers.

Well then, to commence. To wink at a
friend's faults, to yield to his caprices, to be
blind to his defects, to be under such an absurd
delusion about him as to love and admire even
some of his most glaring vices, and actually to
fancy them virtues surely, all this you will
allow is something exceedingly like folly.

And then, again, you will find one man de-
vouring with kisses a dimple on the face of his lady-
love ; another charmed by a pimple on his darling's
nose; and a third, the father of some squint-eyed
urchin, misnaming him a pretty pet !* Such things,
I assert, are the very cream of folly. Yes, of folly.
Shout it out, ye men ; roar it out; thunder it out
fearlessly, over and over again, so that all the world
may hear, that it is through folly, and folly only,
that friendship is cemented and maintained !

* It will hardly be supposed that I adopt " pet" as a literal
rendering of " petum," or rather " Pastum," as Horace has it
(Sat. i., 3. 45), though I think I have sufficiently expressed
Erasmus's meaning. And as to " pimple," as I have translated
" polypus," it need scarcely be said that a polypus was an
excrescence pertaining to the nose of a considerably more
offensive nature than a pimple. The reader, however, would not
thank me to describe it more minutely.yo

I speak, of course, of friendship as it obtains
amongst the ordinary people of the world, people
born with the ordinary faults and failings of
humanity about them, and of whom the most
perfect are at best only those who are the least
imperfect. I speak not of those who are such
gods of wisdom as to possess little or no sense
of friendliness at all, and that little, if they
have it, devoid of all heartiness, and extended
to exceedingly few, even to those only of their
own narrow coterie.* In fact it is a religion
with such men to hold familiar intercourse with
no others, because forsooth all others, in their
estimation, are too commonplace for their society
—too foolish, in short; for it is a dictum with
them that all ordinary men make fools of them-
selves, either in this way or that; and, as they
hold that no friendship can exist but between
men of like minds, they habitually keep themselves
aloof from all others.

* The ancient stoics are ostensibly alluded to here by Erasmus ;
but the attack, of course, is not really made on them, but on
classes of learned men (so called) in his own day, of whose
unfriendliness and narrow-minded exclusiveness he had fre-
quently observed instances. And the race of such is not
extinct now.7i

If by chance a mutually friendly feeling
should spring up amongst any of these grave
and sombre magnates, we may safely affirm its
instability. Nay; how could it possibly be
lasting ? for these men are so morose, so
inordinately censorious that they have the eyes
of an eagle—yea, of the Epidaurian serpent*—
for discerning blemishes in other people, whereas
their own they are stark-blind to, and can no
more see them than a traveller can see the
knapsack which hangs at his own back.$

Now since it is not in human nature to be
without its faults ; since men differ most widely
from one another in their ages, and in their
tastes; since the misunderstandings that may
arise between them are innumerable; since they
are all of them continually liable to make
blunders and mistakes; since, in short, the changes
and chances of this mortal life are so manifold,

* Epidaurus, in the Peloponnese, was dedicated to the worship
of ^Esculapius, who is represented as having in his hand a staff
wreathed by a serpent, as symbolising the keen-sightedness that
should characterise a physician.

I " In other men we faults can spy,

And blame the mote that dims their eye,

Each little speck and blemish find,

To our own greater errors blind."—Gay.72

it is evident that the charm of friendship could
not exist, even for an hour, amongst such
Argus-eyed misanthropes, were it not that even
they are not quite so destitute of folly, as they
fondly imagine that they are. Who can deny
that they studiously affect the airs and graces
of euethia, as the Greeks appropriately call it?
But what after all are these but the airs and
graces of folly, though you may term them, if
you like, the customs of good society.

But all these social conventionalities, it will
be said, are mere deceptions. True, they are.
But what of that ? It is by deceptions that
men are made happy. For instance, Cupid
(Love) the author and originator of the closest
of intimacies, is altogether deceived by his
eyes.* To him ugly things frequently approve
themselves as things of beauty. And so he
makes you, my friends, when under his beguiling
influence, see beauty's charms in the idols of
your affection where no one else can see them;
makes every old don admire his own old dame,

* " Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind ;

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind."

" —Midsummer Night's Dream.73

every lad his own beloved lassie. These things
are everywhere done, and everywhere laughed
at. Nevertheless, these laughable things go far
to cement and consolidate human society, and on
them the pleasures of life very materially depend.

And what has been said of Friendship
may with still greater truth be applied to
Wedlock, which is nothing but an indissoluble
compact between two persons for the term of
their natural lives. Good heavens! what divorces
—yea, and events, too, far worse than divorces,
would everywhere occur, were it not that this
domestic connection between a man and woman
is propped up and supported by my instrumentality.
Thus recourse is had to flattery, to pleasantry,
and to various familiarities of a free and easy
sort ; to tricks, again, of deception and dis-
simulation. All these things, I need not tell
you, are but weapons from my armoury. O
ye Popes ! few enough are the marriages that
would ever be contracted, if every would-be
husband thought it necessary to set to work,
like a prudent man, and carefully investigate
the antecedents of his sweetheart; if he thought

it necessary curiously to pry out all the rigs

i74

that one seemingly so coy and bashful had
long previously been up to ! And still fewer
are the marriages that would endure after
consummation, if married men could but know
very many of the things that their wives do—
things fortunately kept secret from them, in
consequence either of their wilful indifference,
or of their want of the faculty of common
observation.

All such things, it is true, are deservedly
pronounced to be those of folly; but still, so
far as folly can prevent it, no harm whatever
comes of them. Folly, notwithstanding their
occurrence, makes the wife retain her husband's
affections, and the husband the affections of his
wife, so that their home remains free from
discord, and their nuptial alliance is maintained.
Let men of the world smile, if they will, when
some deluded benedict,* in blissful ignorance,
lavishes his caresses on a trothless spouse.
Well—never mind ; he is far happier to be
thus deceived than to be cognizant of facts
which would impel him, in the recklessness of
jealousy, to commit self-destruction, and to close
* " Cuculus, currucca, et quid non vocalur."75

his career in bloodshed. In short, it is evident
that no society, no relations of any sort between
one man and another, could either be happy
or permanent without me. No people would
put up as they do with the foibles of their
princes, no master with the misdeeds of his
servant, no waiting-maid with her mistress's
exactions, no teacher with his pupil's mis-
demeanours, no friend with a friend's faults, no-
wife with a husband's imperfections, no landlord
with a tenant's shortcomings, no comrade with,
a comrade's churlishness, no lodger with a
fellow-lodger's ill-conditioned ways, were it not
that though they all in their turn commit
innumerable blunders, they all also speedily
forget them, use flattery instead of blame, avert
their eyes where they cannot approve, and thus
salve over their sorest misunderstandings with the
honied balm of folly.

Now all such benefits as these, for which
the world is indebted to me, appear to you, I
know, superlatively great. Yo-u shall hear„
however, of greater still. Let me then ask you„
Can a man who hates himself love anybody else ?
Can a man who disagrees with himself agree76

with anybody else ? Can a man who is a plague
and a misery to himself afford any pleasure or
happiness whatever to other people ? Can a man,
who can't carry his own burden, carry another
man's burden as well ? Certainly not; and a
man, I opine, who asserted such a thing would
be a greater fool than Folly. And yet it is
nevertheless true that, unless under my influence,
a man is so far from being able to impart
any joy or comfort to others that he is a scourge
and a weariness to himself. Everything that he
has he esteems to be bad; everything that he
is he regards to be hateful. He detests himself,
and everything belonging to himself. This is
an evil temper of mind to indulge, but he cannot
help it, since Nature has made him what he is.
Nature ? Yes ; Nature has implanted in the
breasts of mortals—especially in the breasts of
those of them who have a little more sense
than their fellows—a propensity to be dissatisfied
with their own circumstances, and to look with
envious and admiring eyes on the circumstances
of others,* proving to them in this, as in so
many other respects, but a cruel step-mother
* Cf. Hor. Sat. i. i. " Qui fit Maecenas, &c."77

rather than a beneficent parent. Thus the most,
coveted endowments impart no satisfaction to
their possessors, and their most refined accom-
plishments afford them no delight. The charms
of their life are vitiated, and all their advantages
are destroyed. What, for example, avails beauty
—-that choicest gift of the immortal gods, if
those who have it see no beauty in it ? What
avails youth, if those who have it alloy it with
senile moroseness ? And, lastly, what action in
life, whether of a public or a private character,
can you perform properly (and every action that
a man does, the most ordinary, as well as those
actions which require more than ordinary skill,
should be performed properly)* what action, I
repeat, of any kind can you perform properly,
unless you have a good opinion of yourself and
of your way of doing it; unless, in short, you
are under the spell of my right-hand helper
here, Philautia (Self-Approbation), whom I am
proud to boast of as a valued relation, so zealously
everywhere does she accomplish my behests ?
Nevertheless, as everyone knows, for a man to
be highly pleased with himself, and to think he
* "What is worth doing at all is worth doing well."—Old Proverb,78

cuts a fine figure in the eyes of a wondering
world, is one of the most distinctive characteristics
of a fool. Well ; be it so. And yet, I would
ask, if a man be destitute of this self-approbation,
of this distinctive mark of folly, what can he possibly
do in a graceful and becoming way ? What can
lie possibly do that will not be ill done ? Take
away this pleasurable stimulus to exertion, and
the orator and his oratory will want the fire of
eloquence; the musician and his music will be
devoid of soul ; the actor and his acting will
be hooted from the stage ; the poet and his
poetising will be laughed at; the painter and
his painting will be held in no repute; and the
physician, with all his physics, will be starved
for lack of patients. Yes; devoid of self-esteem,
a man may be as handsome as Nireus, and yet
be no better off than if he were as ugly as
Thersites ; he may be as youthful-looking as
Phaon, and yet have no more gratification from
being so than if he were as old looking as Nestor ;*
he may possess the talents of a Minerva, but

* Nireus was the handsomest, Thersites the most deformed,
and Nestor the most long-lived of all the Greeks at the Trojan
war. Phaon was a boatman of Mitylene, fabled to have been
restored to youth by the goddess of beauty.79

they will be no more to him than if he
possessed the stupidity of a hog; instead of
being able to speak, as occasion arises, with
ease and elegance, he will remain as dumb as
a deaf-mute; * and though by birth a gentleman,
his manners will be as awkward as a clown's
—so absolutely essential is it to a man's
prosperity in the world that he should hold a
flattering opinion of himself, and that he should,
with that end in view, coax himself, so to speak,
into his own good graces before attempting to
commend himself to the approbation of other
men.

Furthermore, human happiness has this cha-
racteristic, that it consists principally in a man's
being contented with his own peculiar circum-
stances in life, whatever they may happen to be.

* " I pity bashful men, who feel the pain

Of fancied scorn, and undeserved disdain,

And bear the marks upon a blushing face

Of needless shame, and self-imposed disgrace.

Our sensibilities are so acute,

The fear of being silent makes us mute.

We sometimes think we could a speech produce

Much to the purpose, if our tongues were loose;

But being tried, it dies upon the lip

Faint as a chicken's note that has the pip."

—Cowpefs Conversation,8o

And this my - Philautia (his own self-satisfaction),
very easily enables him to be. Hence it comes
to pass that no one despises his own personal
appearance, his own intelligence, his own position
in the world, his own special training, his own
native land. Hence no Irishman would change
places with an Italian, no Thracian with an
Athenian, and no wretched Scythian even, with
the most favoured inhabitants of the Isles of
Fortune.* Oh ! the admirable solicitude of
Nature in all this to make men equally happy
in their great variety of conditions. Of Nature,
did I say ? But stop: her gifts by themselves
are insufficient. A little addition must be made
to them by the beneficence of Philautia. And
yet I speak foolishly. " A little addition "
indeed! Why the gift of Philautia (self-content)
is all in all.f

I have now another assertion to make, and
it is this—that no remarkable exploit was ever

* " Such is the patriot's boast where'er we roam
His first best country ever is at home."

—Goldsmith's Traveller.
f " The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

—Paradise Lost i. 254.8i

done, no ingenious art ever devised, but through
my influence and inspiration. Take the case of
war. Now war, you will allow, is the very
seed-plot and fountain of glorious deeds. And
yet, of all undertakings in the world war is
the most foolish, commenced, as it always is,
on the most frivolous pretences, and invariably
productive of far more harm than benefit to the
belligerents on either side. And I allude,
remember, solely to the case of those who have
the good luck not to get killed. Of the vast
numbers who fall in battle I say nothing, but
pass them over in solemn silence, respectfully
according to them the " no mention " of the
men of Megara.*

Well; war is a foolish game,t and it is fools
only who take part in it. When the steel-clad
soldiers have been drawn up in battle-array,
army against army, and the hoarse bugles have
sounded , to the charge, of what use, I ask,
would wise men be in the ranks—men exhausted

* The reference, Listrius explains, is to a proverbial saying
in Theocritus, which arose from an answer which the people of
Megara received from the oracle at Delphi.

I "War is a game which, were their subjects wise,

Kings would not play at."—Cowper.

J82

with study, and whose thin and impoverished
blood scarcely suffices to maintain their feeble
vitality ? No, no ; stupid lusty loons are the
fellows you want for fighting, animals who have
a superfluity of boldness about them, but of
brains the smallest modicum. Men of wisdom
will never do. Look at Demosthenes, for
example. A pretty sort of warrior was he!
Why, no sooner did he catch a glimpse of the
enemy than, following the counsel of Archilochus,*
down he flung his sword, and off he ran in a
jiffy.f He may have been a sapient orator,
but certainly he was a sorry soldier.

But the conduct of a war, it will be said,
demands a great amount of cleverness. True
it does—in the generals; of a kind of cleverness,
however, which has nothing in common with the
wisdom of philosophers. But as to the common
fun of men in the army, oh, what a motley
crew of scoundreldom they are—parasites, pimps,
thieves, cut-throats, clodhoppers, clowns, swindlers
—in a word, they are the very dregs of

* Archilochus, a poet of Paros who flourished B.C. 685.

f At the battle of Chaeronea, B.C. 338, Demosthenes is said to
have saved his life by flight.83

humanity ! These are the sort to gain glory-
in war, not your lamp-burning philosophers who
waste all their energies in nightly study. If
you would wish to have an apposite example
of what utterly useless beings the latter are, I
don't know that I could present you with a
more striking instance than that of Socrates.
Although Apollo's oracle declared this famous
sage (by the way, the oracular declaration wasn't
sage, but let it pass). Well ; although the
oracle declared Socrates to be so wise as to be
the only truly wise man in all the world, there
yet never was a single public action of his life
that he ever attempted to perform in which he
did not so egregiously fail as to make himself
a laughing-stock to everybody. Thus, however
wise he was, men treated him as a fool. But
yet absolutely a fool he certainly was not. At
any rate he had wisdom enough not to confess
himself wise, and to assert that the attribute of
wisdom was an attribute of God only. And he
was wise enough, moreover, to express his
opinion that wise men would do well to abstain
from all public affairs. However, he would have
expressed a wiser opinion still in my estimation,84

if he had affirmed, not only that wise men
should abstain from public affairs, but from
human affairs altogether; for, certainly, he who
can't keep his wisdom in check is unfit for the
society of mankind. What was it but his
wisdom that compassed his death, that brought
about his prosecution, and compelled him to
drink the hemlock ? For whilst he was up in
the clouds philosophising abstractedly about
"ideas"; whilst he was measuring to a nicety
the foot of a flea, and contemplating in wrapt
astonishment the buzzing of a gnat,* of the
ordinary concerns of the world he allowed himself
to remain in the profoundest ignorance. No
better was his pupil Plato. When Socrates was
on trial for his life a poor advocate indeed did
he make for him. Why, he was actually so
thrown off his balance by the disapproving
murmurs of the crowd that he could scarcely
even get through half a paragraph of his speech.
And, then, there was Theophrastus who, when
he essayed to harangue the people, suddenly
lost all power of utterance as if he had seen
a wolf staring at him. A pretty sort of captain
* Socrates is thus caricatured by Aristophanes in the Clouds,85

would he have been to have cheered on soldiers
to battle! Isocrates, again, on account of his
constitutional timidity never dared to open his
mouth. And as to Cicero, the parent of Roman
eloquence, he was accustomed always to commence
his orations in the most undignified manner,
trembling all over just like some blubbering
schoolboy. And this is what Quintilian regards
as the true test of an orator who is wise enough
to be conscious of his risk. " Wise enough "
indeed! Wisdom then, you see, by his own
confession, is evidently an invincible obstacle to
graceful elocution. Of what earthly use would
such fainthearted poltroons be in the army? No,

A man who in a war of words

Finds his pluck at zero,

Will never midst the clash of swords
Prove himself a hero.Chapter IV.

Wisdom a Disadvantage to Statesmen—Wise Men out
of Place in Society—The Commonwealth Supported
by the Silliest Expedients—Desire of Glory—True
Prudence Indebted to Folly—A Wise Man Depicted.-

So much for the notion that wisdom is of
any use in warfare. Well ; the next thing that
our gods of wisdom will assert, if it suits their
purpose so to do, is that wisdom is necessary
for affairs of state. And in proof of this
assertion they will produce Plato as an authority,
crying up with much more ado than its merits
call for that remarkable opinion of his that
" Those states will be prosperous which shall
either have philosophers for their rulers, or rulers
who are guided by philosophy." With this
opinion I totally disagree. Consult history, and
you will find that no more dangerous class of
men ever existed than statesmen of a philosophical
and literary turn of mind. The Catos, I opine,
are a tolerably good proof of this. The elder87

of the two destroyed the tranquillity of the state
by his insane impeachments ; and the other,
whilst pleading only too sapiently for the liberty
of the Roman people, totally and entirely sub-
verted it. Then, again, take, as other instances,
Brutus and Cassius ; take the Gracchi ; take
Cicero, a man who was about as mischievous
a Roman statesman as Demosthenes was an
Athenian; or take Marcus Antoninus. Granting
that he was an able emperor, still, I think I
can squeeze a moral even out of him. He was
called a philosopher ; and though in reality no
true philosopher at all, the very name brought
down upon him the disfavour and disgust of the
citizens. Well; he may have proved an able
emperor, but he certainly did a vast deal more
harm to the state by leaving behind him such
a scapegrace son* as he did than he ever had
done good to it by his administration of its
affairs. It is a fact worthy of notice that men
who devote themselves to learned studies, un-
fortunate as they are in other respects, are
especially unfortunate in their children,—Nature
thus providing, I conceive, a check to the too
* The emperor Commodus.88

wide diffusion amongst mankind of the evil of
wisdom. Thus, it is well-known that Cicero had
a degenerate son. And Socrates, the very
paragon of . sagacity, had, as some one has politely
put it, " children who were more like their
mother than their father"—words which, when
vulgarly translated, mean simply this—that his
children were fools!

Now if the only fault of men of wisdom
was that they were as unfitted for administering
public affairs as asses for performing on the
lyre, we might somehow or another put up with
them. In matters of everyday life, however,
they are not a whit better. Ask one of them
to dinner, and he will either provoke you by his
sullen silence, or bore you with his troublesome
inquiries. Invite him to a dance, and his move-
ments will be as clumsy as a camel's. Get
him to go with you to a theatre, and by his
very looks he will check the mirth of the
spectators, until at last, unable any longer to
endure the scene, our sapient Cato will march
himself off with disdain !* Take him to a

* The allusion is to Cato the censor, who, once during the
licentious festival of the Floralia, left the theatre as stated.89

conversazione, and lo! no sooner does he open
his mouth than all others are instantly speechless,
as if terror-stricken at the sight of a wolf!
If he buys or sells, or transacts any of the
ordinary kinds of business without which the
world could not go on, he is as difficult to deal
with as a block of wood! So much so is all
this the case that neither to himself, nor to his
country, nor to his friends, can a wise man
ever be of the slightest utility, being utterly
unfitted to engage in any of the common
affairs of life, and holding views fundamentally
at variance with all the ordinary opinions and
usages of mankind. No wonder then is it,
when we think of the profound difference there
is between his tastes and modes of life and
those of other men, that, as a necessary con-
sequence, he should incur universal detestation.
For what worldly concerns are there that are
not saturated with folly ? What worldly business
can you name that is not carried on by and
in the midst of fools ? Surely, none whatever.
Hence the best advice that I could offer to
an individual, unwilling to conform to the
usages of the world, would be to be off like

K9°

Timon* to a wilderness, and to enjoy there his
wisdom in seclusion !

But to return to a subject I had begun to
treat about. I was speaking- a little while ago
about the influence of adulation {i.e. coaxing,
wheedling, flattery, pleasantry, &c.), and I would
now tell you that no influence but this could
ever, by any possibility, have induced such
" stocks and stones," such boorish fools as
people in general are, to compact themselves
into cities and states. This and nothing but
this is what is meant by the fabled music of
Orpheus and Amphion.f And what was it that
induced the insurgent citizens of Rome to return
to their allegiance to the state but this? Was
it learned eloquence that affected them ? Surely,
quite the reverse. It was a silly, ridiculous,
puerile apologue about the belly and the other%
members of the body. J And much such another

* Timon of Athens, surnamed The Misanthrope.

f Orpheus and Amphion are fabled to have moved by their
music even " stocks and stones ! "

$ Of course every schoolboy knows the famous apologue
alluded to ; how Menenius Agrippa pointed out to the Roman
plebeians that, although they might denounce the patricians for
living in ease and luxury on their labours, yet that they could no9i

frivolous tale was that of Themistocles about
the fox and the hedgehog,* and it resulted in
a similar effect. And so, again, Sertorius's fiction
about the hind,f the Laconian's moral from the
two dogs,$ and the lesson ridiculously taught by

more get on without them than the other members of the body
without the belly. Though the belly might appear to lead a lazy
life, it was very necessary, nevertheless, for the other members
to support it, or the belly would soon cease to support them.
The patricians were necessary to the plebeians, and the plebeians
to the patricians. Both were mutually dependent, and each
therefore was concerned in the welfare of the others. How
often has this sermon been preached in all ages, and how often,
too, has it been disregarded !

* The Athenians, irritated by perpetual taxes, were contem-
plating a revolution, when Themistocles reminded them of a
fable about a fox and a hedgehog. A fox, sticking in the mud,
was having his blood well-sucked by troublesome flies, when a
hedgehog came by and offered his assistance. This the fox
declined to accept. The Athenians, in like manner, should bear
with patience their unavoidable burdens, and not listen to the
counsel of interested partisans. A better time was coming,,
The tax-gatherers, like the flies, would soon have had their fill.

f Quintus Sertorius, when an exile in Spain, pretended that
he had intercourse with heaven by means of a white hind, and
that thus he was enabled to know all the plots of his enemies.
This ruse so completely imposed upon the credulous Lusitanians
that they looked up to him almost as a god.

X Lycurgus wishing to show the Spartans how greatly the
character is moulded by education, brought up two puppies of
the same litter—the one in pampered indolence, the other as a
dog useful for the chase; and the difference in their dispositions92

pulling hairs out of a horse's tail,* were far
more efficacious than would have been the wisest
oratory. The instances, further, of Minos and
Numa,t governing the stupid multitude by in-

which their training had produced he illustrated in the following
way. He placed before them a hare and a dish of food, and
then let them loose. The well-trained dog, of course, immediately
pursued the hare, but the pampered dog preferred the food.
" Behold," said he, " in this, O Spartans, the immense importance
of education. Here are two hounds, born of the same parents,
and yet how different in character ! Whilst the one has become
a noble hunter, the other has turned out a lazy, gluttonous whelp."

* Sertorius, to convince the Spanish barbarians of the superi-
ority of skill and perseverance to brute force, had two horses
brought before them, one in high condition, the other a lean and
worn-out jade. He then ordered two men—one a strong, powerful
man, and the other a little weak man, to pull out their tails. He
set the little weak man to pull out the tail of the spirited horse,
and the strong, powerful man to pull out the tail of the jade.
The strong man, having no fear that the poor jade allotted to
him would kick, pulled at the wretched animal's tail with all his
might and main, but only to make himself the laughing-stock of
everybody. The little weak man, on the other hand, set to work
carefully, pulling out the tail of the spirited horse, hair by hair,
until he finally succeeded. " Behold," said Sertorius, " the
.superiority of skill to brute force. Many things which you
cannot accomplish at one blow, you may do by steady perse-
verance."

f Minos, King of Crete, gained acceptance for his laws by
pretending that he received them every ninth year directly from
the lips of Jupiter. And similarly, Numa Pompilius, by feigning
that he every night received revelations from the nymph JEgeria,
imposed his institutions on the Roman people*93

venting stories to cajole them, I need hardly
mention ; for, surely, it must now be sufficiently
clear to you that the populace, like some huge,
powerful, unwieldy beast, is made to move in
a mass by the most trifling expedients. On
the other hand, the laws of Plato and Aristotle,
and the dogmas of Socrates, because in no
respect recommended by folly, have never been
accepted by any state whatever.

And then, again, what was it that induced
the Decii* voluntarily to devote themselves to
the infernal gods ? And what was it that
enticed Marcus Curtiusf into the yawning chasm?
What but the desire of vain glory ? The
sweetest of Sirens I call it. It is wonderful,
however, in what terms, of disapproval it is

* The Decii, father, son, and grandson (b.c. 358, 296, and
280) each devoted himself to certain death in battle for the good
of his country. Acts of patriotism of this kind were frequently
of great service to the Roman state. A general, to cheer the
flagging bravery of his soldiers, would dress himself in con-
spicuous array, and then, solemnly calling on his soldiers to
follow him, and invoking the immortal gods, would rush headlong,
to meet his fate, into the very thickest of the fight.

f The story of Marcus Curtius, mounted on horseback and in
full armour, bravely leaping into the gulph, is of course familiar
to everybody.94

denounced by those detestable pests of society,
our wise men. What, for instance, they will
say, can be greater folly than that of a suppliant
election-candidate who, for the questionable honour
of being the chosen favourite of a mob of fools,
will stoop to conciliate them with flattery, will
buy their good-will with gifts, will hunt after
their idiotic plaudits, will pride himself on their
acclamations, will allow them to carry him about
through the streets in triumph as if he were
an image to be stared at, or will stand forth
before them in the market-place like a statue
of brass ? Again, our wise men will sneer at
the practice of men's assuming grand-sounding
names and titles in order to enhance their
importance. They will laugh, too, at the idea
of a paltry human being arrogating divine
honours to himself,* and at the notion of the
most infamous of tyrants being transmuted into
a god by public ceremonies, f True ; these

* Roman emperors and magistrates not unfrequently did so.
Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. i., chap. 3.

f The deification of an emperor after his death was customary
in imperial Rome. The ceremony of his apotheosis was blended
with that of his funeral (Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol i., chap.
3). A lofty pyre, Listrius informs us, was raised, constructed of95

things are most foolish, and it would afford
full employment to many a Democritus to turn
them into sufficient ridicule. Who denies it ?
Yet, for all that, it is indisputable that from this
fountain are derived all those exploits of brave
heroes which have been lauded to the skies by
the eloquence of men of letters. It is this folly
of ours that begets states ; it is this that
^ eements empires ; it is this that upholds our
magistrates ; it is this that fosters popular
religion, overrules opinion, and presides in our
halls of justice. In short, take human life in
its entirety, and what a game of folly it all is!

And so with the industrial arts. What is
it that has stimulated the ingenuity of mortals,
and induced them patiently to think out, and
hand down to posterity, so many exceptionally
useful inventions, as their authors invariably
consider them to be ? What but this same
thirst for vain glory ? Ah, by what sleepless
nights, by what prodigious toils, have men, in

wood and fragrant aromatics. At its summit was an eagle tied
down by a thin cord. This cord, when the flames reached it,
after the pile was set fire to, of course snapped in sunder, and so
released the captive bird, which, flying upwards, was hailed as
the heaven-ascending soul of the departed emperor.96

their extreme foolishness, sought to obtain I
know not what amount of fame ; and yet, when
they have gotten it, what an empty possession
it has proved ! In the meanwhile you, through
Folly's bounty, are enjoying here all the comforts
and conveniences of life, and—oh, sweet indeed!
—enjoying them, too, not at the expense of any
diligence of your own, but at the cost of the
insane labours of other people.

Having now shown that all the praises which
are so copiously lavished on heroism and industry
are in reality due to me (Folly), I will go on
next to show that prudence also is indebted to
me for whatever good mankind derive from it.
Prudence ! I fancy some will exclaim—prudence
indebted to Folly ! Monstrous ! You might as
well assert that fire and water can commingle.
Well ; I think I can succeed in proving this,
if you will but give me your earnest attention.
In the first place then, if, as is usually held,
prudence results from a practical experience of
the world, whether of the two, I would ask,
has the better title to be called prudent, the
wise man who, partly from modesty, partly from
mental timidity, attempts nothing, and so gains97

no worldly experience whatever, or the fool whom
neither modesty—for he has none, nor danger
—for he has no thoughts of it, deters from
anything ? A wise man, who shrinks from his
fellow-men, and buries himself in the books of
ancient authors, learns from them—what ? A
tissue of mere empty verbiage ! Whereas a
fool, who goes into the world, and runs his
head into all sorts of difficulties—he, if I mistake
not, is the sort of man to acquire true prudence-
Homer, blind as he was, had sight enough to

see this. Hence he avers that

Every fool has learnt some facts

To guide him in his future acts.

And this is just what we should reasonably
expect ; for the obstacles which hinder men
from gaining worldly experience are, in the
main, two—modesty, which, as it were, stifles
out the energies of their souls in the narcotising
fumes of diffidence ; and fear, which, in view
of danger, deters them from all noble exploits.
Now from such silly weaknesses Folly sets a
man gloriously free ; and few people are aware
what a host of other advantages also are
owing to brazen-faced impudence, and dare-devil
audaciousness.

L98

But some people will prefer to have it that
prudence is not so much a thing acquired by
worldly experience as an innate soundness of
judgment respecting human affairs. Well ; be
it so : still my assertion will hold equally good.
Listen then, I adjure you, whilst I demonstrate
how veiy far from being really prudent, in this
sense of the word either, those men are who
arrogantly claim to themselves the right exclu-
sively to be called so. In the first place, it is
evident, let me tell you, that all human things,
like the Sileni of Alcibiades,* wear two aspects
—the real, and the superficial—which differ
•exceedingly one from the other. Thus, what
on the face of it, so to speak, is death, is, if
you look below the external appearance, life.
And, on the other hand, what is seemingly life
is indeed and in truth but death. And so,
•similarly, in all other cases. Only look below the
surface, and you will find beauty to be deformity, f

* Plato, in the Symposium, represents Alcibiades as comparing
Socrates, whose mean external appearance contrasted with the
nobleness of his soul within, to the veiled statues of Silenus,
whose outside coverings were grotesque, but inside them was the
•beautiful work of the artist.

f Thus the old proverbial saying, " Beauty is but skin-deep."99

wealth to be penury, disgrace to be glory,
learning to be ignorance, and strength weakness.
Honour will be acknowledged to be ignominy,
joy will be changed into sadness, prosperity
will become adversity, friendship will be seen
to be but disguised enmity, and what is whole-
some noxious. In short, uncover your Silenus,
and lo ! immediately you will find all things
changed.

But perhaps I may seem to some of you
to have expressed myself rather too abstrusely.
Listen then whilst I endeavour, by the aid of
a simple illustration, to make my meaning
clearer. Who then, let me ask you, does not
confess a king to be both a rich man and a
sovereign lord ? Rich ! but how can he be
that ? Of the riches of the mind he has ab-
solutely none ; and, moreover, what he has
does not satisfy him. In truth, therefore, instead
of being rich he is a very pauper ! And as
to his being a sovereign lord ; how, again, can
he be that ? Surely rather he, whose soul is
given over to a host of vices, instead of being
a sovereign lord, is but a slave of the basest
type ! And we might legitimately philosophiseIOO

in a similar way about any other cases ; but
the above may be sufficient for an example.

But whither, some of you may be inclined
to ask, does this argumentation tend ? Well ;
if you will hear me a little longer you will
easily discover what I am driving at. If any
one were to endeavour to divest of their borrowed
plumes a company of players acting on the stage>
and were to make them all act their parts before
the spectators in their true and natural faces,
would he not spoil the play entirely, and be
thought deserving of being stoned out of the
theatre as a madman ? Indeed, instead of a
stage-play, they would immediately have pre-
sented to them a new sort of thing altogether,
a transformation-scene of singular comicality.
One, who just now appeared as a woman, would
turn out to be a man ; another, who a moment
before was seemingly a youth, would emerge a
veteran; and lo ! again, he who was acting the
great king would be suddenly changed into a
Dama ;* and, more marvellous still, another who
was to all appearance a god would be degraded
instantly into a trumpery specimen of humanity.

# The name of a slave, Hor. Sat. i\ vi-,- 38*101

Take away the illusion, and the whole drama
is destroyed. What rivets the eyes of the
spectators is nought but tinsel and deception.
Now human life, my friends, is but a peculiar
kind of stage-play, and men act their parts in
it, according to their respective characters, until
at last the Master of the Theatre comes (in
the shape of death) and leads them finally from
the scene. Frequently, however, does he compel
them to appear on the stage again in some
new costume. Thus he who just now strutted
on the boards as a king arrayed in the purple
of royalty, will come forth, secondly, as a beggar
clothed in the tattered rags of penury, f Of
course it is all outside sham ; still it is a true
description nevertheless of how the drama of
human life is played out.

And here, if some sage don, coming down
to the earth, so to speak, from his high heaven,
should, in the profundity of his wisdom, suddenly
rise up and protest to me that he whom all

f	" All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts."

-^■As You Like it,102

men look up to as a god* is not even a man,
but a mere sensual beast, a being led like the
brute animals by his appetites, and so a slave
of the most degraded type, since he devotes
himself of his own free will to the service of
masters so many and so unclean as they ; if,
again, he should bid another, mourning for the
loss of a parent, to laugh as having himself
now at last begun life, although, indeed, as I
have intimated, this life beneath its surface is
nought but a kind of death ; if moreover, in
his wisdom, he should call another, glorying in
his pedigree, a base ignoble fellow, because he
happens to be destitute of virtue, the only
fountain of true nobility ; and if he should go
on in this philosophising strain to vilify various
other people in a similar way, what else, I ask,
would he accomplish but this, that he would
appear to everybody no better than a fool and
a madman ?

As nothing is more foolish than preposterous

* Deum ac dominum. The writer had probably here primarily
in his eye the case of the monster Domitian whose edicts,
according to Martial, commenced with the words Edictum
Domini Deique nostri; but the satire points, I imagine, rather at
such a man as Pope Alexander (Borgia),103

wisdom, so nothing is more imprudent than per-
verse prudence. And indeed a man does act
perversely who will not accommodate himself to
the circumstances which surround him; will not
take the world as he finds it; or, at least, will
not remember the convivial rule either to " drink
or begone" (either to be as other people about
you are, or quit their company altogether), vainly
demanding that the Play of Life should be—not
what it is, a play, but a true representation of
affairs.

On the other hand, a truly prudent man—
since men are but fallible mortals, you know—
will have the good sense not to wish to be wiser
than others of his race, but will be either
complacently blind to what he must not see, or
good-humouredly sinning like all the rest of
mankind. But this, say they, is transparent
folly. I readily grant it. I wish, however, that
they, in their turn, would be equally candid
towards me, and would confess—what they can't
rationally deny—that life, therefore, is but Folly's
stage'-play. . Immortal gods ! Shall I blaze
abroad amongst mankind this glorious gospel,
or shall I stifle it ? Stifle it ! No. It is104

truer than truth itself. I will proclaim it.
But how ? The poets are too often wont for
the merest trifles to appeal for inspiration to
the muses of Helicon. Perhaps in a matter of
such supreme moment as this, it may be well
for me also to invoke their aid. O then, ye
daughters of Jove, be present with me, I implore
you, for a little while, and help me to convince
the world that that exalted wisdom which people
prize so highly, and call the very citadel of
happiness, can be reached by no man who does
not submit himself to the leadership of Folly.
In the first place then it is admitted that the
impulses of the mind are due to Folly. So
much, in fact, is this the case that people are
invariably accustomed to distinguish a wise man
from a fool by the characteristic mark of his
being governed by reason, whereas the latter is
controlled by impulse. Hence the stoics speak
of these impulses of the mind—these " perturba-
tions " they call them—as diseases, and deny
that they have any influence over a wise man.
And yet, my friends* the truth is that "these
impulses which they so despise are school-masters
to bring men to the gate of wisdom ; nay,105

better still, they are spurs and incentives urging
them to virtue—monitors exhorting them to
pursue the path of right!

I am aware that that out-and-out Stoic,
Seneca, boldly inveighs against such an asser-
tion as this, and denies that a wise man can
have any mental impulses or affections whatever.
But to what absurdity does his reasoning conduct
him! He destroys the human being altogether!
He creates a novel, monstrous sort of god, such
as never did or could exist ; or—to describe
the matter in plainer terms—he constructs the
marble statue of a man—a soulless block, utterly
destitute of all human feelings! Oh, what a
nice companion must be such a wise man as
this ! By all means, O wise men, enjoy your
compeer's society ! Love him beyond all rivals!
Dwell with him in Plato's republic; or, if you
prefer it, in his region of ideas (Heaven).*
Better still, however, go with him to the gardens
of Tantalus (Hell) ! For who would not rush
from, and dread, as he would a portent and a

* Plato believed the ideal forms of things, as distinct from
their material embodiment, to have been antecedently existent
in the divine mind. But perhaps by the " region of ideas" is
here meant a region that is ideal altogether.

Mio6

spectre, a man of this sort, deaf to all the
sensibilities of nature, and no more moved by
affection's impulses—by love or by pity—than a
hard flint-stone or a Marpesian rock ;* a man
whose notice nothing- escapes, who never deviates
from rigid propriety, but scrutinizes with the
keensightedness of a Lynceusf the most trifling
flaws in the conduct of others, measuring every-
thing with the precision of a foot-rule, and
overlooking nothing, while, at the same time,
thoroughly contented with himself, regarding
himself as alone rich, alone sane, alone a king,
alone a free man; in short, alone everything—
yea, more than alone everything, in his own
good opinion of himself; a man who never
keeps a friend, for he is himself a friend to
nobody; a man who is so profane as to bid
the very gods go hang themselves,X and who

* Parian marble. Marpesus was a mountain in Paros.

f Lynceus, one of the fabled Argonauts, said to have been
able to see through the earth, and distinguish objects at a
•distance of nine miles.

X The old Greek and Roman philosophers often spoke with
supreme contempt of the traditional mythology of their times,
and certainly had no more faith in the gods and goddesses of
heathenism than Erasmus himself in the popular superstitions of
his day.io7

condemns and ridicules as madness everything
that mankind do ? Yes ; this is the kind of
animal that your absolutely wise man is. I
ask, if the matter was put to the vote, what
state would select such a man for a magistrate,
or what army would desire to have him for a
leader ? What woman, moreover, would take a
creature so detestable for a husband ? What
host would invite him as a guest ? What slave
would either wish for, or could endure, a master
with a disposition so singularly odious ?Vj/ And
who would not choose, in preference to him,
some one from the ranks of ordinary men—
most foolish though they be—who, although a
fool, is yet able to govern or be governed, as
the case may be, by other fools; a man who
is acceptable to people of a like sort to himself
—and those, remember, are the majority of
mankind; a man who is affectionate to his wife,
agreeable to his friends, courteous as a guest,
free and easy as a host—in short, a man to
whom nothing human is distasteful ?Chapter V.

Folly Regenerates the World—Old Dons—Old Dames—
School-Knowledge Hell-Born—The Golden Age—
Physicians why Popular — Lawyers — Happiness of
Simpletons—Women Partial to Fools—A Wise Man a
Wretched Creature.

But I am now thoroughly tired of the
subject of that horrible creature the wise man,
so will return to the point from whence I
digressed, and proceed to treat of the remaining
advantages conferred on mankind by folly.
Survey, then—as the poets describe Jove as
doing;—survey, as from some sublime watch-
tower, the various calamities that beset the life
of men, their misery, their base nativity, their
laborious education, the numerous injuries to
which their childhood is exposed, the manifold
hardships to which their youth is liable, the
burthensomeness of their old age, the dreadful
necessity of death, the host of diseases that
infest them, the casualties that await them, the
discomforts that assail them, how everything that
befalls them is mingled with bitterness, not to
mention a legion of other evils that are inflicted109

by man on man, such as poverty, imprisonment,
infamy, shame, torture, plots, betrayals, insults,
litigations, frauds, &c. But I must stop. To
attempt to enumerate all the ills to which the
life of man is liable would be as vain as to
endeavour to count the grains of sand on the
sea-shore. And then, the question occurs, By
what possible misdeeds could men have merited
such dire calamities ? What god could have
compelled them in his wrath to be born amidst
such rueful miseries ? From such dark enigmas
indeed I am forbidden at present to withdraw
the veil. Thus much, however, I will venture
to affirm, that whoever weighs thoroughly in
his mind the joylessness of the lot of man,
will assuredly bestow his tribute of approval
on the example—though a sad one—of the
poor Milesian virgins.* But who are the men

* That is, " will approve of a man's committing suicide."
Erasmus had doubtless in view the declared opinion of many of
the Greek and Roman philosophers who, reflecting on the
miseries of life, had come to the conclusion that suicide, in
certain cases, was allowable. He makes Folly suggest—as of
course Folly only could suggest—that a wise man could come to
no other conclusion. As to the Milesian virgins alluded to
above, they are reported by Aulus Gellius to have been in the
habit of destroying themselves when wearied with the wretched-
ness of existence (Noel. Allic. xv. 10J.I IO

who are most prone from weariness of life,
similarly to court their doom ? Why men of
reputed wisdom. Not to mention Diogenes,,
Xenocrates, the Catos, the Cassii, and the Bruti,
there is the remarkable case of Chiron who,
though he actually had immortality conferred
upon him, voluntarily preferred death.*

You see then, I imagine, the pass to which
things would come if men were universally wise.
The world, forsooth, would be depopulated, and
there would be need of a new creation. Clay
to make men out of would again be in request,
and a second artificer of the stamp of Pro-
metheusf would be wanted to afford his services.

But, since the world generally is under the
influence of folly and not of wisdom, the case
is happily different. I (Folly) by making men,
with respect to the ills of life, ignorant of some,
indifferent to others, and, in cases not a few,

* Chiron, a centaur of surpassing wisdom, and tutor to
Achilles, having been incurably wounded by Hercules, implored
Jupiter to release him from his immortality.

f Prometheus is fabled to have made the first man and
woman that ever were upon the earth out of clay, and to
have animated them by means of fire which he had stolen
from heaven.III

utterly oblivious of all; by inspiring them with
hopes of good things they may never get, and
by adding to their pleasures a honied sweetness
not otherwise attainable, so charm away the
terrible woes of human existence that even, at
the very last, when the thread of life is exhausted,
so far are they from wishing to die and to
leave life, that their only regret is that life so
soon has to leave them. Nay, the less cause
there is for them to desire to live, the more
nevertheless do they love life, so totally unaffected
are they by anything like a weariness of
existence.

Assuredly, therefore, of my bounty it is that
you see everywhere men of Nestorean longevity,
men in whom scarcely the semblance of a man
any longer remains, men whose speech is a
mumble, who are without brains, without teeth;
whose hair is white, whose heads are bald, who
are—to describe them better in Aristophanic
words—

Ugly, crooked, full of woe,

Wrinkled, toothless, and so so.

And yet * you will find these old fellows so
enamoured of life, and so eager to make them-
selves look youthful, that one will dye his whiteI 12

hair, another will disguise his baldness with a
wig, and another will use teeth, which he has
extracted, perchance, from some animal, to supply
the place of his own ! And, again, another
you will find languishing miserably after some
maiden, and going beyond the veriest boy in his
amatory frivolities ! Yes ; you will find old
dotards, bending beneath the weight of years,
and fit only for their graves, taking to wife
some frisky young heifer of a creature, with no
dower to recommend her, and for whose affections
others she likes better will successfully intrigue!
Indeed, so frequently do cases of this kind occur
that the fashion now is to regard them almost
with" approval!

And, again, you will find—a much more
amusing sight—old women already dead with
age, and so cadaverous-looking that you might
fancy that they had returned from the shades
beneath, protesting vigorously that the light (of
life) is sweet to them; you will find them
caterwauling, and, as the Greeks express it,
behaving themselves goatishly, in order* to induce
some beauteous Phaon, for a substantial requital,
to pay court to them ; you will find themH3

painting their faces, lingering long at their
looking-glasses, plucking out their superfluous
hairs, and exposing indecorously their emaciated
busts; you will find them with their poor, worn-
out, tremulous voices singing sentimental sonnets,
in the vain hope of kindling in the breast of
some listener the waning flame of passion; you
will find them, on occasions not a few, resorting
for stimulation to the bottle; you will find them
—superannuated as they are—dancing in the
society of the merest girls ; and, lastly, Oh
heavens! you will find them penning love-letters.

Of course these practices are universally
laughed at, and pronounced to be extremely
foolish. And so, indeed, they unquestionably
are. But then, remember, there is this to be
said in their favour. The old ladies who adopt
them afford themselves by means of them an
immense amount of pleasure. They live in a
condition of supreme felicity, and pass, so to
speak, a honied existence. In short, as you
must plainly see, they are rendered exquisitely
happy by my beneficent instrumentality.

And here I would put a pertinent question
to those (wise men) to whom my remarks appear

N114

ridiculous, and would ask them to consider
seriously whether it is not far better to enjoy
by the aid of folly such an evidently delightful
existence as this than to be driven, as they so
often are, to go and hang themselves in order
to escape from the wretchedness of their lives.
They will say, no doubt, that such foolish
practices as I patronise are contemptible. So
they are. But what does that matter to those
special favourites of mine—the fools? They do
not perceive that (wise) people despise them,
and if they did they would not mind it. If
a stone falls upon your head and hurts you, it
is an evil because you feel it. Similarly, shame,
infamy, disgrace, reproaches, are evils, if you
feel them. But if you feel them not, why
surely then they are no evils to you at all.
What harm is it to you to have the whole
world scoffing at you if, all the while, you are
thoroughly contented with yourself ? And this,
depend upon it, Folly, and Folly only, can
make you.

But methinks I hear the philosophers
exclaiming loudly against me, and protesting
that what I call happiness—namely, to be underH5

the dominion of folly, to err, to be deceived,
to be ignorant—is just the very thing which
they call misery. And yet, my friends, remember,
that to be all this is simply to be a man.
Why then they should call it miserable for men
to be born, nurtured, and built up as their very
humanity demands I certainly fail to understand.
I affirm that to call anything miserable for
consistently obeying the dictates of its nature
is altogether to misapply the term. Would
you call a man miserable because he could not
fly in the air like a bird, or because he could
not walk on four legs like a beast ? Would
you call him miserable because he had not horns
on his head like a bull ? Surely, by a similar
process of dialectics you might assert that a
splendid horse was miserable because he had
never learnt grammar, or because he did not
eat cheese-cakes; or that a bull was miserable
because he was unfitted to take part in a debate.
No; the truth of the matter is this, that my
favourite, the fool, simply lives as his nature
inclines him, and is, of course, no more miserable
for doing that than a horse for being ignorant
of grammar.116

But again these subtle disputants will assail
me. Man, they will argue, stands preeminently
in need of a liberal education in order to enable
him to provide himself by art with such things
as are doled out to him too scantily by nature.
Nature dole out things too scantily ! As if
there were the smallest semblance of truth in
such an accusation. Nature—which so sedulously
watches over the welfare of every paltry fly—
yea, even of every despised weed and floweret
—dole out things so scantily to man, be so
asleep, as it were, to all his needs, as to place
him under the necessity of acquiring school-
knowledge in order to make up for her short-
comings ! School-knowledge! Who was it first
excogitated school-knowledge but that unfeeling
demon Theutus,* who so hated mankind that
he wished thus to bring them to their ruin ?
School-knowledge indeed ! Why, so far is it
from being calculated to promote mankind's
happiness—the express purpose for which it is
said to have been devised—that those very men
(the wise) who are so ardently devoted to it

* An ancient Egyptian hero or demigod, said to have invented
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and the letters of the alphabet.ii7

are themselves evidences to the very contrary !
And this fact is well brought out in that
passage in Plato* where the King, whom I
highly extol for his acumen, argues much as
I do now against this cursed discovery, the
invention of letters. No ; school-knowledge, like
all other plagues that have crept in amongst
mankind, derives its origin from the authors of
all abominations—the maleficent " genii " of
Hell, whose very name, standing as it does
for " geniuses," was undoubtedly invented to
indicate what "knowing ones" they are!f The
simple people of the golden age were furnished
with no such school-knowledge. Nature alone
sufficed to guide them ; instinct, to prompt
them how to live. What need had they for
rules of grammar ? They all spoke the same
language, and all the advantage they looked
for from speech was to make themselves in-
telligible to one another. J What would have

* In his " Phagdrus."

f Erasmus here plays upon the words daimones and daemones,
for which I have substituted genii and geniuses as passable
equivalents, or at least as an analogous verbal conceit.

J How different was it, Stultitia implies, with the wise
diplomatists and disputants of the day, whose words were oftenI iB

been the use of the principles of logic to men
amongst whom conflicting arguments never arose?
What place was there for rhetoric amongst men
who never had occasion to litigate in the courts ?
What would have been the advantage of juris-
prudence to men amongst whom bad morals—
the sole apology for good laws—had no existence ?
Moreover, they were too religious to scrutinize
with impious curiosity the hidden things of
nature—the size, the motion, and the influences
of the stars, and the secret springs of events*
—considering it presumption for a mortal man
to strive after knowledge which is beyond his
destiny to reach. And as to entering, as men
do now, upon inquiries concerning what exists
beyond the concave of the sky, why, good
heavens ! such insane speculations would have
surpassed their wildest conceptions, f

But as the purity of the golden age
lessened by slow degrees, various branches of

craftily employed with the directly opposite intent, of concealing
rather than revealing their true minds ! Thus Talleyrand, in
humorous irony once said that, judging from his own experience,
this is the main end for which language was given to mankind.

* Astrologers are here pointed at.

f The speculations of theologians and metaphysicians are
here referred to.119

school-knowledge, as I have said, were invented
by maleficent genii. These indeed at first were
but few, and cultivated by but few individuals.
But in process of time to these the super-
stition of . the Chaldees,* and the idle levity of
the Greeks, added a host of others—such mere
brain-racking puzzles that to master the first
principles of even one of them is abundantly
sufficient to torture one perpetually for a life-
time !

Yet, even amongst these various branches of
knowledge, which I have described as being
utterly unendurable, there still are some which
are justly held by mankind in higher estimation
than others. And the reason evidently is that
there are some branches of knowledge which are
less opposed than others to the dictates of
common-sense—in other words—to folly. Men
very soon experimentally discover that these are
the branches of knowledge which are likely to
prove most serviceable to themselves. Hence,
while theologians are allowed to starve, and
philosophers to pine for want of patronage ;

* The Chaldees had a superstitious belief in the influences of
the stars, and are said to have originated astrology.1 20

whilst astrologers are laughed at, and logicians
treated with neglect, the physician alone is always
in request.

A doctor's valued more by far

Than scores of better mortals are.

And not only so ; but the more empty-headed,
the more confident in assertion, the more reckless
any man of this profession is, the more his
patients are sure to think of him—paragons of
wisdom though some of them may deem them-
selves to be. And yet medicine—as it is now
frequently practised—is nothing but a system of
pure humbug, as much so in fact as rhetoric itself!

Next in repute to the physicians stand the
pettifogging lawyers. Perhaps I ought to have
placed them first; for philosophers—to say nothing
of my own opinion—are unanimously agreed to
laugh at their profession as that of a set of
asses. And asses I grant you that they are.
Nevertheless, it is by the will and pleasure of
these asses that the business of the world, from
the greatest to the least, is transacted. They
are able to make their fortunes, and increase
their broad acres, whilst the poor theologian,
in the meanwhile, with his shelves emptied of121

his whole stock of divinity, wages assiduous
warfare against the worms and lice* on a
meagre diet of lupines!

As then the professional arts prosper in
proportion as they are characterised by folly,
so by far the happiest people in the world are
those who are in a position to dispense with
artificial training altogether, and to follow solely
nature as their guide. And, truly, a more
unerring guide it is impossible for them to find;
for nature is in all respects perfect; and more-
over—unless, indeed, we imagine that mortal
beings have it in their power to transcend the
limits of their mortality-—from her dominion no
man living can escape. Now nature sets her
face against all artificial expedients. Hence you
will always find that what is done best is what
has been unspoilt by art. Come now, let me
ask you, Do you not see that animals of every
kind which have been subjected to no training,
and have been left to the sole guidance of
nature, are those which live most happily ?
Take the case of bees. What happier or more

* " Against the worms and lice that is, against death and
starvation.

O122

wonderful little creatures can be found ? It is
true their very bodily senses are deficient; yet,
for all that, their skill in building their cells
is so exquisite that in the whole history of
architecture you will not find their equals ;
and their system of polity is so complete that
from the entire annals of philosophy no single
philosopher can be named who ever conceived
so perfect a republic as theirs.* On the other
hand, take the case of the horse. In cast of
mind he is akin to man, and has permitted
himself to be domiciled in human homesteads ;
but, alas, as a necessary consequence, he is a
partaker of human calamities. Thus, not un-
frequently, on the race-course, whilst scorning
to be beaten, with all the sensibility of a human
creature, he runs till he actually breaks his
wind; and on the battle-field, whilst as eager
for victory as his rider, a deadly weapon pierces
him, and down they come both of them rolling
on the ground. Not to enlarge upon the cruel
bits, the stabbing spurs, the prison-like stables,
the whips, the cudgels, the chains, the riders,
in short, all the tragedy of servitude which of

* Not even Plato with his ideal republic.123

his own free choice the noble animal endures,
simply to inflict—in the spirit of a brave hero
—a too magnanimous revenge on his unfeeling
masters,* how infinitely preferable to their life
is the life of flies and birds, living on joyously
from day to day (if the snares of men will only
permit them so to do) solely by the instincts
of their nature. And it is perfectly wonderful
how, when once any of these birds are caught
and shut up in cages, and are taught to mimic
the human voice—it is perfectly wonderful, I
say, how greatly they degenerate from their
native sprightliness. I assert, therefore, un-
hesitatingly that any creature that has been left
solely to nature to train up is happier in all
respects than one with whose training man's
art has had anything to do.

And in accordance with this opinion of mine
is the conclusion—which I cannot applaud too
highly—of that old cock Pythagoras! who, after

* Stultitia imagines a horse to be such an extraordinarily wise,
intelligent, and magnanimous animal as to be actuated by
feelings of chivalrous heroism akin to that of martyrs who, by
going through their sufferings with patient and unflinching
submission, take a noble revenge on their persecutors.

f Lucian represents Mycillus as conversing with a cock which
was animated by the soul of Pythagoras.124

his soul had gone through all sorts of trans-
migrations, after he had been in succession
well nigh everything—a philosopher, a woman,
a king, a nobody, a fish, a horse, a toad, and
•—verily I believe—even a sponge, yet, after all
his varied experiences, declared as his deliberate
judgment that the condition of no other animal
was more calamitously wretched than that of a
man; for whereas all other animals obeyed
contentedly the conditions of their nature, man
alone was perpetually striving to transcend the
limitations of his lot. And moreover, amongst
men, his unhesitating conclusion was that
ordinary people of the world were by many
degrees better off than the wise and great.
That stupid simpleton Gryllus, for example, who
preferred to be turned into a pig, and to remain
at home grunting in a sty, rather than expose
himself with him to the risks and contingencies
of travel, was not a little wiser—take my word
for it—than Ulysses with all his vaunted
sagacity. And with these views Homer, the
great father of romance, appears to me to agree;
for although he calls all men wretched and
miserable, yet Ulysses, his ideal of a sagacious125

hero, he calls, again and again, "woebegone"—a
term he never applies to Paris, or Ajax, or
Achilles. And why was this ? Why, but because
he (Ulysses) was a crafty, cunning wight who
never did anything but at the instigation of
Minerva (Wisdom) ? In short, he was too
clever to live, repudiating as he did utterly the
benign guidance of nature.

It is clear to you, I presume, now that
those who make wisdom their study, by so
doing, make themselves the most miserable of
mankind. What double-dyed fools then must
they be for pursuing it ! Born men, yet for-
getting their condition, and affecting to live
like the immortal gods ! born men, yet presuming
like the giants of old—by school-machinery—
ha-ha—to wage war against nature! Oh, what
egregious folly!

On the other hand, the least miserable of
.mankind—those who are as little miserable as
it is possible for men to be—are those who in
condition and intelligence are very little superior
to mere brutes, who are content with their lowly
lot, and have no ambition for anything beyond
it. Come ; let me see if I cannot prove this126

to you—not, of course, by dry philosophical
arguments, but by sound and solid illustration.
By the immortal gods, then, I solemnly swear
to you that no class of men is happier than
that of those whom the world calls—and the
names applied, in my opinion, so far from being
a disgrace to them, are exceedingly honourable;
—no class of men, I say, is happier than that
of those whom the world calls simpletons, fools,
and blockheads. My assertion on the face of
it may seem, perhaps, silly and absurd. Never-
theless nothing can possibly be truer. In the
first place, men of this class are entirely devoid
of—what, by Jove! I can tell you is no trifling
evil—the dread of death. They have no accusing
j consciences to make them fear it, and no alarms
\ are excited in their minds by the bugbear
stories told about the condition of departed
souls. Of ghosts and goblins no terrors haunt
them ; of impending evils no anticipations crush
them; and of coming good no vain expectations
buoy them up. Of the thousands of cares
which lacerate the minds of other men they
are happily without experience. They feel no
shame, no solicitude, no ambition, no envy, no127

love. And lastly, to crown all—and 1 assert
this, mind you, on the authority of theologians
—if their intelligence is sufficiently low to
approximate to that of brutes, then, do what
they may, they are free from any imputation
of the guilt of sin ! Ah, ye besotted men of
wisdom, if you could only reckon up all the
numerous days and nights that your souls have
been racked with anxiety; if you could only
pile together in a heap all the various ills of
life which you have gone through, you would
need no further evidence to convince you from
what a mass of calamities I have delivered my
idiotic favourites. And not only so; not only
have I so constituted them that they are them-
selves happy—perpetually rejoicing, and playing,
and singing, and laughing—but they have also
the peculiar property of making other people
happy as well. Thus, in whatever company
they may be, you will find them affording
pleasure and fun to everybody. You will find
everybody amused at them, everybody laughing
at them, as if the gods of their goodness had
actually created them for the express purpose
of dispelling gloom from human existence.128

Hence men are invariably partial to them, and
though actuated, indeed, often enough, as you
well know, by feelings of a veiy different
character towards one another, yet never entertain
towards my beloved fools any other sentiments
but those of affection and attachment. They
acknowledge them all as their own kith and
kin; they court their society; they feast, caress,
and fondle them. If any trifling mishap befalls
them, they fly to their help at once, and they
allow them with impunity to say and do just
whatever they please. Indeed, so far is anyone
from wishing to do them any harm that even
wild beasts will not molest them,* being re-
strained from doing so by an instinctive
consciousness of their innocence—for, of course,
such childish simpletons cannot be regarded as
amenable to blame. Truly, they are the especial
favourites of the gods, and of me more than all.
Hence it is not to be wondered at that all
creatures should hold them in such high venera-

* Listrius remarks on this passage that he had observed with
wonder how rarely dogs will attack children or imbeciles. I
fancy, however, that he rates canine discrimination and
magnanimity a little too highly.129

tion. Even the greatest kings delight in them.*
Some of them can neither dine, nor walk, nor
remain—rno, not for a single hour—without them.
Vastly indeed do they prefer them to all those
grave counsellors whom for the sake of dignity
they pamper at their courts. And the reason
why they so prefer them is obvious enough ;
for, whilst those confoundedly wise counsellors
of theirs bring upon them nothing but sadness,
and, relying on their own superior learning,
venture sometimes even to annoy their sensitive
ears with words of stinging truth, the fools, on
the other hand, afford them—what alone princes
care to hunt after from all sorts of places and
in all sorts of ways — sport, laughter, and
enjoyment.

And there is, moreover, this virtue in fools
—and believe me it is no mean one—that they
alone of all mankind are both simple and truth-
telling at the same time. What can be more
praiseworthy than their truthfulness ? The proverb
indeed of Alcibiades in Platof represents truth-

* "Court Fools" were regarded as indispensable appendages
to a King's retinue.

f In the Symposium.130

telling as due to childishness, and to a man's
having taken too much wine; but, depend upon
it the whole credit of it is due to me. And
in asserting this I am borne out by no less an
authority than Euripides who, in that famous
declaration of his concerning me which is still
extant, remarks that—

When a fool in his folly opens his lips

He speaks as a fool does, and out the truth slips ;

for a fool cannot keep a secret: what he thinks
in his heart his countenance reveals, and the
words of his mouth betray. On the other hand,
as the same Euripides observes, wise men have
two tongues: with one of them they speak
truth ; with the other, whatever they think
expedient at the moment. They can prove to
you that black is white, and can blow equally
well either hot or cold, as it may suit them
best to do. And oh! how different indeed may
be thoughts concealed within their breasts from
what the words they so glibly utter would lead
you to suppose.

Moreover, with all the advantages that
princes are imagined to possess, they have, as
it seems to me, this paramount disadvantage—■i3i

a disadvantage which the very notion of a prince
carries with it—namely, that they have no people
about them to tell them the plain, unvarnished
truth, and thus are under the necessity of
mistaking flatterers for friends. But " truth,"
some one has well said, " is abhorrent to the
ears of princes," and hence, of course, their
courtiers do not like to tell it them. It is so,
indeed. And thus it comes to pass that princes
shun the society of their wisest counsellors,
fearing lest any of them should be freer in
conversation with them than they quite like,
and should have the boldness to tell them what
is true rather than what is agreeable. This, I
say, is the reason why truth is detestable to
kings. And here it is that my fools prove
themselves marvellously useful. Princes will
listen to them with pleasure when they tell them
plain truths—nay more—even when they openly
vilify them. And so much is this the case
that a speech which would cost a wise man
his head, coming from the lips of a jester,
affords them incredible delight; for truth if
told inoffensively—and fools indeed are the only
beings in the world who are endowed by the132

gods with the power of so telling it—has in it
a peculiar fascination.

For somewhat similar reasons women, being
naturally fonder than others of pleasure ancl
frivolity, are particularly partial to men of this
kind. Sometimes, indeed, they go a little
further in their familiarities with them than is
prudent—to more serious lengths than need be
named here. However, they interpret it as only
a little bit of fun and frolic ; for their sex is
gifted with vast ingenuity, especially when
excuses have to be invented in extenuation
of their pranks.

But to return to the happiness of my fools.
After having spent their lives in this world very
agreeably, undisturbed by the fear, or even by
a passing thought, of death, they depart hence
straight to the realms of Paradise, there to
satiate their pious and frivolous souls with a
full fruition of what they so fondly love as
pleasure.

And now go on, if you will, and contrast
with theirs the lot of a wise man. Take any
one you like, be he but a fair specimen of
wisdom—some man who has worn iiway his133

youth and manhood in mastering- the jargon of
the schools; some man who has consumed the
sweetest prime of his life in incessant night-
studies, moiling and toiling day after day with
dull and wearisome monotony, scrupulously
careful not to allow himself a moment's respite
to taste the very smallest particle of pleasure;
a man always thin and mean-looking, always
moody and morose; a harsh and cruel taskmaster
to himself, and shunned as a bore and a nuisance
by every one else; a pale, emaciated, sickly,
blear-eyed wretch, exhausted by old age long
ere old age is due, prematurely grown grey,
and hurrying prematurely to his grave. However,
of course, when he dies is of no consequence;
for, correctly speaking, he has never lived.,
having never had the least experience of the
happiness of existence.Chapter VI.

Insanity of two Kinds—Sportsmen—House-builders—
Alchemists—Gamblers—Miracle - mongers — Supersti-
tions — Indulgences — Absolutions — Saints — Pompous
F unerals—Pedigrees—Self-esteem—F lattery.

And now I have given you a tolerably
faithful picture of what a wise man is like.
But the frogs from the porch* are croaking at
me again ! And what is the burden of their
song now? "Nothing can be more miserable
than insanity. Extravagant folly is insanity.
Therefore, nothing can be more miserable than
extravagant folly." Well; if to be insane means
to be in a condition of mental error, all I can say
is that these wise men have been insane enough,
in all conscience, all their lives^ through ! I
will, however, the Muses helping me, just proceed
to shatter in pieces this nice, fallacious little
syllogism of theirs. Now surely such ingenious

* The wise man, here called " frogs from the porch" in
allusion to the Stoa or Porch at Athens where Zeno taught his
philosophy.135

reasoners as these men are must have shrewdness
enough to see, as Socrates in Plato* teaches
them, that if you bisect a Venus or a Cupid
you make two out of what before was one.f
Similarly, they ought to be able to see, if
they would save their own credit' for sanity,
that insanity also may be of two different kinds;
for certainly insanity is not always a calamity
to a man. If it was Horace would not have
spoken as he did of being under the spell of
a delightful insanity nor would Plato || have
reckoned amongst the chief of earthly blessings
the insanity of poets, prophets, and lovers ;
nor, again, would that prophetess (the Sibyl)
have described the pleasing labours of ^Eneas
as the labours of insanity. §

There are evidently then two kinds of
insanity. One is infernal in its origin, and is
sent up to earth from the depths of Hell by
those dire disturbers of human happiness—the

* In the Symposium.

f That is, if you analyse the term " love " you find that it
stands for two very different things—for an animal passion as
well as for a pure and spiritual affection.

J " Me ludit amabilis insania." Hor. Carm.y Hi. iv., 5.

|| In Phaedrus.

§ " Insano juvat indulgere labori. Yirg. jtEneid*, vi., 135,136

cursed Furies, who let loose their maddening
scorpions amongst the sons of men to excite
in their breasts a burning passion for warfare,
an insatiable thirst for gold, a lust for dis-
honourable and forbidden gallantries, an inclination
to commit parricide, incest, sacrilege and other
such like enormities, or to torture their guilty
consciences with the stingings of remorse, and
with firebrands of anticipated horror. Oh ! how
totally different from this most terrible infliction
is that other kind of insanity which proceeds,
I am proud to say, from me, and is held in
estimation by everybody as a boon to be most
earnestly desired. It steals over a man when
any pleasing hallucination pervades his mind,
freeing his soul from anxious cares, and steeping
it, as it were, in a bath of rose-water.

It was an insanity of this kind that Cicero
tells Atticus in a letter that he sought as a
special favour from the gods in order that he
might be freed from the miserable consciousness
of his calamities. And it was an insanity of
this kind, too, that the Argive we read of in
Horace* was under the influence of. He was a
* Hor. Ep.y ii. ii., 128, &c.137

good sort of fellow enough, by the way, in the
common affairs of life, agreeable to his friends,
kind to his wife, considerate towards his at-
tendants, and no tippler, yet so mad that he
would sit alone for whole days together in an
empty theatre laughing, applauding, and in the
highest glee, under the pleasing delusion that
he was witnessing some marvellously fine acting,
when of course nothing of the kind was being
transacted at all. Well; this man—when, by
the care of his kinsmen, and the administration
of copious draughts of physic, he had been
cured of his disease, and brought again to his
sober senses—thus expostulated with his friends.
" By Pollux! my friends," said he, " so far
from having done me any service, you have
ruined me ; you have deprived me of the
greatest enjoyment I ever had, and have taken
from me, against my will, a most delightful
phantasy." And assuredly he had good reason
for saying so; for, indeed, they were in grievous
error, and had really far more need themselves
to have been doctored with hellebore* than he
had, thinking as they did that they were acting

* This drug was held in reputation as a cure for madness.

Q138

kindly towards him in dosing him with medicine
in order to purge out of him as a dreadful
disorder an insanity of such a happy and blissful
sort. Insanity do I call it ? And yet why
should it be so named? Why should a pleasing
delusion of the senses or of the mind be called
by the name of insanity ? Now people do not
usually call a man insane if, owing to the
defectiveness of his eye-sight, he chances to
mistake a mule for a donkey, or if, through
lack of ear, he admires a discordant sound and
thinks it fine music. If, however, he be deceived
—somewhat out of the ordinary way—by his
judgment, as well as by his senses, as a constant
thing and not as a mere casual occurrence; if,
for example, whenever he hears the braying of
a jackass, he imagines it some glorious symphony;
or if—being but an obscurely-born and insigni-
ficant pauper—he habitually fancies himself a
Croesus, King of the Lydians, then at once they
pronounce him to be a crazy fool. And yet
why should they thus depreciate this grateful
species of insanity—an insanity from which, as
a rule, nought but pleasure is derived, which
confers no mean delight on those who are subject139

to it, and on those, too, who witness its
comicalities ? And these are charmingly diver-
sified ; for this kind of insanity is not
exemplified only in one stereotyped way, and
more, depend upon it, are under the sway of
it than people commonly suppose. Many a man,
for example, who laughs at another's folly is
but a fool himself—fool laughing at fool, each
affording a laughing-stock to the other ! And
generally you will find that the one who laughs
the loudest is the bigger fool of the two.
And you will find, too—provided a man is
insane with no insanity but that delectable
insanity which is peculiar to myself, and which
I so widely diffuse amongst mankind—that, if
you search the world over, you will not discover
a single individual so invariably wise as not to
be at times under the dominion of it in some
shape or another. And, finally, you will find
—take my word for it—that the happier any
man is the more manifold are the varieties of
his insane follies.

Well; the kind of insanity which I alone
am concerned in producing is this happy in-
sanity which, as I have just remarked, is14°

everywhere diffused. People are not aware how
universally mankind are under its influence. If
a man were to see a gourd and were to call
it a woman, they would then perhaps acknowledge
that he was insane, because of course few
would make such an unusual blunder. If,
however, he were to commit some very ordinary
mistake; if, for instance, he were to swear that
his wife was more true to him than Penelope
—every one knowing her to be the very reverse
—and were to bepraise himself on the strength
of it in the most self-congratulatory style,
happy as the day under the spell of his delusion,
none would think of calling him insane at all
—not because he is not so, but because they
see that husbands, all the world over, are
continually liable to be duped!

And to this class of insane fools belong
also those who regard all pursuits as contemptible
in comparison with the chase, and who profess
to experience incredible feelings of delight if
they do but hear the tuneless blast of a hunt-
ing-horn, or the doleful howling of a hound.
Indeed, I verily believe that the loathsome fcetor
of canine excrement is in their nostrils as the141

grateful perfume of cinnamon! Certainly, the
horrible operation of tearing in pieces some
poor, wretched wild animal affords them exquisite
pleasure! Now, any low-born fellow, you know,
is usually supposed to be good enough to fulfil
the task of slaughtering an ox or a sheep;
but—singular inconsistency—to cut up the carcase
of an animal captured in the chase is the work
of a gentleman ! For any man of lower grade
to presume to do it were a kind of sacrilege.
It must be performed with a solemnity befitting
so dignified a business. The operator uncovers
his head, falls down on his knees, draws out
a cutlass, specially provided for the purpose—
for no baser weapon will suffice—and then, after
duly flourishing it, proceeds to butchery, gashing
the carcase, part after part, with the precision
of an anatomist, and according to certain
recognised rules of dissection which he is
religiously scrupulous to observe.* Meanwhile,

* " In one of his letters from England Erasmus claims to be a
first-rate huntsman; and unless he had been at least once in at the
death, he could scarcely have given so humorous a description
of the operation." Drummond's Life of Erasmus, Vol. 1, p. 190.
Erasmus's friend More—possibly from his intercourse with
Erasmus—viewed hunting similarly as one of the follies of142

around him stands a gaping throng, looking
on in silent wonderment as if at something
very new to them indeed, whereas, may be,
they have been spectators of the self-same thing
at least a thousand times before. And if any
one of them is fortunate enough to get afterwards
a taste of the slaughtered creature's flesh, he
conceives himself thereby as receiving no trifling
accession to his importance! In this way these
fools, although by perpetually hunting and
devouring wild animals they almost degenerate
into wild animals themselves, yet all the while
are supremely happy under the impression that
they are passing a right-royal life of it.

And very similar to these men in their folly
are those who burn with an insatiable propensity
for dabbling in bricks and mortar, who are never

mankind, and, as Mr. Drummond remarks, expresses sentiments
to that effect in his political romance, the Utopia—published in
1518:—"The exercise of hunting, as a thing unworthy to be
used of free men, the Utopians have rejected to their butchers,
to the which craft they appoint their slaves; for they account
hunting as the lowest, the vilest, and most abject part of
butchery." It is interesting to reflect that Erasmus and More on
this matter held opinions so far in advance of their age that
they are only now just beginning to be appreciated by any
considerable number of the community.*43

content with the kind of houses they happen
to live in, but must be perpetually altering1 them
in this way or that. Should they live in a
round house they can never be satisfied till
they have made it square, and no sooner have
they made it square, than again they must be
making it round. And there is no end or
limit to these constant variations, until they
have reduced themselves to such a condition of
poverty that they have neither house to dwell
in nor food to eat ! And what then—you will
ask ? Why then, of course, they die. But
what of that ? They have spent in the mean-
while, for many a year, a thoroughly happy
existence.

Next in order to them seem to me to
come those* who vainly waste their efforts in
endeavouring by strange and mysterious arts to
transmute into one another things specifically
different, t and who compass sea and land in
a futile search after a certain imaginary quint-
essence. Honied hope so lures them on that,
in the prosecution of their quixotic designs,

* The Alchemists.

t As, for example, the baser metals into gold.144

they are weary of no labour, and chary of no
expense. And so remarkable is their zest for
the discovery of new theories wherewith to
beguile their time, and to afford them fresh
experience of the deceptive delights of specu-
lation, that they never give over their investiga-
tions, vain though they be, until they have
exhausted every possible substance that they
can put to the test of their crucibles. Even
then they cease not dreaming pleasant dreams,
animating others as best they can to look for
success where they have failed, and to walk after
their example in the paths of delusion which
have proved to them at any rate paths of
pleasure. And at last, when all their hopes
have turned out to be fallacious, there yet
remains to them this abundantly consoling
reflection,

Those who grand ends pursue with steadfast will,

Despite all failures, merit honour still.

Thus do they complacently finish their career,
never for a moment casting any blame on
themselves for their folly, but imputing all their
disappointment to the brevity of life ! Had their
term of existence been but a wee bit longer,145

it would have sufficed, they fondly think, for
the solution of their recondite problems.

And next to be noticed are the gamblers,
a class of men about whom I am somewhat
inclined to doubt whether or not they should
be admitted as members of my college. Never-
theless, I think I must accord them that honour;
for, certainly, to see men so addicted to gaming
that they cannot even hear the rattle of the
dice-box, but their hearts leap and palpitate
with emotion, is as thoroughly absurd and
ridiculous a sight as can well be conceived.
And what fools do they make of themselves
when, enticed on and on by the hope of winning,
they do nothing but go on and on in a course
of losing, making shipwreck of their fortunes,
dashing their bark, so to speak, against the
rock of Alea (dice), more formidable far than
the rock of Malea,* and escaping may be with
their bodies, but without a rag wherewith to
cover them ! Yet, notwithstanding this, not for
the world would they deprive the winner of one
tittle of his gains. Oh no ; they are far too
honest for that! They pay him to the very

* A dangerous promontory of Laconia.

Jl146

uttermost farthing-. Ah—how glad would their
legitimate creditors be if they only acted towards
them in a similar way!

Another reason why we should regard this
class of men as coming under the category of
fools is that we actually find amongst them men
perpetually addicted to gaming who are yet so
old and so blind that positively they have need
to use glass-eyes (spectacles) in order to enable
them to see the dice! And when at last gout
—-justly enough deserved—has settled in their
finger-joints, so devoted are they to their cherished
hobby that, at considerable expense, they will
hire substitutes to throw the dice for them
rather than give it up.

Now this kind of life is all very delectable
no doubt; but there is this drawback to it,
that gambling, unfortunately, is peculiarly liable
to terminate in raging madness, and that, as
you know, is amenable to the Furies' auspices
and not mine.

There is another class of men, however, of
whose position in my school there can be no
doubt whatever. I mean those whose delight
is in hearing and detailing reports of miracles147

and mendacious prodigies. Of such fables they
can never have enough. The most portentous
tales about ghosts and apparitions, and about
all sorts of goblins and infernal scare-crows,
they swallow down with avidity. By the thousand
are such stories told. The greater the fabrications
the more readily are they believed, and the more
agreeably do they tickle the pricked-up ears of
these credulous dupes. However, they are full
of fascination to them, and not only conduce
wonderfully to wile away the tedium of their
days, but are a source also of no little gain to
certain parties amongst them—their priests and
friars more especially.*

And closely akin to these are those who
adopt such foolish and pleasant superstitions as
the following; who, for instance, persuade them-
selves that if they gaze on a wooden statue or
picture of a cyclopean St. Christopher they will
be sure on that day to escape death; or that
if they salute in a set form of words a sculptured
effigy of St. Barbara they will return safely

* The love of mendacious marvels, as is well-known, is rife
still in Roman Catholic countries, and is far from discouraged
by the priesthood. See Dr. Littledale's Article in the Con-
temporary Review for January 1876, p. 296, &c.148

from battle; or that if they go on certain days
with a certain number of tapers and invocations
to the shrine of St. Erasmus they will grow
speedily rich. In St. George they have found
a grand champion, a hero with the prowess of
a Hercules.* Of a Hercules did I say? And
yet, strange as it may seem, they appear rather
to have made a second Hippolytus of him, so
completely have they allowed him to be thrown
into the shade by his horse ! f It is on his
horse that they lavish their devotions ! It is
his horse that they accoutre so very religiously
with trappings and tinsel, and after that curry
favour with by many a nice little pious offering !
In sober truth they all but worship his horse! His
horse? Yes, and stranger still, his helmet! To
swear by St. George's brazen helmet is, as every
one knows, regarded as a right-royal privilege!

And surely, too, I may pronounce as

* Some of the fabled exploits of Hercules are supposed to
have clustered round the head of St. George. The myth, for
instance, of his vanquishing the Dragon seems but an altered
version of the story of Hercules and the Lernoean monster.
How he came to be the patron saint of England is briefly
explained by Wheatly in his work on the Common Prayer, ch. 1.

f For Hippolytus means horse-destroyed—a name given to a
son of Theseus in reference to the mode of his death.149

belonging to my school those who quiet their
qualms of conscience so very sweetly with
fictitious absolutions (indulgences), and measure
out the spaces of time to be spent in purgatory
as it were with an hour-glass, dividing it
precisely into this or that number of ages, years,
months, days, and hours with the infallible
exactness, as they fondly imagine, of a mathe-
matical computation. And those, again, who,
relying on the performance of certain little
superstitious penances and invocations which
some pious impostor of a priest for his amusement
or gain has devised, promise themselves all sorts
of good things in consequence, riches, honours,
pleasures, carousals, unimpaired and continuous
health, long life, a green old age, aye—and
finally a place in heaven of the most exalted
happiness—which however, by the way, they have
no wish whatever to reach one moment sooner
than they can help it—that is not until the
pleasures of this life—to which they lovingly
and tenaciously cling to the very last—have
utterly and entirely abandoned them ! Then let
the delights of heaven succeed if they will, but
not one moment sooner do they want them!150

To my school, too, belongs he—be he who
he may—trader, soldier, judge, or what not ?—
who thinks that the whole moral quagmire of
his life can be cleansed, once and for all, from
a host of enormous robberies by the payment
to a priest of a paltry little bit of money ; who
fancies that the guilt of perjuries, intrigues,
drunken-bouts, quarrels, massacres, hypocrisies,
treacheries, and treasons innumerable can be
bought off in this cheap and easy way—just as
in common life one might drive a profitable
bargain—and be so bought off, so thoroughly
blotted out, that he has now before him a
clean page of life which he is quite at liberty
to fill in anew with a fresh catalogue of
depravities !

And what, again, can be more silly, and yet
at the same time what more conducive to happiness
than the conduct of those who confidently promise
themselves a felicity hereafter more than supreme
for repeating over and over again, day by day,
seven versicles from the sacred psalms ? By
the way, they have the credulity to believe
that those seven magical versicles were indicated
to St. Bernard by a devil! The wretched sprite,I51

It appears, intended to make game of the saint,
but proving more simple than shrewd was
cleverly out-witted by the holy man.* Now such
is the foolish stuff—so foolish that even I (Folly)
myself am really almost ashamed to own having
any connexion with it—which receives the approval
not only of the ignorant masses, but of grave
professors of religion !

And similar is the folly of those who
believe that particular saints are the patrons of
particular localities, that they have each special
benefits to confer, and must each be propitiated
with certain special rites of devotion—this saint
to relieve a tooth-ache, that one to be propitious
at a birth, another to get back something that
has been stolen, this one to afford help in time
of shipwreck, that one to protect a flock. And

* The Devil, so the legend goes, once upon a time appeared
to St. Bernard, and, thinking to tantalize him by exciting his
curiosity, boasted that he knew seven verses in the Psalms which
whoever repeated every day would be sure to get to heaven.
The saint was eager to learn which the verses were, but this the
fiend persistently declined to tell him. " Well/' said St.
Bernard, " it is of no consequence: every day of my life I
repeat the whole of the Book of Psalms, and therefore, of course,
the verses you allude to !" The Devil, thus non-plussed, revealed
the secret.152

so on in various other cases which I need not
mention, for it were indeed an endless task to
attempt to enumerate them all.

And some saints there are whose good
offices are not confined, like those of the above,
to special cases, but who are appealed to on
all sorts of occasions, and for all sorts of things.
Among saints of this description the deiparous
Virgin* stands preeminent, and is indeed held
in almost greater honour by the. common run
of men than even her divine Son himself.

But from these saints what favours do men
ever think of asking but such as have affinity
to folly ? They never for a moment ask for
or expect any benefits to be conferred on them
by wisdom. Among all the numerous votive
inscriptions'!" with which the walls and even the
very roofs of their temples are loaded, you will
never see one expressing a man's thankfulness
for having been rid of folly, or for having been
made, by even a hairsbreadth, wiser than he was
before. No; people return thanks for things

* Or " the Virgin, Mother of God "—Deipara virgo.
f Erasmus writes in a letter to Ammonius, " I intend to pay a
visit to the shrine of the virgin at Walsingham, and to hang up
a Greek ode as a votive offering."153

very different from this—for having escaped
drowning, for having saved their lives from the
dagger of a foe, for having with more luck
than pluck run away from battle and left others
to fight it out, for having been preserved from
the gallows by some saint who patronises thieves,
and for ha<ving been thus enabled to prosecute
anew their philanthropic efforts to relieve persons
burthened with wealth of some portion of their
superfluous possessions, for having effected an
escape from prison, for having got well from
a fever in spite of their physician's endeavours
to keep them ill, for having been cured by
poison instead of killed by it—to the no small
disappointment of their wives who pretended to
be so devotedly anxious for their recovery, for
having brought their horses safe home after
having capsized their waggons, for having been
extricated with unbroken heads after having been
entombed beneath a mass of falling debris, for
having eluded an indignant husband's clutches.
Such are the kinds of things that people return
their grateful thanks for. But as for giving
thanks for having had folly expelled from them
no one ever thinks of such a thing. Not to

s154

have wisdom is so sweet a condition that mortals
will fly to their saints in deprecation of anything
and everything rather than that. No ; they
never wish to escape from the delightful sway
of Moria !

But on what an ocean of absurdities am I
now embarked ! Oh—

If I an hundred mouths possessed, an hundred vocal tongues,
If I a voice like Stentor had, if I had iron lungs,
My strength would fail me to recount one half the fond
things done

By superstition's votaries beneath yon glorious sun !
Yes ; to such a degree as this do the fooleries
I speak of abound on all sides around us
amongst Christians—fooleries allowed and fostered
without compunction by their priests, only too
wide awake to the considerable gains that accrue
to them in consequence !

And yet, after all, how pleasant are these
fooleries to mankind I Let but some odious
man of wisdom rise up and condemn them ;
let him declare to my favoured devotees, though
it be but in an undertone, the plain unvarnished
truth that no man need fear death who leads
a godly life ; let him convince them that what
they require for the condonation of their sins155

is not the giving away of paltry doles of
money, but—what is far better—a detestation
of evil actions, tears, watchings, prayers, fastings,
to cure them of their bad propensities—in fine,
a radical change in their manner of life ; let
him assure them that good St. Erasmus will
be their friend if they thus reform themselves
—if, instead of seeking in the modes they do
to propitiate the favour of their saints they
strive rather to emulate the goodness of their
deeds; let, I say, some odious man of wisdom
but rise up and impress this and such like
verities upon their minds, and oh—of what
happiness would he instantly deprive them ;
into what a tumult of remorse and misery
would he plunge them!

Members, again, of my College of Fools
are those who are concerned to secure pompous
funerals for themselves, and who actually think
it worth while during their lives to lay down
precise directions as to the pageantry with
which their obsequies are to be conducted,
prescribing with punctilious care—just as a
parvenu city-magnate might do concerning the
ceremonies to be observed at his entertainmentsJ56

—the exact number of torch-bearers, mummers,
dirge-singers, and actors of grief they desire to
have as an escort for their remains—as if they
calculated on being witnesses of the spectacle,
and would feel ashamed if they beheld their
carcases committed to the ground without suffi-
cient display !

But I must needs hasten on. However, I
must not altogether pass over in silence those
who, though superior in no degree to the very
meanest cobbler, yet are wonderfully satisfied
with themselves because they happen to have
some empty pretext for regarding themselves as
of noble lineage. Thus one traces up his
genealogy to ^Eneas, another to Brutus, and a
third to King Arthur. All about their houses
they set up statues and portraits of their
ancestors. They enumerate the lists of their
sires and grandsires, and of their ancient family
names, though themselves endowed with scarcely
more sense than a dumb statue, and with not
half the good looks of the pretentious daubs
they so prominently display on their walls.
Yet, notwithstanding this, they live a com-
pletely happy life—thanks to the influence over157

them of sweet Philautia (their thoroughly good
opinion of themselves) !

Nor are there wanting people equally foolish
who look up to these contemptible animals as
if they were very gods. But what need to
speak of them here, or—for the matter of that
—of the former class either? for it is abundantly
evident that Philautia (Self-Approbation), who
has such a marvellous sway over the majority
of men, makes all of them' in wonderful ways
supremely happy. Thus you see here a man
uglier than a baboon who yet deems himself
as handsome as a Nireus. And you see here
another just able to sketch out a triangle
with a pair of compasses who yet regards
himself as a very Euclid for his dexterity. And
here you behold a third, about as well able to
sing as a donkey, to perform on the lyre, and
possessing a voice less musical than that of a
barn-door cock, yet fancying himself a second
Hermogenes !*

But another kind of delusion, and by far
the sweetest kind of all, is that which possesses

* A famous singer alluded to by Horace in his satires. (Hor»
Sat, i., iii., 129, &c.158

the minds of certain men who become impressed
with the idea that they are capable of doing
themselves whatever any of their dependants are
capable of doing- for them. Thus Seneca
describes the case of a foolish grandee—twice
happy however in his folly—who prided himself
in being able to tell a story well, though he
would have made but a sorry business of it
indeed if he had not always had his slaves at his
elbows to prompt "him ; and who, though so
physically weak and incompetent that he could
hardly with truth be called a living man at all,
yet hesitated not to boast that he was equal
to a combat with a pugilist. And so, no
doubt, in a sense, he was; for, as he was full
well aware, he had a goodly number of brawny
slaves at home who would have fought the
battle for him !

As to professional people of various kinds
I don't know that I need say much, since it
is evident enough that they are all of them
peculiarly amenable to the happy influence of
Philautia (good opinion of self). To such a
degree is this the case that you will find many
a man amongst them who would positively159

sooner give up the whole of a comfortable little
patrimony than confess himself deficient in
cleverness for his craft. It is chiefly actors,
singers, orators, and poets who are men of this
description, any one of whom in proportion to
his incompetence is so much the more self-
satisfied, so much the more boastful, so much
the more puffed up with conceit.

And in proportion to their incompetence
do they find admirers. Thus, in proportion as
any discerning critic would pronounce this or
that performance of theirs to be more or less
ridiculously bad, the mass of people will bepraise
it, for they always like best what deserves
commendation least, the reason of course being,
as I have abundantly shown, that the mass of
people are great fools.*

As then the more superficial a man's pro-
fessional knowledge is, the more he is satisfied
with himself, and other people with him, why

* There is much truth in all this pungent satire. High art,
even in these days, is appreciated by but few. A Tom Thumb
is patronised when a Haydon is neglected, and a jig-tune or a
nigger-melody commends itself to popular taste in preference to
the music of a Handel. The majority still " like best what
deserves commendation least."i6o

on earth should he attempt to acquire any more
solid erudition which, in the first place, would
cost him much toil, in the second place, would
make him alive to his defects and therefore
wretchedly diffident, and lastly, when got, would
be acceptable to scarcely any ?

And as it is with individuals, so also I
perceive it is with nations and with cities.
They are all under the sway of Philautia.
Self-approbation, variously displayed, has been
implanted by nature in them all. Thus it comes
to pass that the British pride themselves, above
other things, on their good looks, good music,
and good cheer; the Scotch on their. claims to
be of noble or royal lineage, and not a little,
too, on their cleverness in repartee. The French
boast of the politeness of their manners, the
Parisians of their knowledge of theology—-of a
theology, however, of so singular a sort that
almost all articles of belief have been expunged
out of it. The Italians so plume themselves on
their literature* and eloquence — in fact, so

* The literature of Italy at this time was far in advance of
that of other nations. See Hallam's Introduction to the Literature
of Europe, Vol. i.161

thoroughly, so sweetly delighted are they with
themselves on this account—that they regard
themselves to be the only people on the earth
who are not absolute barbarians. And especially
is this kind of happy self-satisfaction observable
in the citizens of Rome who, even to this day,
are ravished with the most beatific dreams of
Rome's ancient grandeur. The people of Venice,
again, derive exquisite pleasure from a belief in
their noble origin, and the degenerate Greeks
—as if the birth of letters was in any respect
due to them—glory mightily in decking themselves
out with the antique titles of their praiseworthy
and heroic progenitors. The Turks again, and
all their vile scum of outer barbarism, actually
have the effrontery to take exclusive credit to
themselves for being religious, despising as
contemptibly superstitious the . whole body of
enlightened Christians. But happy beyond all
others in their good opinion of themselves are
the Jews who still live in constant expectation
of their Messiah, and hold—up to this very day
—tooth and nail to the anticipations of their
prophet Moses. The people of Spain, again,
think none their equals in warlike renown, whilst

T162

the Germans boast of their bodily stature and
their acquaintance with the mysteries of magic.

But I need not give you any further
examples, for by this time I am sure you must
clearly enough perceive what a great amount of
happiness individuals and mankind in general
everywhere owe to Philautia (Self-Approbation).

And almost equal in number are the benefits
they derive from her sister Assentatio (a dis-
position to yield assent to the foibles of others).
A man is subject to the influence of Philautia
when he flatters himself, to that of Kolakia*
when he flatters somebody else. I shall be told
perhaps that to flatter other people is, in these
days, reckoned base. I would ask, By whom ?
Why, by the very people who most enjoy
flattery when they get it. Plainly then, what
they dislike is not the thing but merely the
empty name. But a fawning, flattering, yielding
demeanour, say they, can have no sincerity
about it, no fidelity, for fawning and fidelity
are utterly incompatible things. Fawning and

* Kolakia (Flattery) has been previously mentioned with
Philautia as amongst the numerous handmaidens of Stultitia.
The names Kolakia and Assentatio are here both applied to her
as descriptive of two different but closely allied functions.163

fidelity incompatible ! Why, the very brute
animals rise up to repel so false an affirmation.
What can be more given to fawning than a dog?
And yet where will you find a more faithful
creature ? What animal, again, can be more
engaging in its ways than a squirrel ? And
yet, for all that, what animal more unaffectedly
sincere in its fondness for its owner ? What !
will you say that creatures which never fawn
at all, such as savage lions, ferocious tigers,
and hastily provoked panthers, are better friends
to mankind than creatures so endearing as these?
I don't of course deny that there is a base
kind of flattery which is of a nature utterly
pernicious—namely that which is adopted, to
compass their own nefarious ends, by perfidious
scoundrels who only laugh in their sleeves at
the wretched dupes whom they lure on to their
destruction. The flattery, however, which I here
advocate is of a very different description from
that. It , proceeds from simple goodness of
heart, from simple openness of disposition, and
is, as Horace says,* far more akin to virtue
than plain, blunt out-spoken asperity, and that
* Epist. i., xviii,, j3 &c.164

rude and ill-conditioned moroseness of behaviour
which springs from an opposite character of
mind. It gladdens the dejected spirit, it soothes
the saddened heart, it stimulates the languishing
energies, it rouses to action the torpid faculties
of the dull, it alleviates the sufferings of the
sick, it calms the breast of the angry, it con-
ciliates love, and retains it when conciliated.
It allures the young to the pursuit of study, it
cheers up and exhilarates the old, and under
the guise of praise affords without offence both
admonition and instruction to princes.* In a
word, it makes every man pleasanter and dearer
to himself, which indeed is one of the very chief
ingredients of earthly happiness, t

What more useful duty then can be performed
than when, as the saying is, " the asses scratch

* Fuller says of Dick Tarleton, court-jester to Queen
Elizabeth, that " he told the Queen more of her faults than most
of her chaplains, and cured her melancholy better than all her
physicians." Doran's Court Fools, p. 175.

j- Erasmus was himself a tolerably accomplished expert in the
use of this sort of flattery. Witness his adulation of the Duke
of Burgundy, his fulsome letter to Pope Leo, the laudatory
language which he lavishes on Dorpius, and lastly the neat
compliments which he pays to his friend More in his preface to
this work.165

one another," when they mutually butter each
other up with complimentary expressions ? How
much every belauded orator's success depends
upon using flattery of this kind, how much
more still every physician's success depends
upon it, and most signally of all, how supremely
every poet's success is dependent upon it, I
need not of course delay to tell you. In short,
it must be manifest to everybody that it is the
very sugar and spice of human intercourse.

aChapter VII.

Popularity of Falsehood — Stultitia's Bounties — Her
Worship—Her Temple—Her Priests—Her Images—
The Gods Amused at the Doings of Mankind—Traders
—Pilgrims—Schoolmasters—Grammarians.

But to be deceived, people say, is wretched.
I, on the other hand, hold that what is most
wretched is not to be deceived.* They are in
great error who imagine that a man's happiness
consists in things as they are. No; it consists
entirely in his opinion of what they are. In
fact, so obscure and complex are human affairs
that to know them thoroughly is impossible, as
has been rightly observed by my friends the
Academics, the most sober of philosophers, f
Supposing him however to know the real truth

* Folly alone can love to be deceived and prefer opinions that
are " comfortable " to opinions that are 4' true." Folly alone
will profess that " where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise."
Her argumentation, however, is very ingenious.

f They considered that man's conduct should be directed by
probability. The great Bishop Butler expressed a similar view
when he said, " Probability is the very guide of life." Introduc-
tion to the Analogy.167

in some particular case, depend upon it that
his knowledge will not add to his peace of
mind ;* for man is so constituted that falsehood
is far more agreeable to him than truth. Does
any one need proof of this ? Let him frequent
the public assemblies, let him visit the churches,
and assuredly he will find proof of it enough.
He will find that when any matter of serious
and solemn truth is dwelt upon, the listeners
at once become weaiy ; they sleep, they yawn,
they grow sick of it. But if—as indeed is
commonly the case—the rater that is addressing
them (I beg his pardon, I should of course say
the orator !)t begins some silly, old wives' tale,
immediately they are all attention ; they prick
up their ears and stare with open mouth. And
so, similarly, the saints they prefer to appeal
to are those whose histories are most made up
of fable and romance. You will see men, for
example, far more assiduous in their devotions
to saints, of this kind—to St. George, St.

* For instance if a man knew that a pretended friend was but
a disguised enemy.

f " Rater" and " orator" is not quite a satisfactory rendering
of "clamator" and " declamator," but I don't see well how
better to represent iri English the play of the words.168

Christopher, or St. Barbara—than to Peter,
Paul, or even Christ himself. But of all this
by and- bye. At present what I would remark
is this, that though to be deceived adds much
more to your happiness than not to be deceived,
it yet costs you much less trouble. Now, as
you are doubtless aware, you cannot generally
acquire things of any intrinsic worth—even the
least valuable of them — without considerable
difficulty, just as you cannot master without
labour the rudiments of grammar ; but an
opinion which deceives you about things you
can take up at once with the utmost facility.
And the beauty of it is this, that it conduces
quite as much, or even more, to your happiness
than if the things really were what your opinion
of them leads you to suppose them to be.
Thus, suppose a man feasting off salt fish in
a condition of such advanced decomposition
that the very odour of it is intolerable to
everybody else, yet regarding its flavour as so
delicious that he pronounces it as fit food for
the immortal gods, surely it is to him just
as if it really were so. And similarly, on
the other hand, if some one else loathes169

sturgeon,* it is to him precisely as if really
loathsome. And so, too, if a man has a re-
markably ugly wife who, nevertheless, appears
to him to rival Venus, is she not quite as
pleasing to him as if she were beautiful indeed ?
And so, again, if a man, possessing a mere
worthless daub of red and yellow colouring,
prizes it from a persuasion that it is a veritable
painting of an Apelles or a Zeuxis, is he not
better off than some discriminating virtuoso who
wastes his money on the purchase of a true
work of either of those distinguished artists,
and looks at it too, in all probability, with less
admiring eyes ? I know a man, having the
honour to bear my name,f who once gave
some counterfeit gems to his newly-married
bride, persuading her—for he was an extremely
insinuating fellow—that they were not only real
and genuine, but moreover of singular and
inestimable value. What difference, I ask, did

* The sturgeon was anciently held in high esteem as a delicacy.
Thus Martial:—

" Ad Palatinas acipensem mittite mensas,

Ambrosias ornent munera rara dapes."

f The name of More, no doubt—-as Listrius observes,

u170

it make to the girl, since she gratified her
eyes and her mind quite as well as if the
trumpery trash she so carefully preserved had
been really a priceless treasure ? And the
husband, meanwhile, both avoided expense, and
enjoyed the delusion of his^ wife ; and had
gained her affections every whit as thoroughly
as though he had given her a costly present!
For what difference is there when you think of
it between those who, as it were, enter the
cave of Plato,* and gaze with complacent
wonderment on nothing but shades and sem-
blances, and those who are so wise that they
must needs escape from the cave's deception,
and see in the world around them things as
they really are ? No; shadows and deceptions
are all that men require. If „Mycillus,t of
whom Lucian speaks, had but been allowed to
dream for ever his rich and golden dreams,
nothing further would have been necessary to
complete his felicity. The conclusion, therefore,

* Plato compares those who imagine things to be what they
seem to blind men dreaming in a cave, and taking their dreams
to be realities.

f A poor cobbler who dreamt that he had suddenly become
enormously rich and prosperous.i7t

which must be come to is, either that there is
no difference at all, in respect to happiness,
between one man and another, or, if there is
—and who can doubt it ?—that it tells com
pletely in favour of the condition of fools. In

the first place their happiness is very easily

if-

secured. It consists in very little—solely in the
adoption of opinions, no matter how groundless,
that are calculated agreeably to deceive them.
And then, again, this happiness of theirs is
enhanced by the multitudes who enjoy it with
them ; for no good thing whatever is worth
having unless you have companions with whom
to share it. But what companions have wise
men ? What companions have men whose num
bers, as every body knows, are too few for
companionship—so few that really I can hardly
tell you where to discover even so much as one ?
The Greeks, it is true, in the course of many
centuries, boast of having produced seven; but
if any one could only correctly appraise all the
incidents of their histories—by Hercules ! I would
stake my life upon it—he would not find a half,
no—nor yet the quarter part:—of a wise man
in the whole lot.17 2

And now to pass to another argument in
my favour. Among all the praises of Bacchus
this unquestionably is the chief—that he drives
away care. It is, however, but for a short time
only that he does it; for no sooner have you
well slept off the effect of your carouse than
back again in cartloads, as they say, come all
your cares again. Now, how much more complete
and ready at hand are the benefits mankind
derive from me! I also afford them intoxication,
but an intoxication whose influence is perennial,
which gladdens them unceasingly, and makes their
hearts bound perpetually with leapings of delight.
And all, too, without cost to them. And my
favours I deny to nobody. Other divinities are
more chary of their bounties, doling them out
with a niggard hand, to one here and another
there, as their favouritism impels them. Thus
Bacchus does not place it in everybody's power
to have when he needs it a good draught of
generous and mellowed wine to cheer up his
drooping spirits, and to drive his cares away.
Venus endows but few with the charms of beauty,
and Mercury with eloquence fewer still. Scarce,
again, are those whom Hercules helps to wealth,173

and yet scarcer those on whom Homeric Jove
confers imperial dignity. Mars, in many a battle,
gives neither side the victory, and from Apollo's
tripod many a suppliant departs unsatisfied away.
Saturn darts many a baneful thunder-bolt, Phoebus
many a plague-producing ray, and more are
those whom old Neptune engulphs than those
whose safety he secures. And as to those
demons of desolation—gods I will not call them
—such as Pluto, Ate, and the Febres—whose
sole occupation is ruin and devastation, the
infernal originators of all conflagrations, cata-
clysms, pestilences, and such like dire calamities
—to them I need accord but a passing mention,
since the evils they inflict are manifest enough.
But what a different business is mine! I, the
benevolent Stultitia, am unique amongst the
gods in the mode in which I exercise my
sovereignty. I confine my favours to none. I
embrace all without exception or partiality in
the encircling arms of my ever-ready beneficence.
I grant them their wishes at once, and do not
grow angry with them, or demand expiation
at their hands, even though they do sometimes
presume to approach me with looks of levity,174

instead of with the stately punctilios of solemn
ceremony which other divinities require. I do
„ not storm, and rage, and throw, as it were, heaven
and earth into a tumult of confusion, if, when
all the other gods are invited to a sacrificial
feast, I am left at home, and not permitted even
to sniff the fragrance of the victims.* But as
to the other gods, so morose, so vindictively
ill-tempered do they become towards you, if you
fail to show them the respect and deference
which they regard as their due, that the best
advice that I can offer you is to have nothing
at all to do with any of them. Keep clear
of them altogether, just as you would keep
clear of certain disagreeable men who are
so cross-grained, so easily provoked to do
you any mischief in their power, that it is
infinitely better to be strangers to them than
friends.

* Erasmus seems here to give a sly thrust of satire at the
petty gods of this world who, thinking much of their own
importance, and holding their wit and wisdom in high esteem,
are sorely mortified at trifling slights. And, doubtless, there are
many otherwise sensible men who before now have been more
piqued at not having had the honour of an invitation to partake of
" the fragrant victims " sacrificed to appetite on the table of some
convivial votary o£w3tulti-tia than they would willingly confess.i?5

But, say people, no one would ever think
of offering a sacrifice, or raising a temple to
Stultitia. Indeed, as I have said, I wonder not
a little at this gross ingratitude of mankind.
At the same time, so easy-going am I that I
take it all in good part. And yet, really—for the
matter of that—why should I desire such things?
What need have I of incense, or cakes, or
goats, or swine, when I receive from the men
of all nations under heaven what, even in the
estimation of theologians, is the only true
homage—the homage of their affections ? Is
there any reason why I should envy Diana the
sacrifices that are slain to her ? I trow not.
Her sacrifices are the bloody sacrifices of human
bodies, mine the willing oblation of human
souls. Indeed, I regard myself as receiving
the highest devotion imaginable, and not only
so, but the most catholic as well. Go where
you will you will find me the paramount divinity,
cherished in the hearts of men, displayed in
their manners, reflected in every action of their
lives. But how about Christians with respect
- to their saints ? Do you frequently find them
worshipping their saints in this way—worshipping176

them, I mean, as mankind everywhere worship
me ? No doubt, you will find plenty of them
placing lighted tapers at midday, when there
is no need for them, on the altars of their
deiparous Virgin ; but you will find few of them
indeed, I promise you, erhulating the chastity,
the modesty, and the heavenly spirituality of
her life. And yet, after all, this alone is true
worship, this alone - is the worship which is
acceptable to the denizens of heaven.

Furthermore, why should I desire a temple,
when I have the whole world for my temple,
and—if I mistake not—a most beautiful temple
too ? What do I need of priests, when I have
priests wherever human beings exist ? And
what, again, do I want of images ? Images !
By the way, do you think me so besotted that
I would consent to allow a stone, paint-bedaubed
image to be set up as a representative of me ?
Why, it would obviate my worship altogether ;
for is it not a well-known fact that the stupid
bloated idiots whom one so often sees bowing
down before images invariably mistake symbols
for things meant, and so worship the images
instead of the saints whom the images standfor ? Now I don't wish men to do that with
respect to me. I have no desire to be thus
vicariously thrust aside. No, no ; I will have '
none of it. Talk of images indeed ! Why,
you will find images of me everywhere, and of
a kind far more to my liking—as many images
of me as there are people in the world; for,
verily, in every mortal man that you behold
you see an image of me — a living image,
having my likeness plainly enough stamped upon
his physiognomy, however unwilling he may be
to confess it ! There is therefore, surely, no
reason why I should be envious of other gods
if one of them happens to be worshipped in
this little corner of the earth, and another in
that, and only, too, on rare and stated occasions
—Phoebus, for instance, at Rhodes, Venus in
Cyprus, Juno at Argos, Minerva at Athens,
Jupiter on Mount Olympus, Neptune at Tarentum,
Priapus at Lampsacus—for I am adored at all
times and everywhere throughout the whole wide
world by every individual human being, and
have far more worthy victims offered up to me
than any one of them ever has. Do I seem
to any of you in making this assertion to speak178

with more boldness than truth ? Look then,
let me request you, for a short time at men's
actual, everyday lives, and it will, I think,
become apparent to you enough, not only how
much they all are indebted to me, but also in
what high veneration I am held by them from
the least of them even to the greatest. We
will not, however, review the lives of all the
common, ordinary noodles that one daily meets
with, for that were a tedious task, but will
confine our attention to certain representatives
from whom it will be easy to form an opinion
about the rest. To investigate all the silly
histories of all the silly commonplace people of
this commonplace world would be a waste
of time indeed, since about their belonging
to my school there can be no possible con-
troversy at all. They are made up of folly,
for ever practising it, and for ever inventing
new forms of it, so that it would require
a thousand laughing philosophers of the stamp
of Democritus to laugh enough at them, and
even then there would be need of one
such laugher more to laugh at the laughing
philosophers !179

The fun, the ecstacies of amusement that
these insignificant mortals afford to the gods
above is truly incredible ; for these exalted
divinities, I may tell you, are accustomed every
day to devote their hours of sobriety—their
antemeridian hours, that is—to listening to the
prayers, and the various frivolous carping com-
plaints, that are made to them by men. When,
however, they have well drunk of nectar, and
are consequently disinclined for such serious
pursuits, they go to that part of heaven from
whence they can get the best view of the
earth beneath, and there, confabulating together,
and bending their faces forwards, watch all the
various antics that human beings are up to.
And a rich spectacle it is to them. Oh heavens!
it is as good as a play—a fool's medley indeed.
And I have seen it, you know—for I am
privileged occasionally to sit in the ranks of
the poetic gods—and deliciously diverting I have
found it. I have watched, for instance, a silly
fellow pining miserably in love for some pretty
little specimen of womankind who would not
deign even to look at him, yet plying his
hopeless suit with a vehemence of adorationi8Q

supremely ridiculous to witness, and increasing
ever * more and more precisely in inverse ratio
to his prospects of success. I have seen another
marry himself to a bag of money instead of
to a wife ! I have seen another so blind
to the failings of his spouse that she freely
coquetted with whom she would ; and, on the
other hand, another so jealously disposed that
he observed his consort's doings with the eyes
of an Argus. And — oh, ye popes !—what
absurdities I have seen men saying and doing
on such occasions as those of funerals, hiring
mourners like stage-players to go through a
farce of grief, weeping inconsolably—ha! ha!—
at the graves of their departed step-mothers I
And others, again, I have seen toiling and
moiling to scrape a little cash together, and
then forthwith spending it so completely on
their present appetites that when next stern
hunger pinched them, they had nothing left to
buy victuals with at all! Others, again, I have
seen who, to judge from their lazy, dreamy
habit of dozing through their existence, evidently
consider sleep and indolence to be the acme of
felicity. And others, again, I have seen pf ai Si

more active turn of mind amusingly full of fuss
about other people's affairs whilst totally neg-
lectful of their own. And others, again—too
soon, alas, to be undeceived by the unwelcome
advent of a smash—I have seen thinking them-
selves surprisingly rich whilst having nothing
whatever to show off upon but borrowed finances!
And others again, on the other hand, I have
seen whose happiness consisted in living like
paupers in order, forsooth, to enrich their heirs!
And others, again, I have seen eagerly traversing
dangerous seas, committing themselves to the
winds and waves, and risking—with a view to
some small and utterly uncertain gains—their
very lives, for the loss of which no earthly
gains, however great, could compensate them.
Others, again, I have observed—and oh ! what
egregious fools they are-—actually preferring to
go abroad, and seek their fortunes in the hard-
ships of foreign soldiering,* than to spend a
safe and easy-going time of it at home ! And
others again I have seen who deem that the
shortest cut to wealth is to be found in paying

* " Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth."—As You Like IL182

obsequious court to wealthy old bachelors ;
and not a few, too, who seek to compass
the same end by ingratiating themselves
with rich old maids ! It affords prime fun,
I assure you, to the gods, looking down
as spectators upon all this, to see how
often it turns out that these designing
legacy-hunters are out-witted by their would-be
dupes!

But of all the men whose doings I have
witnessed the most sordid—and appropriately so,
for they handle a very sordid thing indeed*—
are men of trade. Go where you may, you
will find them telling lies, breaking their word,
pilfering, defrauding, and imposing upon every-
body. Nevertheless they get rich, and then
they are immediately looked up to as very
princes. For their worth ? No; for no better
reason than because they are able to wear gold
rings on their fingers ! And you will find
plenty of the small men of the trading fra-
ternity ready enough to cringe to them for
their patronage, to flatter, belaud, and " Your
Worship" them—in the hope, forsooth, of getting
* Money, that is.183

into their own coffers some scanty portion of
their ill-gotten gains ! *

And, casting my eyes in another direction,
I have seen men apparently so wedded to the
doctrine of the Pythagorean philosophers on the
subject of the community of goods that they
seem to regard all goods as rightfully belonging
to themselves ! At any rate, whatever may be
their opinion on the point, any tangible thing
of the least value that they happen to espy,
if left anywhere unwatched and unprotected,
they will be sure immediately to purloin, and
to keep it too, I warrant you, with as little
compunction as if theirs by lawful inheritance !

And others, again, I have seen, the sum
total of whose wealth consists in nothing more
substantial than vain hope, dreaming perpetually
agreeable dreams of how extremely well off
they will be at some future day—never destined
to arrive. But no matter; their happiness for
the passing hour is invariably secure. Others,

* Listrius says of traders, " I believe very few, if any, of
them ever get rich entirely by honest methods." Had he lived
in these days, though unfortunately we still have a few question-
able " tricks of trade," I fancy he might have seen cause
somewhat to modify his unfavourable opinion. '184

again, I have observed whose only ambition is
to be thought rich; and who, with a view to
that, make all the show they can when they
appear abroad, although at home their bill of
fare is often a sorry one enough ! And others
I have seen in such a hurry to get rid of
their money that they will throw it away
broadcast ; and others, again, so anxious to
hoard it up that they care not whether they
amass it by fair means or foul. Here I have
watched some bustling, blustering agitator, for
ever thrusting himself - before the public, and
touting for popular applause ; and there, on
the other hand, some shy, shrinking soul of
so retiring a cast that his whole delight consists
in being allowed to enjoy at home the quietude
of his chimney-corner. And others I have seen
—and they form a goodly section of the com-
munity—whose minds are perpetually bent on
litigation, commencing against one another in-
terminable law-suits, and having apparently before
them no earthly object but that of reducing
themselves with all speed to beggary whilst
putting money into the pockets of a set of
venal judges and attorneys who are, you may185

rely upon it, far more desirous of accumulating
bribes and perquisites than of bringing their
causes to a conclusion ! And others I have
seen who would destroy, root and branch, all
existing institutions ; and others, on the other
hand, who would raise no end of bulwarks to
prop them up. And others I have seen going
off on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Rome, or
Santiago,* when their plain duty was to have
remained at home, and to have attended to
the interests of their wives and families. In a
word, could you but mount upwards to the
moon, and behold from thence, like Menippus,
all the innumerable vagaries of these puny
mortals, you would imagine that you were
looking down on a crowd of flies or gnats ;
you would see all these insignificant little beings
quarrelling and fighting incessantly, playing off
all sorts of antics and trickeries, all sorts of
sports and wanton wiles, born to-day, in the

* Santiago, in days of yore, was a great resort of pilgrims,
owing to the then current belief in a silly tradition that the
remains of the Apostle James had been miraculously transported
thither from Jerusalem. The 25th of July was' originally set
apart as St. James's Day in connection with this legend, and not
with any reference to the Apostle's martyrdom which took place
before Easter.

W186

wane of life to-morrow, and the day after dead
and gone! It is incredible what commotions—■
yea, what tragical tornadoes—this diminutive,
ephemeral little creature is capable sometimes
of stirring up. His wars, for instance, even in
the mildest form, are terribly stormy affairs,
killing off many thousands at a swoop like a
noisome pestilence.

But I should be silly indeed, and should
well deserve any amount of ridicule that a
Democritus could cast upon me, if I were to
attempt to enumerate but a tithe of the follies
and insanities of the common run of men. I
will confine my attention, therefore, to those
amongst them who are esteemed to be men of
more than ordinary sagacity, and whose steps,
as the saying is, are bent in eager pursuit of
wisdom's golden branch.* Amongst these a
foremost place is occupied by the schoolmasters, f
a class of men who would indeed be in the

* The story of " the golden branch " in Virgil's Sixth .iEneid
is here alluded to.

f Erasmus, satirising as is his wont the people of his time
under archaic appellations, uses the term Grammarians (Gram-
matici) here for schoolmasters as well as for men who were
grammarians in the stricter sense.i8y

most calamitous, the most afflicted, the most
God-forsaken condition conceivable were it not
that I (Folly) of my benevolence ameliorate the
wretchedness of their most wretched profession
by making their bitter lives perceptibly sweet
to them, rendering them, to a very considerable
extent, insanely happy in the midst of their
most insane and most laborious drudgery. Verily
their lot is a woeful one indeed, cursed—not,
as the Greek epigram has it, with five—but—
with five hundred drawbacks. It is a lot of
semi-starvation and of debasing slavery. In their
schools — well; schools I call them, though
"schools" is indeed far too good a name for those
hotbeds of care and misery, those grinding
mills, those dens of torture, in which, super-
intending flocks of small boys, these unfortunate
pedagogues are destined to eke out the measure
of their days. In these schools, then, these
bridewells of uproar and confusion, do they
grow prematurely old, exhausted by their labours,
deafened by continual hubbub, and with their
constitutions shattered and broken down, owing
to the close foulness of the atmosphere that
day by day they are necessitated to breathe.188

Yet, notwithstanding all this, thanks to my good
services, they are by no means such miserable
creatures as you might at first sight be inclined
to imagine. In their own estimation they are
important personages enough, and think them-
selves mightily fine fellows ; but whilst they
strut about with stern looks and scolding voices,
striking terror and alarm into the breasts of a
set of trembling urchins, half scarifying the
little wretches occasionally with canes, and birches,
and straps, and exercising their arbitrary tyranny
over them in all sorts of other ways,* they
after all, do but ludicrously perform the part
of the ass in the well-known fable ! j" Moreover,
all the horrible discomforts which, as I have
told you, they have to endure seem to them
to be precisely the very reverse. They are
apparently quite unconscious of the amount of
dust and dirt with which their schoolrooms are

^ Erasmus here plainly enough teaches that undue severity in
schools is a great folly. The lesson is happily little needed in
these days, but at the period of Erasmus schoolboys appear to
have had a hard time of it. They owe him a debt of gratitude
for his enlightened appreciation of their wrongs.

f The familiar fable of the Ass in the Lion's Skin, who whilst
he struck other asses with terror was clearly enough seen by the
discerning eyes of his master to be only an ass after all !i8g

polluted, since no steps whatever do they take
to have these abominations removed. In fact,
evidently to them filth is as cleanliness, and bad
smells as perfumes; and their own most wretched
servitude is to them a kingdom of felicity—-a
kingdom which they would not exchange—no, not
for the despotism of a Phalaris or a Dionysius !*
But what renders them far more happy still
is the extraordinarily good opinion that they
have of their own superior learning. Thus,
whilst they are drumming a parcel of idle
nonsense into the heads of schoolboys, by
Heavens ! they think themselves such unrivalled
scholars that there is no Palsemon, no Donatus,f
no professor of erudition however well informed,
that they do not look down upon as a mere
witless ignoramus in comparison with themselves!
And singularly enough, by some wonderful
jugglery, they are actually able to impress silly
mothers, and shallow - brained fathers, with a
confirmed and unwavering belief that they really
9.nd undeniably are as clever and accomplished
as they make themselves out to be.

* Tyrants of Agrigentum and Syracuse.

t Teachers of grammar of some note in their day.190

And another thing that adds to their hap-
piness is the pleasing conviction which they
have, not only that they are men of vast
learning and information, but also that much
of the learning and information they possess
—no matter how worthless—is of a strange,
recondite, out-of-the-way sort. Dear me! if any
one of them happens to discover who was
Anchises's grandmother; or if, in some worm-
eaten chart, he chances to light upon a word
or two of barbarous, unused Latin, such as
bubsequa, for instance, or bovinator, or manticulator;
or if—never mind where—he is lucky enough
to dig up the fragment of an old stone con-
taining a few mutilated characters of an ancient
inscription upon it, verily, by Jove! he is thrown
into such a transport of triumphant exultation
that you might imagine he had conquered
Africa, or captured the city of Babylon !*

And there is another thing that affords
them infinite delight, namely, the pleasing con-
viction they have that they are gifted with a

* The meaning is, "You might imagine that he had accom-
plished some mighty exploit." The subjugation of Africa proved
a tough business to the Romans, and Babylon, before it was
captured by Cyrus, was deemed impregnable.191

marvellous genius for poetry. They concoct a
lot of doggrel of the most dull, the most
prosaic, the most pointless kind imaginable, and
then, forthwith, must be showing it off to
everybody, under the agreeable delusion that
their miserable little verselets are brilliant speci-
mens of talent. Nor do they want for admirers.
Indeed, it is the persuasion of not a few that
their breasts are animated by the soul of a
Virgil !

But in nothing does their happiness more
remarkably consist than in the mutual congratu-
lations, laudations, and flatteries that they lavish
profusely upon one another when they happen
all of them to agree in opinion. Let, however,
the smallest differences arise amongst them, and
then, lo and behold ! the tables are turned.
Suppose, for instance, that some unorthodox
pedant whose views conflict with their own
happens to come in their way, and suppose
further that any one of them of sharper dis-
cernment than the rest by some lucky chance
detects him using this or that insignificant little
vocable in what they deem an incorrect manner,
then, O Hercules, what a hubbub ensues, what192

a passage of arms, what recriminations, what a
storm in a tea pot ! Oh, what indistinguishable
grammatical distinctions do they wrangle about
—distinctions which they know not how to
distinguish themselves ! And may all the
pedagogues in creation become my enemies if
I say what is untrue ! I am well acquainted
with a certain poly-scholastic individual claiming
to be a Greek scholar, a Latin scholar, a
mathematical scholar, a philosophical scholar—
nay, a king of scholars, a man now sixty years
of age who, for the last twenty years of his
life, has given up all other pursuits, and has
taken solely to racking and torturing his brains
with the study of grammar. And the conclusion
he has arrived at is this, that his arduous
labours will be amply rewarded if he can only
have the good fortune to live sufficiently long
to discover how to distinguish from one another
the eight parts of speech, a question which, up
to this time, no Greek or Latin doctor has
ever fully succeeded in settling ! These silly
squabblers, however, on either side in this
■ wordy warfare are troubled with no doubts at
all. They are each ready to lay down the193

law with unhesitating confidence on the very
nicest grammatical points—such, for example,
as whether a disputed conjunction ought or
ought not to be denominated an adverb, and
—-as if the controversy could be decided in
this rough and ready way—they seem to imagine
that their mere unsupported assertions ought to
be accepted by their opponents as demonstrative
evidence.

Now in consequence of all this discord
among grammarians we have naturally an end-
less number of conflicting grammars—as many
grammars as there are men to write them—
nay, more ; for I know one grammarian—a
friend of mine of the name of Aldus*—who
alone has produced five different grammars !
No new grammar that comes out, however
barbarously and unintelligibly written, does he
allow to escape his notice. He pores over it
with avidity, and criticises with a jealous eye

* A Venetian printer of some note to whom Erasmus entrusted
the printing of the fourth edition of his Adagia, and was fre-
quently in his company in Venice in the year 1508 when super-
intending the printing of that work. From the account here
given of him we may gather that he had a greater taste for
grammar than printing, and that Erasmus had no very high
opinion of his wisdom,

X194

every sentence it contains ; for he can brook
no one who attempts anything, however in-
different in this department of literature, being
always in a wretched, morbid state of nervous
trepidation lest, amongst the numerous makers of
grammars who are perpetually springing up, some
fresh aspirant should arise who, by forestalling
him in the promulgation of new grammatical
ideas, should deprive him of his reputation as
a grammarian, and of all the fruits of his
years and years of labour.

Is this sort of conduct folly, or is it
insanity ? Well ; I don't care which you call
it provided you allow, as at any rate you
necessarily must, that I (Folly) am the author
of it ; that it is owing solely to my benevolent
interposition that schoolmasters and grammar-
writers, the most wretched animals in creation,
are thus, as you have seen, made so com-
pletely satisfied with themselves that they would
not exchange their lot—no, not for that of the
monarch of Persia.Chapter VIII.

The Poets—Rhetoricians—Authors—Plagiarists—Con-
troversialists —Judges—Barristers—Philosophers —
Mathematicians—Astrologers—Parsons and School-
men.

The poets owe less to me. But notwith-
standing this, they are enthusiastic devotees of
mine. They proverbially describe themselves as
a free-living race, and their entire business
consists in tickling the ears of fools with silly
ditties and ridiculously romantic tales.' On the
strength of these, however, wonderful to relate,
they confidently anticipate for themselves and
others* an undying fame, and a place in the
ranks of the immortals ! Of the services of
my attendants Philautia (Self-Approbation), and
Kolakia (Flattery), they never fail to avail
themselves, and really I don't know that there
is any other class of men in the world amongst
whom I should find more devoted and constant
adorers.

* Namely, those to whom they dedicate their lucubrations..196

Moreover, again, there are the rhetoricians.*
These men indeed have dallied and trifled far
more than I like with the speculations of
philosophy, f Nevertheless that they belong to
my school there can be no reasonable doubt.
I could adduce many other striking evidences
in proof of this, but will content myself now
by insisting only on the following, that amongst
all the nonsense they have written they have
yet said a good deal that is true as to the
advantage in oratory of the use of joking.
One of them—I allude to the unknown author,
whoever he may be, who penned a letter to
Herennius on the Art of Speaking—actually
goes so far as to enumerate foolish jests as
amongst those which it is politic for speakers
to use. Quintilian, likewise, the prince of
rhetoricians, has written a whole chapter as
long as the Iliad on no more serious subject

* Under this classical euphemism the public speakers and
preachers of the time are pointed at. Erasmus evidently con-
sidered them a set of humbugs, more knaves than fools, and
intimates his opinion pretty plainly here that their success was
more due to popular folly and credulity than to any superior
wisdom in themselves.

f Cicero, for instance, who, though a master in oratory, de-
voted, as every one knows, much of his attention to philosophy.1-9.7

than how to excite a laugh ! Now such writers,
surely, afford cogent testimony to the paramount
influence of folly, since they are constrained to
confess that, when an orator can get out of a
difficulty by no sensible arguments whatever, he
may yet often completely turn it aside by a
stupid jest that will raise as stupid a laugh.
Granted that in his method of uttering his
jocularities there may be consummate art. What
of that ? It in no respect whatever militates
against my position that his triumph is due to
folly.*

Those, again, who hunt after immortal fame
in the domain of literature unquestionably belong
to my fraternity. Whilst all of them are vastly
indebted to me (Folly), those of them are
especially so who appear to have no better
object before them than to soil a quantity of
white paper with black ink, penning down line

* Due to his audience being such a pack of fools as to take
empty declamation and frivolous witticisms for arguments, and
also to his own dissimulation in pretending to be foolish enough
to believe them to be so himself. No doubt in the time of
Erasmus there were many such disingenuous spouters, and their
representatives may still be found now in the pulpit, on the
platform, and on the stump ; but—thanks to the press and the
advance of knowledge—their influence is greatly on the wane.198

after line of nonsensical rubbish which no
reasonable being would think it worth his while
to read. As to those who aspire to write
really learned treatises for the critical eyes of
a few exceptional literati, and whose highest
aim is to produce some elaborate work which
shall commend itself to the admiration of a
Persius or a Lcelius, they seem to me to be
a class of men much more to be pitied than
envied. Poor fellows! They pass indeed a
wretched life of it, poring over their manuscripts
perpetually; adding a word here, changing an
expression there; expunging this, replacing that;
repeating this profound exposition to one, ex-
hibiting that scholastic dissertation to another;
doing in the space of a single year an amount
of drudgery which might well have taken them
at least nine years to have accomplished. Still,
for all that, they are never satisfied with the
amount of work they have done. And for what
reward do they do it ? What is the return
that they look for? Verily, for no better reward,
for no more substantial return than mere empty,
evanescent praise ! And by whom accorded to
them ? Why, by only the very-very-limited few199

who are capable of appreciating their erudition.
But, alas, at what a price do they purchase it !
At the cost of severe night-study; at the cost
of sleep—that sweetest of earthly restoratives;
at the cost of feverish excitation, of laborious
travail, and of racking self-sacrifice. And to all
this add—the drain that it is upon their reserve
of health; how it mars their physical appearance;
how it damages their eyesight, or even totally
destroys it; how it reduces them to poverty
and want; how it calls down upon their heads
the shafts of envy, deprives them of pleasure,
makes them old apace, and eftsoons kills them
altogether ! Such, and numerous other such
evils does devotion to literature entail upon
them. But they will be amply repaid, they
think, for all the toil and trouble they have
undergone. How ? By gaining, forsooth, the
approbation, of one here and another there, of
a few half-blind bookworms !

Oh, how much to be preferred to the
miserable condition of these brain-racked students
is the lot of that favoured author who writes
exclusively for the people, and devotes himself
therefore completely to Folly's control. Insane200

he is of course—what scribbler is not ?—but
then his insanity is of a very different kind
indeed from that of those learned maniacs whose
woes have been enumerated above. It is an
insanity full of happiness to him, full of delight.
Without any mental exercise at all he jots down
just whatever first enters his head, just whatever
comes most trippingly to his pen—even his
silliest day-dreams, skimming over his sheets
with a rapidity which is charming, fully aware
that the more nonsense he indites the greater
will be the number of his readers—in other
words, of fools and ignoramuses—who will, laud
his productions to the skies ! What if a
fastidious critic here and there should be found
to condemn his balderdash—though indeed such
a man is little likely to condescend to read it
at all—still, supposing he does read it, what
weight would his opinion carry in opposition to
the suffrages of crowds of appreciative admirers ?

Wiser still in their generation are those
who appropriate other people's literary productions
and pass them off as their own, adopting the
very simple and easy method of just changing a
few words on the title-page, and so transferring to201

themselves by a mere stroke of the pen, all the
honour and glory of the labours of a rival author!
A masterpiece of policy is this; for even should
the worst come to the worst, and their plagiarisms
be detected, they have a tolerably good chance,
before that contingency occurs, of pocketing a
considerable profit !

It is worth while, too, to notice the pleasure
they derive from the amount of popular attention
that is invariably accorded to them ; how men
point them out in a crowd, and exclaim, as
they pass by, " There goes the famous author! "
how their works are displayed in all the book-
sellers' shops with the three fictitious names
printed in prominent characters on the title-page.
Names of a foreign sort they usually adopt as
more calculated than others to impress the mind
of the community with an exalted notion of
what remarkable individuals they must be—-just
as conjurors, for a similar reason, in performing
their magical tricks affect an outlandish jargon.
Well ; they are supremely happy, fancying
themselves very distinguished personages, though
all the while, the gods immortal know, they
are a ' set of most insignificant nonentities—

Y202

mere high sounding names and nothing more
-—names, too—for narrow indeed, in comparison
with the vast world that lies beyond it, is
the contracted sphere of their celebrity—names
heard of by few, and admired by fewer still,
since—even among the simpletons who peruse
their books—tastes are found to differ.*

Furthermore, as to the names they give
themselves. These are sometimes merely their
own vernacular names clumsily transformed into
foreign barbarisms, f At other times they are
names which do not belong to them in any

* Erasmus little thought, at this time, of the celebrity that
would accrue to him from his Praise of Folly. Instead of
being "heard of by few, and admired by fewer still," soon
" ingens orbis personabat ingentem Erasmum." The tastes
of his readers, however, differed. The monkish " simpletons,"
when they understood it, were stung to the quick by his satire.

f Erasmus here, by the mouth of Stultitia, turns the laugh
against himself. His patronymic Gerard, signifying in Dutch
the Beloved, he Latinised into Desiderius, and Graecised into
Erasmus, adding to these two names a third name Roterodamus,
from the place of his birth, thus making his designation in
full to be—like that of the old Roman magnates with their three
names—Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. The pedantic
practice of translating their vernacular names into Greek was
common with men of letters in the sixteenth century. Thus
Kuhhorn (cow-horn) became Bucer, Hauschein (domestic light)
CEcolampadius, and Schwartz-Erde (black earth) Melancthon.203

sense at all, being merely names which they
have culled from ancient authors, and have
appropriated to themselves. Thus one will
delight immensely to call himself Telemachus,
a second Sthenelus or Laertes, a third Polycrates,
and a fourth Thrasymachus. Of course, for
any information that such empty pseudonyms
convey, it would be just as well if they called
themselves chameleons or pumpkins,* or labelled
their books, as philosophers do,f with meaning-
less letters of the alphabet.

But after all, perhaps, the most exquisite
silliness they are guilty of is their inveterate
habit of mutual complimentation ; the senseless
custom they have of extolling one another to
the skies ; dedicating epistles, eulogistic verses,
and fulsome addresses to one another, fool
bepraising fool, noodle applauding noodle; one,
for instance, declaring of the other that he is
as great a poet as Alcseus, and the other,
delighted by the remark, forthwith retorting
that the genius of Callimachus is as nothing

* As indicating how false are their colours, and how turgid
their conceit.

f Aristotle, for instance.204

to that of his encomiast ; * or one, again,
pronouncing the other to be intellectually superior
to Cicero, and the latter, forthwith, out-doing
him by averring that in very truth even the
wisdom of Plato is eclipsed by the discernment
of his friend!

Sometimes, again, in order to increase their
fame, they adopt opposite tactics, and enter the
lists against one another as antagonists in the
arena of controversy, f Meanwhile the public
take this side or that according as caprice
inclines them, until at last wearied out with
polemics of which neither head nor tail can be
made, they give the matter no further concern,
but contentedly resign themselves to the very
sage conclusion that the contending parties are
both of them right, and that both have won
the victory. J

* The allusion is to a passage in Horace's Epistles, wherein
the writer laughs at how, in his time, the inferior poets of
Rome were accustomed to pay compliments to one another.

4< Discedo Alcaeus puncto illius : ille meo quis ?

Quis nisi Callimachus ? —Ep. ii., 2. qg.

f They repudiate—to use the terminology of Mill {Logic vi.,
7. 3)—"the Method of Agreement," and have recourse to that
" most perfect of all methods—the Method of Difference ! "

$ Controversies have their day, and when that day is past and
gone, people sink into indifference about them. The filioque205

Well; wise men laugh at all this as egregious
folly: and so of course it is—no one denies it.
What, however, I wish you to observe is the
pleasant life of it that the class of men I am
now speaking of lead ; how completely their
happiness is bound up with their folly ; and
how—owing to my beneficence—they are so
thoroughly contented with themselves that they
would not exchange their controversial successes
—imaginary though they be—no, not for the
triumphs of a Scipio !

But as to those wise men I have just
alluded to, who are so ready at all times to
ridicule the follies of their fellows, you may
rely upon it they are themselves far more
beholden to me (Folly) than they altogether
like to confess. And this, if they are capable
of the very smallest demonstration of gratitude,
I defy them to deny. Now unquestionably
amongst specimens of profound erudition the
great judges* of the land—in their own estimation

controversy, for instance, which once set the world in a blaze,
and sundered the Church in twain for centuries, can be settled
amicably now by a few divines at Bonn !

* " Jureconsulti." The lawyers — " leguleii " — have been
already spoken of.206

at any rate—hold the foremost place. There
is certainly no class of men who are more
thoroughly pleased with themselves than they are.
And yet what a life of drudgery do they lead !
How like Sisyphus with his rock are they for
ever engaged in a task of the utmost hope-
lessness ! No cause comes before them for
decision, but immediately a mass of conflicting
and contradictory laws confronts them. And
those conflicting and contradictory laws they
are expected in one breath to declare, reconcile,
and consistently apply to any and every case
that may be brought before them. Vain ex-
pectation ! All they accomplish is to heap
gloss upon gloss, and opinion upon opinion,
and to convince everybody that the study of
the law must be a difficult study indeed. But
what of that ?

Because their task is so laborious,

They hold it therefore doubly glorious !

Very naturally the barristers* merit our
attention next—a class of men so extraordinarily
loquacious that they make more noise and hubbub

* " Dialectici et sophistae."207

than all the kettles of Dodona.*1 Talk of female
garrulity! Why, I would back any one of them
to win a prize for chattering against any twenty
of the most talkative women that you could pick
out. And well indeed would it be if they had
no worse fault than that. I am bound, however,
to tell you that they are not only loquacious
but also pugnacious. Their quarrelsomeness is
something astounding. Looking as if they could
cut each other's throats they will wrangle with
the most vehement pertinacity about a goat's
hair, and will be so excessively eager for victory
in the altercation that they will lose sight of
truth altogether! So good, however, is the
opinion that they entertain of themselves that
they are as happy as the day is long. Armed
with a few syllogisms they will essay with the
utmost confidence to join issue with any one
on any subject whatever. And their obstinacy
renders them invincible. You would not silence
them, I warrant you; no, not with the voice
of a Stentor!

* The allusion is to the brazen kettles in the temple of
Jupiter at Dodona, so arranged that when one was struck all
the others reverberated the sound. They were used to make a
gong-like clangour on occasion of the deliverance of oracles.208

After these come the bearded and gowned
philosophers, very sage-looking men certainly.
I may tell you, however, that their reputation
for profound sagacity is far more owing to their
solemn beards and gowns than to any real wisdom
that there is in their heads! Nevertheless, wise
—exceptionally wise—they boast themselves to be,
claiming alone to be possessed of substantial
knowledge whilst all other mortals are but flitting
hither and thither in quest of shadows. How-
ever, this insane self-deception of theirs is very
delightful. Oh, how pleasantly do they beguile
their time whilst they construct innumerable
worlds, whilst they compute the magnitude of
the sun, moon, and stars, and calculate the sum
of their revolutions with as much confidence as
if they could span them with their fingers, or
take their dimensions with a thread! With what
assurance do they assign causes for lightnings,
winds, and eclipses, and for all sorts of other
inexplicable phenomena,* just as if Nature had
initiated them into the mysteries of her handiwork,
or as if they had descended to mankind from

* Erasmus clearly did not forecast the scientific triumphs in
store for a later age.2og

a cabinet council of the gods ! Meanwhile,
Nature—grand and glorious in her magnificence
—mocks at the futility of their puny speculations;
for not a single new truth do they ever succeed
in establishing. If we need proof of this' we
may see it in themselves, since they agree on
no one single point, but are hopelessly at
daggers drawn upon any and every question
that is mooted in their midst. In reality they
know nothing, though they profess to know
everything; and although they do not even
know themselves, and are generally so blind,
or in such a state of mental absence, that if
a ditch or a stone were to come in their way
they would not be able to perceive it, they yet
are for ever prating about their capacity to
see — what do you think ? — ideas, universal
conceptions, forms apart from their substances,
immaterial qualities, entities, quiddities, eccei'ties,*
and—goodness knows what else—things so utterly
imperceptible to any human vision that even a
Lynceus, I ween, with all his eyes, would fail
to detect the faintest trace of them!

* Terms from the jargon of the schoolmen.

Z2IO

But those of them who feel most conscious
of their own superior erudition, and regard with
peculiar contempt the ignorance of others, are
the mathematicians. These men, when engaged
in scrawling their mysterious geometrical hiero-
glyphics—their triangles, squares, circles, and so
forth—adding one to another in the queerest
manner possible, and concocting at last a sort of
eccentric-looking picture, having the appearance
of a kind of labyrinth, with letters of the
alphabet dotted about it here and there like
soldiers in sentry boxes, first placed in one order
and then anon in another, make unsophisticated
lookers-on wonder immensely what inscrutable
conjurations they are up to. They effectually
accomplish one object, at any rate, which they
have ever much at heart, that of throwing a
plentiful amount of dust into inexperienced
people's eyes, and gaining to themselves credit
for an intelligence which they don't possess!

To this philosophical brotherhood belong
also those who give out that they can foretell
future events by observing the positions of the
stars. And they predict occurrences of the
most prodigious proportions. Talk of the marvels2 11

of magic ! Why they dwindle to insignificance
when compared with the astounding wonders
which astrologers declare to us are about to be.
Yet—fortunate men—they find gullible people
enough in the world to swallow their wildest
announcements !

Prudence would bid me—as I would avoid
stirring up a stagnant cesspool, or handling an
ill-scented weed — to pass over the parsons*
without a word of notice, for a more dangerous
class of men to provoke against you it were
impossible to conceive—so amazingly supercilious
are they, and so astonishingly touchy. Breathe
but some harmless sentiment that is not strictly
conformable to their notions of orthodoxy, and
lo and behold ! they are all in a body up in
arms against you at once, imputing to you a
host of profane inferences which may be you
never dreamt of, and summoning you as you
hope for salvation to submit to a public re-
cantation. Refuse to go through this humiliating
ordeal, and — woe betide you ! Forthwith you
are undone indeed. Against your devoted head

* Erasmus uses the more general, as well as more classical-
looking term—"theologians" (theologi).212

is hurled that terrible weapon of theirs, where-
with in a trice they silence those whose opinions
they dislike, that most awe-inspiring of eccle-
siastical thunderbolts—the charge of heresy !

Now there is certainly no class of men in
the world less willing than they are to acknow-
ledge that they are indebted to me for any
advantages they may possess. Nevertheless, I
can truthfully tell you that their obligations to
me are by no means inconsiderable. Their
darling Philautia (good opinion of self) makes
their condition a very beatific one, exalting
them, so to speak, to the third heaven, from
whose sublime height they look down upon
other mortals—almost pitying them for their
great inferiority to themselves—as if they were
so many sheep crawling on the ground beneath
them ! *

And then, again, it is owing to my in-
spiration that they are able to defend so
successfully as they do the ramparts of their

* As if, when the clergy called themselves " shepherds," and
their people " sheep," they really believed that the laity were to
them as mere cattle ! The satire is very biting, and shows the
contempt with which Erasmus regarded priestly arrogance and
assumption.213

theological stronghold, being securely fenced in
from hostile attack by an extraordinary array
of the most silly definitions which they quote
as of magisterial authority, producing a host
of the most senseless conclusions and corollaries
—propositions explicit and propositions implicit—
and rejoicing in such a number of approved
methods of escape from any argumentative
positions that they may take up that you can
never cope with them, you can never pin them
down to anything, you can never entrap them
—no, not even if you have the chains of a
Vulcan wherewith to bind them. They will be
sure to elude your grasp ; they will certainly
wriggle themselves out of your clutches by
means of some of those many subtle distinctions
of theirs by the aid of which they can cut
through the hardest knots with greater ease
than a halberd of Tenedos ; such shoals of
newly coined terms have they always ready
for their use, such multitudes of prodigious
expressions !*

Furthermore, how evidently are they indebted

* Such, for instance, Listrius observes, as " sorteity," " quid-
dity,^" " transubstantiation," and a variety of -others.214

to me when they venture to explain unfathomable
mysteries by frivolous theories of their own ;
when they presume to lay down dogmatically
what was the Almighty's rule and plan when
he created and arranged the world ; through
what special channels it was that the taint of
original sin flowed down from Adam to his
posterity ; in what manner, in what degree,
and for how long a time, Christ was completely
Christ* before he was born of the Virgin ; how
the "accidents" of the eucharistic elements are
able to subsist when they have no locus standi
left to them ! t

Now these are trite and everyday questions
with them. There are, however, others of a
more recondite and curious kind which those
only of their number are considered competent
to handle who are—or rather, who are called—
great and illuminated theologians. Well ; the

* That is completely " incarnated," completely human and
divine.

f They have " no locus standi left to them " because their
" substance " by consecration is supposed to have been " transub-
stantiated," or transmuted into other " substances " of a totally
different sort and kind, and which would naturally of course
have totally different " accidents."215

questions I allude to, which these distinguished
professors of divinity think it worth while to
set their wits to solve, are calculated, I promise
you, to keep them wide awake for many a long
day. Take, for example, the following : —
Whether or not there was a particular instant*
when the Father begat the eternal Son ; whether
it is possible for the Father to hate the Son;
whether God could have assumed the form of
a woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, or a flint-
stone ; and, supposing he had assumed the
form of a gourd, whether this divine gourd
could have preached, worked miracles, and have
been crucified; whether the sacramental elements
could have been transubstantiated into the body
and blood of Christ if Peter had consecrated
them at the time when the body of Christ was
actually hanging on the cross ; whether, too,
at that time Christ could have been properly

* The word " instant" is here used in a technical sense. As
a "point" in Euclid's Elements is defined to be "That which
hath no parts, or which hath no magnitudeso, here, by the
word " instant" is meant, " That which hath no duration "—a
"point" in eternity. Thus the theologians alluded to could
talk learned nonsense about the " instant" of the Son's genera-
tion, and yet hold at the same time that it was from all eternity S2 16

called a man ; and whether, after the resurrection,
men will need to eat and drink as they require
now to provide against hunger and thirst.*

And ten thousand other flimsy subtleties
there are—'far more sublimated even than the
above—concerning which these learned doctors
will gravely deliberate. They are perpetually
disputing, for example, about " instants," about
" relations," about " formalities," about " quid-
dities," about " ecceities " — in short about
things so refined—nay—so utterly indiscernable
—that I defy any one to perceive them at all,
unless so gifted with the faculty of Lynceus as
to be able to see, through the deepest darkness,
things which are non-existent!

They propound, too, the most outrageous
propositions. Talk, of the oracular utterances of
the Stoics as being extravagant. Extravagant
indeed ! why they are simply common-sense—
mere market-place truisms—in comparison with
the preposterous assertions that are made by

* The account here given us of the schoolmen and their
lucubrations no doubt is, and was intended to be, somewhat of
a caricature. It is no mere burlesque, however, but only too
true a picture of the kind of speculations then in vogue amongst
men reputed learned.these theologians. For instance, they will
solemnly aver that it is a lighter crime to
slaughter a thousand men than once in the
course of your life-time to tie up some poor
man's shoe-strings for him on the Lord's Day;
and that it were better to allow all mankind to
perish out and out, with all their food and all
their clothing, as the saying is, than to tell a
single infinitesimal falsehood, no matter how
trifling, to save them from destruction !

Moreover, these schoolmen make their
mystifying discussions more mystifying than ever
in such a multiplicity of ways that were you to
get into an argumentation with any of their
Realists, their Nominalists, their Albertists, their
Occamists, their Scotists*—-and I have not yet
mentioned all, but only their leading sects—■
you would extricate yourself, I warrant you,
more quickly from the windings of the labyrinthsf

* The Realists were those schoolmen who held that genus and
species were real things; the Nominalists, those who taught that
they had no existence but as names ; and the Thomists* Albertists,
Occamists, and Scotists, those who adopted respectively the
doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, of Albertus Magnus, of Occam
(an English divine), and of Duns Scotus.

f The labyrinths alluded to are the four of ancient celebrity—•
in Egypt, Crete, Lemnos, and Italy.

AA218

than from the bewildering' mazes in which you
would find yourself involved by these confusing
reasoners ! They are endowed, all of them—
this new-fangled race of theologians—with so
much erudition, with so much perverted clever-
ness, that not even would the apostles themselves,
I verily believe, be anything like a match for
them in disputation unless possessed by a spirit
of a very different kind* from that by which
they were inspired. If the Apostle Paul, for
example, were to confront them, he would of
course be fully competent to inform them what
" faith " consisted in, and he would go on to
tell them that it was " the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."f
But would they, think you, be satisfied with
such a definition as this ? Not a bit of it.
It would be far too unscholarlike for them !
And so, again, the very beautiful description of
" charity," which St. Paul has given in the
thirteenth chapter of his First Epistle to the

* By a spirit of disputatious casuistry—to wit; by a propensity
for distinguishing and defining matters of mystery with dogmatic
and logical preciseness.

f Heb. xi., i. That the Epistle to the Hebrews is not of
Pauline authorship Erasmus was unaware.-Corinthians, would very ill accord indeed with
their notions as to how logic requires that
"charity" should be divided and defined. And
as to the eucharist, the apostles, no doubt,
were accustomed to celebrate it with due and
becoming reverence. Had they, however, been
asked to explain its terminus a' quo, and its
terminus ad quern ; how the transubstantiation of
the elements is brought about ; how one and
the same body can be in a multitude of different
places at one and the same time ; how the body
of Christ in heaven differs from what it was on
the cross, and what it is in the sacrament ; at
what precise " instant "—since the prayer of
consecration which effects it is uttered piecemeal
—the mystery of transubstantiation is consum-
mated ;—had the apostles, I say, been required
to answer such embarrassing queries as these,
they would, I opine, have been put to their
wits' end; whereas, as everybody knows, our
shrewd theologians—the Scotists, can analyse
and define all these transcendental matters with
the utmost facility! The apostles, again, were
the contemporaries and the familiar acquaintances
of the mother of Jesus, yet which of them could220

have told us philosophically, as our theologians
can, how it was that she was preserved
immaculate from all taint of the sin of Adam ?
Peter received the " keys," and received them,
too, from One who would never have entrusted
them to an unworthy guardian. Whether he
would have understood such a subtle point or
not I don't pretend to say, but certainly he
has nowhere ventured to explain, as the Scotists
have done, how a man destitute of knowledge
is to be credited as being the holder of the
"keys" of it.*

The apostles, again, wherever they went,,

* What!—the Pope " destitute of knowledge ?" Oh no, it is'
only Folly's surmise ! The Scotists' position was that a pope,,
by virtue of his office as successor of St. Peter, held the "keys'*
of both secular as well as sacred knowledge, and was, therefore,,
even if ignorant, qualified to pronounce ex cathedra what was and
what was not to be believed by the faithful. Folly justly remarks,
that the question, " How could he be qualified if ignorant ? " is
one which—although the Scotists may be able to answer it ta
their own satisfaction—Peter, to whom the " keys " were given,
was certainly not wise enough to explain! This passage is a
bold one, considering the time when it was written—betraying,,
as it does, the unbelief of Erasmus in the authority traditionally
ascribed to the popes. If they were ignorant and unreasonable
men, and unworthy guardians of the " keys," they could not
possibly have any divine right or title to be judges of matters,
requiring knowledge, discretion, and worth.221

were accustomed to administer baptism, yet
about its " formal," its " material/' its " efficient,"
and its "final" cause they nowhere said a single
word, nor did they ever make any mention at
all about its " delible " or its " indelible "
character. Again, no doubt, they were acceptable
worshippers of the Almighty, yet, for all that,
they worshipped him only in spirit, they worshipped
him only according to the simple Gospel rule,
" God is a spirit, and they that worship him
must worship him in spirit and in truth."* In
fact to them it never seems to have been revealed
at all that this sort of worship was insufficient.
They never appear even to have dreamt that
people in their devotions ought to have before
their eyes, and should worship as if it were
Christ himself, some wretched representation of
him chalked out on a wall — no matter how
inartistically, provided only that it has two
extended fingers, f a superfluity of flowing hair,
and a few strokes radiating from the head to
indicate a nimbus of glory !£ No ; they never

* John iv., 24.

f Symbolical of the act of blessing-.

J More literally—" three marks in the shield-like circle which
adheres to the occiputfor, as Listrius informs" us, the rays in222

perceived how such a mode of worship as this
could be made to accord with the spiritual
worship of the Gospel. And no wonder; for
who could possibly perceive how this could be
unless for six and thirty years* at least of his
existence he had absorbed himself wholly in
the study of metaphysics, and in the ultramun-
dane speculations of Aristotle and the Scotists ?
Again, the same apostles insist on man's need
of grace, but they nowhere mention the difference
between graciam gratis datam and gratiam grati-
ficantem. They exhort to good works, but they
do not expound the distinction between opus
operans and opus operatum. They everywhere
inculcate "charity," but they do not discriminate
between that which is "infused," and that which
is "acquired;" nor do they explain whether it
is an " accident " or a " substance ;" nor
whether, if substantial, it is, or is not a thing

the nimbus were usually drawn in three several groups—one
group diverging from the crown of the head, and the other two
from the temples.

* " Six and thirty years "—that is " more than half a life-time "
—more than half of the space of " three score years and ten "
which the Psalmist allots to man's mundane existence.—Psalm
Xc., 10.223

created. They hate and detest " sin," but I
will stake my life upon it that unless possessed
by the spirit of the Scotists not one of them
could have defined it with scientific precision.
I can never, for instance, be induced to believe
that St. Paul—whose erudition we may take as
a specimen of what might have been the
erudition of the rest—if he had been at all
capable of comprehending such fine-spun dis-
tinctions as those of the schoolmen, would have
* denounced as he has done, over and over again,*
the vain questionings, janglings, and genealogies,
th.e—what he calls—" logomachies "f which were
rife in his days, and which were inartificial and
unsophisticated " logomachies " indeed compared
with the more than Chrysippian subtleties^ in
vogue now with our recognised theological
authorities !

But notwithstanding this, so supremely

* In Titus iii., 9.; 1 Tim. i., 4; vi., 4; 2 Tim. ii., 16, 23 &c.

j- Xo^ofMvxfas " word-battles "—" strifes of words " (A.V.)
1 Tim. vi., 4.

J Chrysippus, a stoic philosopher of Tarsus, died B.C. 207.
His numerous works were full of captious, quibbling word-
puzzles. Hence the expression, " Chrysippian subtleties," in
the text.224

modest a class of men are our distinguished
theologians, that not a word of condemnation
do they ever presume to utter against anything
that has been written by these said unsophis-
ticated apostles. No ; the plan they pursue is
a cleverer one. Whenever they light upon any
doctrines in their writings expressed in language
too simple and too undogmatic to be fully
suited to their taste, they adopt the highly
convenient method of so interpreting them as
to make them appear to square precisely with
their own tenets ! In this ingenious way do
they claim to have primitive antiquity on their
side, and at the same time to pay due deference
to the teaching of men so utterly unversed in
scholastic subtleties as the apostles. And, by
Hercules, it would be unreasonable indeed to
expect to find a knowledge of dogmatical dis-
tinctions and definitions in such men as the
apostles—men who, in all their lives, never had
one syllable of instruction in such matters im-
parted to them by their Great Preceptor!

But not quite so deferential are our school-
men in their treatment of writers like Chrysostom,
Basil, or Jerome. Let but these famous Fathers225

express opinions that are unpalatable to them,
and their authority is rejected at once. They
are mistaken, and that is all about it !

The apostles, again, confuted the Gentile
philosophers and the Jews who by their very
nature were the most pertinacious opponents of
the truth ; but they confuted them more by
their lives and their miracles than by syllogisms.
And precisely in a similar way also did they
win over those whose mental capacity was
such that they could not have mastered a
single quodlibet of Scotus. Ah, how much
cleverer are mankind become now ! Now
every goth, every insignificant heretic is regarded
as competent to yield an intelligent assent to
the most incomprehensible theological refinements.
A man is despised as a dullard who declares
that he cannot understand them, and woe betide
him for his audacity should he venture boldly to
sneer at them ! But should he be a theologian—
save the mark !—armed with the same stratagems
of controversy, and able to contend with his ad-
versary on equal terms, protracted forthwith is the
campaign of polemics that ensues between them

—magician, as it were, defying magician, one

BB226

man claiming to hold in his hand an invincible
sword confronting another equally claiming to
wield one ! Alas, it is a barren warfare—a
case of Penelope over again—one weaving, the
other unweaving, and no good coming of it
at all !*.

Wise, therefore, in my opinion, would
Christians be if, instead of bloated military
armaments—such as those whose success in the
old crusading days was often so very questionable
— they would send away these most noisy
Scotists, these most stubborn Occamists, and
these invincible Albertists, together with the
whole band of their sophists, to fight with the
Turks and Saracens !f The world would witness,
I fancy, such a charming conflict as never before
was waged, and such a glorious victory as never
before was won! Oh, how the keen darts of

* The allusion is to the tale of Penelope and her suitors.
She promised to select one of them as soon as she had finished
a piece of tapestry on which she was busily engaged. However,
what she wove by day, she unwove by night, so that she never
finished it all! Hence the proverb, " Penelope's web."

f A nice way of utilising divines and lawyers ! The gist of it
is that the world would be well rid of priestcraft and litigation ;
but of course Folly alone could entertain such an erroneous
opinion !227

their polemics would, so to speak, rankle in the
veins of their unbelieving foemen! How they
would inflame the very coldest of them to fever-
heat, and exasperate the most stolid amongst
them to a pitch of frenzy ! But vain would
all their anger be. Such clouds of metaphysical
dust would their conquering opponents forthwith
cast into their eyes as to reduce them to
utter . helplessness. And assuredly the most
sharp-sighted of them all would—in a very short
space of time indeed—be so irretrievably blinded
by this means, so superlatively mystified, that he
would have to retire from the battle-field in a
condition of hopeless bewilderment !

In all this I dare say you think me well
nigh jesting, and hardly credit me with stating
the truth when I thus describe the polemical pro-
pensities of our leading ecclesiastical authorities.
And no wonder, indeed, if such should be your
impression ; for even amongst the parsons them-
selves there are some*—instructed in a better
school of thought—to whom all these frivolous
refinements of theologians are positively sickening.
Indeed, some there are amongst them who even go
* Such men, for instance, as Colet—afterwards Dean of St. Paul's.228

so far as to execrate them as akin to sacrilege,
and pronounce it impious in the extreme for
fallible and imperfect men to dogmatise thus
respecting the secret things of the Almighty—
things which it were presumption to discuss with
heathen-like familiarity, or to define with arrogant
precision—things too deep to be fathomed by the
plummet of human reason, and to attempt to
describe which in the cold, miserably poor words
of man's language is only to desecrate and de-
grade those majestic mysteries of divine theology
which should be adored rather than explained.

But these self-same divines, although en-
grossed so devotedly in futile lucubrations, are
yet, let me assure you, the very happiest of
men, thoroughly contented with themselves, and
completely ravished with the charms of their
doctrinal diversions which they pursue with such
unremitting pertinacity both by night and by
day that not sufficient leisure can they spare
to read through, even once, the Gospels, or
the Epistles of St. Paul !*

* Listrius says that he knew personally " very many (so-called)
theologians " in his day who were thus unfamiliar with the
Scriptures.sag

In the meantime, whilst they thus trifle
away their existence in the schools, they believe
that as Atlas in the poets sustained the heavens
on his shoulders, so the whole universal church
owes its support to them, and that were it not
upheld by the props of their syllogisms it would
forthwith topple into ruins ! As you may easily
imagine this flattering conviction of theirs is to
them a source of the utmost gratification. It
inspires them with such confidence in handling
obscure passages of Scripture that they unhesi-
tatingly deal with them as if they partook of
the nature of wax, and might be twisted and
turned into any form, accommodated to any
sense, that it best suits their purpose to give
them ; it induces them to regard their own
deductions—be they but endorsed by a few
schoolmen—as of more binding force than the
laws of Solon, and as even more imperative
than the decrees of popes ; it makes them
consider themselves as the legitimate censors of
the world, dignitaries whose province it is to
take good care that every man is compelled
by judicial process to recant should his opinions
not happen to square with their " conclusions230

explicit" and their "conclusions implicit"—as
they pedantically put it—even to the veriest
hair's breadth ! Indeed, with such oracular
authority do they, pronounce anathemas of con-
demnation upon a man for a wee flaw* in this
proposition, for a slight taint of profanity in
that, for a faint odour of heresy in a third, or
for a spurious ring in a fourth, that in these
days neither baptism, nor the Gospel, nor Paul,
nor Peter, nor St. Jerome, nor St. Augustine
—no, nor even most Aristotelic Thomasf him-
self—suffice to make any man—unless conversant
in addition with the logomachical refinements
in vogue with our newly fledged graduates—a
Christian in the estimation of our schoolmen—■
so extremely delicate and precise are the tests
which they apply!

By ruthless logic, then, we are brought to
this—that an unlettered bumpkin who knows

*' I have represented here, I believe, fairly enough the author's
meaning ; namely, that what was—as seen through the magnify-
ing glasses of their prejudices—a " scandalosa propositio " to the
schoolmen, might not be to other men even perceptibly divergent
from the line of allowed opinions.

f Thomas Aquinas was amongst the first of the schoolmen
who applied the philosophy of Aristotle to divinity. His ex-
position of the Ethics is still held in esteem.231

nothing of the niceties of language, who uses
his vulgar tongue in a vulgar way, and in
whose mouth it would be as " congruous "*—
I speak scholastically you observe—in whose
mouth it would be as " congruous" to say
" the pail smellest" as " the pail smelleth,"
and " hot the pot " as " heat the pot,"—we
are brought, I say, to this—that such a man
cannot be a Christian ! Surely, we should
never have known it, unless these profound
theologians had taught us so!

Signally, again, do they illuminate the
darkness of the church—and in a way, too,
they little contemplate—by pronouncing censure
on heretical writings which no one would ever
read at all were it not that, by setting their
veto upon them with their great seals, f they
bring them prominently into notice !£

* " Congruity " was a term in use with the schoolmen having
reference to an opinion which many of them held that some men
had by nature a fitness (congruitas) for receiving divine grace.
This view is condemned in the 13th Article of the Church of
England.

f It was their custom, we are informed by Listrius, to affix the
seal of the university to documents containing lists of con-
demned propositions.

X Again and again have attacks upon books reputed heterodox
merely served as advertisements to increase their circulation, and
given them a celebrity they would not otherwise have obtained.232

But are they not superlatively happy whilst
they act in this foolish way ? Are they not
superlatively happy, moreover, whilst they depict
with such graphic minuteness all the horrible
things in the infernal regions that you might
almost imagine that they had passed there
many a year themselves ? And are they not
superlatively happy, again, whilst, in the ex-
uberance of their fertile fancy, they annex new
domains (orbes) to the realms of heaven,* more
broad and beautiful than any of the rest—con-
ceiving, I suppose that beatified spirits resemble
the denizens of this lower world, and that for
conveniently roaming, banqueting and ball-
playing they must have additional space!

With these, and with innumerable other
equally groundless notions, the heads of these
men are so thoroughly stuffed that I should
think their brains must be in a somewhat
similar condition of distention to what the

* The heavens were anciently regarded as consisting of nine
spheres (orbes)—seven, one above the other, in which the seven
planets respectively moved ; an eighth—still higher—for the
fixed stars; and a ninth—the primum mobile—above that. To
these the schoolmen added a tenth, which they designated the
empyreum, or realm of pure light.233

gravid brain of Jupiter must have been when
he implored that his cranium might be cleft
by the halberd of Vulcan for Pallas to be
enabled to come forth ! No wonder, therefore,
that at their public disputations they are so
careful to bind their heads round and round
with such manifold encirclements of gear ;* for,
obviously, their overcharged skulls would other-
wise burst asunder!

And this reminds me of another folly of
theirs, and one too at which even I (Folly)
can scarce suppress a smile. Because it happens,
as you know, that in these public disputations
they speak in Latin—so barbarously, however,
so incorrectly, so stutteringly and stammeringly
that none but babblers like themselves can
comprehend them — they plume themselves on
possessing a degree of erudition unattainable by
the mass of men, and consider that they are
mightily learned theologians ! They boast that
being theological doctors and not schoolmasters
it would be incompatible with the dignity of
their sacred profession to allow themselves to

* The head-dresses of Parisian doctors at this period, Listrius
remarks, were especially extravagant.

CC234

be tied to grammatical rules. Strange dignity
to lay claim to—the sole right and title to talk
faultily ! Not that they have it though. Many
a cobbler shares the honour with them !

And, lastly, so high an opinion do they
entertain of the veneration that is their due
that, in their own estimation, they are next
door to divinities. People, as you know, are
always religiously scrupulous to accost them as
—" Magistri nostrifor these theologians hold
that in this precise form of salutation there lies
a similar kind of mysterious sacredness to that
which there is, according to the Jews, in the
letters which compose the name of Jehovah.*
Hence they affirm that it is a forbidden thing
for any one to write Magister Noster but in
capital letters ; and that if any one, inverting
the words,f says " noster magister," he destroys
at once all the honourableness of the appellation !

* The " Tetragrammaton,"
f " Praepostere."Chapter IX.

The Monks and their Doings—Specimens of their Ser-
mons and Style of Oratory.

Another class of men next claims our atten-
tion, whose condition of happiness very closely
approaches that of the theologians, namely, the
religious orders or monks, as they call themselves,
though both designations are utterly misleading,
since the greater number of the men of these
fraternities have not a grain of religion in them
at all, and all of them are perpetually to be
found in all sorts of places of resort.* Oh—
how inconceivably miserable their lot would be
were it not that I (Folly), in a variety of ways,
prove myself their constant friend ! Thus it is
that though they are shunned and execrated by
everybody—and that to such a degree that it
has become an article of popular belief that if

* The reader will hardly need to be reminded that the term
" monk " implies retirement from the world.you chance to meet a monk evil assuredly
awaits you—they yet, all the while, regard their
fortune as a favoured one, and congratulate
themselves heartily on the exceptional felicity
they enjoy ! It is true, no doubt, that they
are vety illiterate—so absolutely illiterate that
there are many amongst them who cannot even
read ! Well; but what does it matter ?—for to
have had nothing to do with worldly learning
is to them a satisfactory proof of their exalted
piety ! It is true, moreover, that day by day
they chant in their churches a set number of
psalms,—or rather they don't chant them, for
they bray them out most inharmoniously, like so
many asses—without having the smallest con-
ception of their meaning ! Be it so ; but I
again say, What matters it ?—for they imagine,
all the while, that they are soothing the ears
of beatified saints with charming and delightful
melodies ! It is true, too, that some of their
number are—to all appearance—the most miserable
tatterdemalions conceivable, going about begrimed
with filth, and appealing loudly, from door to
door, for bread to keep them from starvation,
and that there is not an inn, stage-waggon, or237

passenger-ship that is not molested by the im-
portunities of these wretched-looking mendicants.
Well, but it matters not; for they drive, I can
tell you, in this way an uncommonly thriving
trade which rival beggars might well envy, and
—what is more—all the while they delude
themselves most pleasantly with the notion that,
with all their dirt, ignorance, rusticity, and
impudence, they personate the very apostles !

Again, another thing that contributes greatly
to their happiness is the habit that they have
of always living by fixed and stated rules, and
that so scrupulously that it is a religious duty
with them to be mathematically precise even
about the most trivial matters. Thus, for ex-
ample, they make it a point of conscience, as
members of their respective monasteries, to dress
in uniform; to have their shoe-strings tied alike,
their girdles coloured alike, their doublets alike
in shape and in material, their waist-bands
always of a certain regulation-width, their cowls
of a certain regulation-amplitude, their heads
tonsured in a certain regulation-fashion, their
time for sleep of a certain regulation-length
—and so on. And this they call acting on a238

principle of equality. Arid so it certainly is—
in a very odd way, however ; for it is applying
a rule of equality to things which have no
equality about them, to an utterly incongruous
jumble of men who, both in body and mind,
are of all sorts, and sizes, and descriptions !
This may be a rule of equality, but yet, for
all that, as any one must see, it is an
egregiously unequal rule.*

Well ; all this ado about petty punctilios
of dress, and so forth, is of course very

* The meaning is that one and the same rule applied to a
variety of men differing from one another in mental and bodily
characteristics, though well adapted to some of them, may be
extremely unsuitable for others. Men are not necessarily treated
with equal fairness because treated all alike. This is what
Stultitia means when she says that "the rule of equality" is
u an unequal rule." There is an ambiguity, it will be observed,
in the word " equalityand this ambiguity has led people into
the error of confusing its two different meanings, and contending
for "equality" when they really mean "equity." Equity all
men should have, but equality they can never obtain—strive for
it how they may. They are unequal by nature, and if treated
"equally," are not therefore treated "equitably." And, more-
over, however equal the measures meted out to them, unequal
they themselves will remain to the end of the chapter. It
cannot be otherwise ; for is it not an indisputable axiom that
" if equals be added to uitequals the ivholes are unequal V Men
can never be made " equal " by being treated " equally ;" but
their lot may be rendered "equitable" by their being treated
" equitably."239

frivolous. The monks, however, do not see it
to be so, but on the contrary regard it as so
important a matter that not only do they disdain
all other people for not being accoutred like
themselves, but also—strange as it may sound
—for a similar reason look down with contempt
upon one another; for although they profess
to be actuated towards one another by the
warmest feelings of apostolic love, yet, let but
some poor monk be compelled by his poverty
to wear his garments unfashionably girdled, or
of a dingy hue, and then—tragical indeed his
condition is ! His wealthier compeers, with all
assumptions of saintliness, so scorn him as to
fill one with absolute amazement!

Again, amongst these monks you may see
some who imagine themselves to be men of
the most rigid and austere piety, because,
forsooth, they wear no outer garments but those
of coarse Cilician goat-hair,* whereas—but oh !
tell not the tale abroad—their inner vestments,
all the while, are of the softest Milesian wool !f

* The people of Cilicia were skilled in the manufacture of a
coarse material from the shag of goats which abounded in that
district. -

f The wool of Miletus was celebrated.240

Others, again, there are who do just the reverse,
and think themselves particularly religious for
having their under-garments made of rough,
homespun stuff, whereas for their upper-garments
—and they see no inconsistency in this—they
get the very finest materials obtainable ! Others,
again, are men of such singular sanctity that
not for the world would they touch such a base
thing as money—oh, no—not even with the tips
of their holy fingers! They shrink from it as
from poison ! It would soil their purity—:it
would contaminate them ! Would that they
were equally scrupulous to shun the beastliness
of intoxication, and the defilements of degrad-
ing lusts !

In fine, they are a most contrarious set of
men, possessed apparently all of them with an
astonishing zeal to render their lives as little
conformable as possible to those of rational
beings. And no desire do they evince to be
like Christ, but much eagerness to be unlike
one another.*

Moreover, let me tell you, as a further

* The various communities of monks differed very considerably
in rules and in costume.241

evidence of their folly, that a great part of
their happiness consists in—-what do you think ?
in having nicknames applied to them ! They
delight in being dubbed Cordeliers,* Capuchins,f
Minors,X Minims,|| Bullists,§ Benedictines, Ber-
nardines, Bridgettinians,^]" Augustinians, William-
ites,** Jacobites,ft and—goodness knows what

* " Funigeri." They were monks of the Order of St. Francis,
and wore gowns of coarse grey cloth tied with a rope-girdle.
Hence their name.

f So called from their capuche or cowl. They were an offshoot
of the Franciscans.

f The Franciscans, alias Grey-friars, were called by their
founder the Order of the Minors.

|| Begging, or mendicant friars, who called themselves minimi
fratres.

§ Friars who by the Pope's " bull" or authority were exempted
from episcopal control.

If Monks of the rule of St. Bridget.

** There was a monastery in the city of York dedicated to St
William, one of the early archbishops of that see ; but probably
the Williamites alluded to were so called after 4 4 William, a Count
of Aquitaine, one of the most distinguished commanders under
Charlemagne, who in his latter days, in the year 806, retired into
a monastery which he had founded near Lyons." — (Nichols's
Pilgrimages, p. 75.)

ft Monks of the Order of St. Dominic were called Black-friars
in England, and in France Jacobites, or Jacobins. There is a
a satirical play upon the words in the Latin which is worth
noticing:—"Hi Benedict/^, illi Bernard^.? ; hi Brigidenses,
illi Augustimm^; hi Guilhelmzfaj, illi Jacobitas, appellari se
gaudeiit."

DD242

else! To be called simply Christians is of course
quite an insufficient designation !

The majority of these men have such a high
opinion of their meritoriousness for observing
with punctilious scrupulosity a lot of silly
ceremonies, and paltry traditional rules, that
they think that one heaven will by no means
adequately recompense them for their amazing
deserts. Ah ! little do they reflect how utterly
contemptible all such things are in the eyes
of Christ, and that when he comes to judgment
the great question for them to answer will be
—not, whether they have gone through such
and such routine observances and forms, but
whether they have fulfilled from their hearts
his precept of love. What, at such a time,
will their reply be ? What are the pleas which
then they will produce in their defence? Pro-
bably, such as the following. One will contend
that, in the name of religion, he has devoured
a mighty quantity of fish ; another that he has
chanted no end of psalms; another that he has
fasted ten thousands of times, and suffered for
it, too, as often afterwards by gorging his
carcase to the point of bursting ! Another243

will bring forward such a heap of ceremonies
as will be enough, so to speak, to sink a dozen
merchantmen ! Another will boast that for sixty
years he never touched money unless with his
fingers protected by being doubly gloved! And
another will exhibit as a proof of his humility
a cowl so foul and greasy that the veriest
muckworm* would not deign to put it on !
Another will tell a long tale of how for half-
a-century or more he led the life of a sponge
—always fixed to one and the same identical
spot; another, of how he made his voice hoarse
by constant singing; another, of how he con-
tracted a lethargy by dwelling continually in
seclusion ; and another, of how by constant
silence he lost the use of his tongue altogether!

But—What will Christ say to all this ?—you
ask. Well, were it not for being interrupted
by him they would go on with their self-
glorifying for ever. He will speedily stop them,
however, with words to the following effect.
"From whence," he will say, "comes this new

* " Nauta." The word is used in a similar sense a little
further on, where I have translated nautas et aurigas " out-casts
and scapegraces."244

sect of Jews that I see before me ? One only
law do I acknowledge as mine of which from
them I hear nothing. When formerly upon earth
I plainly and without disguise promised the
reward of my paternal inheritance—not to such
ascetics as these with their cowls, their canting
and their penances, but to those who fulfil the
requirements of love.* I repudiate as disciples
of mine men who vaunt so loudly the merito-
riousness of their conduct, f and evidently wish
to be considered as holier even than myself.
No; let them occupy, if they will, the heavens
of the Abraxasii,£ or bid those whose silly
traditions they have preferred to my command-
ments to construct, if they can, some new heaven
for them, since assuredly no room for them will
be found in the kingdom of the redeemed I"

* Matt, xxii., 34—40; Luke x., 25—28 ; John xiii., 34, 35.

f See Matt, xxiv., 31, &c.

t Better known as the Basilidians. Their founder, the heretic
Basilides, taught, as Listrius observes, that there were
365 heavens, of which he called the highest Abraxas, and
commended that name to his followers as of mystical import.
The Greek letters of which it is composed represent the number
365. As may be learnt from any Greek Grammar that treats of
the numerals, a stands for 1, ji for 2, p for 100, f for 60, and s
for 200. Thus we have in the word "Aj-lpa^a? 1 +2 -j-1 oo-j-i +
60+1 -{-200=365. A concise account of the Basilidians may be
seen in Hook's Church Dictionary.24.5

No room for them! Imagine the amazement
with which they will gaze one upon another
when they hear from the judgment seat such
words as these! Picture their looks of astonish-
ment when they shall see the vilest outcasts
and scapegraces chosen before themselves ! *
In the meanwhile, however, thanks to me (their
folly), they are as happy as the day is long,
and derive ample enjoyment from their high-
flown expectations!

Again, these men—especially the mendicants
—have this further advantage—that, although
they are socially a class apart, no one dares
venture to treat them with contempt. And the
reason is this, that by means of their practice
of hearing what they call " confessions," they
have the most intimate knowledge of everybody's
private affairs, t These, of course, they hold it

* Matt, xxi.., 31. " Veiily I say unto you that the publicans
and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you."

f A friar, " could confess, whosoever might come to him. It
was to no purpose that a parish priest refused absolution to any
black sheep of his flock. Away he went to' a Franciscan, and
* absolution was given him at once; the more readily indeed as
an opportunity was thus afforded the friar of expressing his
contempt of every ecclesiastical body but his own,"—Blunt'$
Sketch of the Reformation, p. 38.246

to be unlawful to reveal. They do reveal them
however, nevertheless; and that not unfrequently!
For instance, when they have been tippling,
and wish to amuse themselves with a rich tale,
they will let out everything but the actual names
of the parties concerned. These are left to be
guessed at. If, however, any one has chanced
to irritate these hornets—woe betide him! They
will have their revenge upon him assuredly
enough. At all their popular preachments* they
will point out by unmistakeable innuendoes who
their enemy is. They won't publish his name
—no, but they will publish his description, and
that, too, in such a manifest way that no one
with a grain of intelligence will have the
smallest doubt as to who is the person meant.
Nor will these dogs cease their barking, I
warrant you, until their mouths have been stopped
with a substantial bone !

And as to these preachments of theirs to
which I have just alluded, what a ridiculous

* A friar " could preach where he would. If he could not
lawfully take possession of the church of the minister, he could
erect his ambulatory pulpit at any cross, in any parish, and rail
■—as he generally did—at the supineness and ignorance of the
resident pastor."—Blunt's Sketch, p. 37.247

figure do they cut in them ! Where will you
find a buffoon, where a mountebank, whose
antics would afford you more amusement to
witness than those of these men as they hold
forth before some gaping- audience ? It is truly
absurd, and, at the same time, most rich to
see them; to behold how they act the orator;
to view their clumsy attempts to carry out into
practice the rules which rhetoricians have laid
down for public speaking-. Good heavens—what
a caricature do they make of it! How they
g-esticulate; how grotesquely* do they change
their voices ; how they rave—screech—cry—
bellow; how they fling themselves about; and
presently —oh !— what a variety of ludicrous
grimaces do they put on ! In short, they per-
form—and in a very literal sense too—such
" a roaring farce "—such a comedy of hulla-
balooing, that from first to last the sound of
their voice is one overwhelming din !

These contemptible friarsj* possess a peculiar
method of constructing their sermons—which
they hand down as a mysterious secret one to

* " Ut apte;; " but the words are clearly ironical,

f " Fraterculi."248

another. Of course, what it is they have never
divulged to me; but from what I know of their
usual practice I can make, I think, a tolerably
good guess about the matter. In the first
place then, I take it, they have a rule that a
sermon to be effective must invariably be begun
with a divine invocation—in other words, with
a bombastic appeal to heaven for assistance—a
telling artifice, no doubt, for which they are
indebted to the poets!

Well; when that is over, then they proceed,
in the second place, as follows. Supposing their
subject to be Charity, they will most likely go
on with a long tirade about the Nile, the river
of Egypt ! or if the Mystery of the Cross be
the topic to be treated of they will straightway
felicitously commence with a high-flown disser-
tation about Bel, the Babylonian dragon! or if
Fasting be the point to be discussed, they will
forthwith dilate on the twelve signs of the zodiac!
or, again, if Faith is the theme to be spoken
on, in all probability they will introduce it with
a preamble about the squaring of the circle! I
once heard myself a certain monk so exquisitely
foolish—I beg his pardon, I should say learned,—249

that—when about to explain the mystery of the
Holy Trinity to a very distinguished congregation
indeed—in order to satisfy the ears of the
theological critics who were present, and to
make it evident to everybody how surprisingly
erudite he was, he opened his discourse in the
most unprecedentedly novel manner imaginable ;
namely, with a prolix preliminary dissertation
on the rudiments of grammar—describing to his
hearers the letters of the alphabet, the formation
of syllables, and the distinctions of words; and
from thence going on to the concords—of the
noun with the verb, the adjective with the
substantive, and so on! His listeners, naturally
enough, gradually grew weary of this sort of
thing. The majority sat wondering in silence
what he was driving at. Some, however, less
patient than the rest, could not refrain from
whispering in one another's ears the query of
Horace,

Whither does all this stale stuff tend ? *

Well ; at length he brought the matter to
a climax. And what do you think was his
observation then ? Why this, that having now

*v* Hor. Sat. ii.? 7, 21.

EE250

finished his prefatory prelude he would go on
to elucidate to us, as plainly as a mathematician
could draw a figure on the sand, that a re-
semblance to the Trinity was to be found in
the rudiments of grammar !

And in the preparation of the above stupid
and wearisome discourse this most theological of
monks actually worked so exceedingly hard for
eight entire months in succession that he rendered
himself more blind than any mole, and so remains
to this very day—the whole sharpness of his
eye-Sight having no doubt gone to counter-
balance the bluntness of his wits!

However, his loss of vision affords him no
regret. On the contrary he cordially congratulates
himself on having purchased at so inconsiderable
a price the meed of immortal celebrity!

And I heard another monk preach—a man
now eighty years of age, and of such an
extraordinarily theological cast of mind that you
might have imagined that in his person Duns
Scotus himself had been incarnated afresh.
Well ; this man, once, in discoursing on the
mystical import of the name of Jesus, demon-
strated with surprising subtlety that whatever251

can be predicated of Christ is involved in the
very letters which compose his name. He began
by informing us of the fact that the word
Jesus has but three inflections, and stated that
this was a manifest indication that there were
three persons in the Godhead! He then went
on to point out that the word in its first case
ended in s (Jesus), in its second in m (Jesum),
and in its third in u (Jesu). This he contended
was deeply mysterious, and that the grand and
glorious truth that Christ is the 5—m—u—the
Summum, the Medium, and the Ultimum—the
author, conductor, and accomplisher of the great
work of human redemption, lay inscrutably
concealed under these three little terminal
letters !

But there remained another mystery in the
word, still more recondite than the above, if
we may accept his mathematical demonstration
as a proof of it. He went on then, after this,
to divide the word Jesus into two equal portions
so that the dividing point* exactly fell upon the
middle letter. And thence he proceeded to
explain that this middle letter, the letter s, is
* " Penthemimeresthat is, " The halving one of five parts."252

called by the Hebrews Syn, and that it is
usually pronounced (in the brogue of Scotchmen,
I presume!) sin. And what do you think he
inferred from this ? Why, that the great central
doctrine of the Christian religion, that Jesus
Christ was ordained to take away the sin of
the world, was unmistakeably involved in the
central letter of his name !

During this novel exordium it was amusing
to observe the gaping listeners—especially the
theologians. So mutely motionless did they all
remain, so dumb-struck with wonder and amaze-
ment, that you might almost have imagined
that they had become petrified into so many
statues, converted like Niobe into so many
stones! I, on the other hand, was affected
very differently. In fact, I was on the point
of bursting, like Priapus the god of the fig-
stump—to his great discomfiture—when watching
the nocturnal orgies of Canidia and Sagana,*
—so terribly difficult did I find it to curb my
inclination to laugh ! And, had I so exploded,
I should have had sufficient reason for it I
think. Did ever Demosthenes amongst the
* Hor. SaL L, 8, i, &c.253

Greeks, or Gicero amongst the Latins, conceive
the idea of commencing an address with such
a curiously irrelevant opening ? Indeed, the
view of these distinguished orators was that if
a speaker's premisses had no logical connection
with the point to be proved, his reasoning was
essentially fallacious. And any common, unedu-
cated bumpkin, with no instructor to guide
him but the simple promptings of his nature,
would instinctively act on a similar assumption.
But not so the learned preachers I am alluding
to. Their opinion apparently is that a " pre-
amble "—for such is the name which they
apply to their preliminary remarks—instead of
being vitiated, is rhetorically improved by having
no bearing whatever on the subject of inquiry;
that it serves more effectually to inveigle the
listener on, and keeps his mind on such a
stretch of expectancy, that he irresistibly mutters

to himself,

What next, I wonder, and what next
Will he elicit from his text ?

Whither—O whither—does he go ?

Proripit ille se nunc quo ? *

The third division of their discourses is

* Virg. Eel. iii., 19.-254

concocted, I suspect, in the following way.
They cull a narrative from the Gospels, and
on this they afterwards deliver a few words of
exposition ; but so hastily, so as a mere matter
of form—though their whole time might profitably
be given up to elucidating the lessons it contains
—that I have unhesitatingly arrived at the con-
viction that their sole object in quoting from
the Gospels is not to impart spiritual instruction
to their hearers at all, but simply to amuse
them with scriptural parables as they might
entertain them with the recital of a series of
romantic fables!

When they arrive at their fourth division,
they assume a fresh character, and propose the
solution of some outlandish theological problem
or another, which will assuredly be found to
be as remote as earth from heaven from any
connection whatever with anything they had pre-
viously advanced. However, they deem it an
essential ingredient in their method of preaching.
And here they put on the airs and graces of
professional divines, and din into one's ears an
interminable list of solemn doctors, subtle doctors,
most subtle doctors, seraphic doctors, saintly255

doctors, and, above all, irrefragable doctors—for
by such high-flown epithets do they characterise
their most worthless authorities — in support of
any proposition, no matter what, which they
may take it into their heads to maintain.

And then, to all this—in order to make
the crowd of listening ignoramuses stare still
more at the vastness of their erudition—they
tack on a farrago of syllogisms, a lot of major
premisses, minor premisses, conclusions and corol-
laries, intermixed with a tissue of the most
frigid hypotheses and far-fetched conceits, which
not even the very schoolmen could surpass.

Next comes the fifth act of the farce on
which they lavish, as is fitting, the utmost
efforts of their skill. And they proceed here,
it seems to me, on the following ingenious plan.
Having selected—from some Abstract of History,
I presume, or from some Sketch of Roman
Annals—the first silly, childish tale of wonder
that comes to hand, they retail it to their
credulous hearers as fraught with the most
profound significance, amazing them with a
glowing account of all its allegorical, tropological
and analogical senses, until at length they bring25S

to a finale such an heterogeneous homily as can
only be fittingly described as being in its way
a more monstrous chimera than even Horace
could have conceived when he penned his doggrel
about

A creature strange with equine neck,

And with head of the human kind :

Its limbs birds' feathers did bedeck,

And a fish-tail dangled behind ! *

And now for a few words about their
style of oratory. They have been taught,
rightly enough, by their instructors—whoever
these may be—that when they begin their
speeches they should be sedate in their deport-
ment, and not raise their voices to a pitch of
loudness. Very good advice certainly. But
how do you think they carry it out ? Why,
on the strength of it, these simpletons—as if
there could be any imaginable use in a man's
speaking in public at all, if he so spoke that
no one could possibly catch a word he said—
actually begin their addresses in so low a tone
as to be absolutely inaudible to everybody !
In fact, really, I more than doubt whether they

* Ars Poetic a i., &c.are even themselves conscious of any vocal
sounds proceeding from their lips whatever !

Again, they have been taught that in
order to arouse the attention of his hearers it
is well for a speaker occasionally to give vent
to ejaculatory remarks in a voice of greater
loudness than before. This precept, I can
assure you, they do their best to carry out into
practice. They will mumble away quite in a
suppressed undertone, and then—-lo !—without
the smallest occasion for it—they will all of a
sudden become so perfectly furious, and explode
into such a fit of uproarious frantic bellowing
that, if you chanced to be listening to any one
of them, you would swear that the man had gone
mad, and your impulse would be to exclaim,—

Rave away, maniac, rave till you're blue,

None heeds your bedlamite hullabaloo !

Moreover, they have been instructed that a
speech should increase in energy as it goes on.
To carry out this direction they commence each
of the several divisions of their sermon in a
manner certainly as far as possible from being
insanely excitable. But anon-—good heavens,
what a change! They roar, they rant, they258

Strain their voices, as if they were in a very
tumult of impassioned fervour, and you would
naturally think how very stimulating their subject
must be. Stimulating! Not a bit of it. The
chances are that it is frigid and uninteresting
to the last degree. However, it is all the same
to them. They go vociferating on to the end
of their tirade, until at length they become so
done up, so thoroughly " winded," by their
oratorical efforts that they seem positively to
gasp for breath, and you might imagine that
they were about, after a few gasps more, to
give up the ghost altogether !

Again, lastly, they have heard that, amongst
other subjects which rhetoricians* treat of, they
do not omit to mention that the philosophy of
how to raise a laugh should form an important
part of an orator's study. The consequence is
that they endeavour to be facetious in their
sermons, and intersperse their remarks with
stupid jokes which—O dear, Venus!—are about
as comely, about as much in place as a braying
jackass would be in a concert-room !

Sometimes they assume a satirical air, and

* Quintilian, for example, in his work Be Inst. Orat, vi., 3.259

affect a tone of biting sarcasm. It is all
blarney, however. Their bites, I can assure
you, are very harmless. They are studiously
careful to inflict no wounds on guilty consciences.
No; they don't want to bite, but only to tickle, and
that they accomplish effectually enough. In fact,
their very plain speaking, as they call it, is nothing
in the world but so much dissembled flattery! *
And now to sum the matter up. Their
whole demeanour in preaching is such that you
might swear they had taken lessons from a set
of itinerant mountebanks, though indeed the
mountebanks are out and out their superiors.
However, they are both so similar the one to
the other that no one could for a moment
doubt that either they must have derived their
art of rhetoric from the mountebanks, or the
mountebanks from them. Nevertheless, infamously
bad though their oratory is, they find—owing

* For instance, Listrius informs us, they would tell the women
who attended their preachments, and who, some of them, wore
skirts of fashionable prolixity, that they were " animals with
tails/' and that they were very sinful to dress so charmingly as
they did, for that they thereby exercised too potent an influence
over the hearts of their captivated admirers ! And they would
say all this so as to send them away extremely well satisfied with
themselves.260

to my invariably proving- myself their friend—
plenty of people who are weak enough when
they listen to them to esteem them as worthy to
be regarded as rivals of Cicero and Demosthenes!

The people I allude to are for the most part
traders and silly women, whose ears it is a great
object with them agreeably to titillate,—the traders,
because, by judiciously flattering them up, they
manage to ■ squeeze out of them some nice little
portions of their ill - gotten gains ; and — the
women, who for many reasons that might be
mentioned are particularly partial to this class of
men, because they take a great delight in receiving
from them their confessions of—what do you think?
The peccadilloes of their naughty husbands !

You see clearly, I opine, how immensely
these men are indebted to me; for whilst by
their whimsical ceremonies, their nonsensical
vagaries, and their uproarious hullabalooing,
they wield a tyrannous sway over the minds of
mortals, they also, at the same time, esteem
themselves to be as distinguished saints as Paul
and Anthony! *

* Egyptian solitaries of the third century, and the reputed

founders of monachisrruChapter X.

Kings and Princes—Courtiers—Bishops—Cardinals—■
Popes—Priests.

But I willingly leave these disingenuous,
histrionic impostors, who are as ungrateful to
disown the benefits they derive from me, as
they are wicked to pretend to piety, and go
on next, as it is high time that I should, to
say a few words to you about kings, and the
royal princes belonging to their courts. Very
different are they from the counterfeit fellows I
have just been speaking of. They are genuine;
not like the stupid monks pretending to be wise
when they are the reverse, but, on the contrary,
devoting themselves to me without disguising the
matter at all ! They frankly and openly live
a life of folly, and it is but just, therefore,
that I should give them their due, and as
frankly and openly tell them so ! Indeed, if262

they had a grain of sense in their heads no
condition would be more deplorable than theirs,
no position to be shunned with greater eagerness.
Who, for .example, would think it worth his
while to burthen his conscience with the guilt
of perjury and parricide in order to obtain a
throne, if he only weighed in his mind the
galling yoke that it would impose upon his
shoulders, the slavish drudgery that it is
adequately to discharge the duties of a king ?
For he who holds in his hands the reins of
government has no time whatever—poor fellow!
—to attend to his own private concerns. No;
the whole vast business of the realm is dependent
upon him, and he is expected, therefore, to
devote all his thoughts to national matters. He
is the author and executor of the laws, and
yet, not by a finger's breadth, is he permitted
to transgress them. For the integrity of all
his public officials and magistrates he alone is
responsible. He alone is the observed of all
observers : his moral conduct is scanned, his
administration criticised, and he himself is ex-
posed to the gaze of everybody as the paramount
cause of their weal or woe ; viewed either as a263

benignant star* bringing hope and salvation to
the state, or like a baneful comet portending
its ruin and destruction. Other people's vices are
comparatively little noticed, and their corrupting
influence is only of limited extent; whereas a
royal personage's position is such that if he
diverge in ever so trifling a degree from the
path of rectitude, forthwith his bad example is
copied by untold multitudes.

And then, again, his ample fortune brings
with it a host of temptations which are ex-
ceedingly likely to lead him astray. The danger,
for instance, of the pleasures of the court, and
of freedom to do what he wills ; of flattery,
luxury, and so forth, cannot be over-estimated.
He is bound perpetually to keep up a vigilant
guard against their risks, and to watch with
sedulous care against their seductions, or, as
sure as fate, he will be doomed to be deceived,
and to fail in the performance of his duties.

Lastly, to omit all mention of such dire

* The comparison of distinguished personages to " stars " or
luminaries has been common in all ages. Thus in the Preface
to the Authorised version of the Bible the Translators describe
the demise of Queen Elizabeth as the setting of a " bright
Occidental Star," and the accession of King James as " the
appearance of the Sun in his strength."264

contingencies as the plots which his enemies
may devise against him, and the hazards he
may run from popular hatred and discontent;
to pass over the perils, and the dread of perils,
amidst which his days are constantly passed,
there remains this solemn reflection — that for
everything he does he is amenable to a higher
potentate than himself ; that One who is a
King indeed, and is cognizant of all his actions,
will, at no distant period, call him to a strict
account for the very minutest of his faults, and
will exact from him a penalty which will be the
more rigorously severe in proportion to the
eminence of the imperial position which he fills.

These, I say, and very many more con-
siderations of a similar kind, if princes were
but to weigh thoughtfully in their minds—and
weigh them thoughtfully, if wise, they surely
would—they would neither be able to eat nor
sleep for mental anxiety. As things are, how-
ever, owing to my good services, they cast all
such reflections to the winds, indulging themselves
in ease and luxury, and effectually preventing
any scruples or misgivings from disturbing their
peace by admitting none to their confidence but265

a set of smooth-mouthed worldlings who know,
only too well, how to beguile them with flattering
words which are pleasant as honey to their
souls.

The views they have formed of what con-
stitutes the functions of a king appear from
their mode of life to be as follows. They
regard it, I imagine, to be the duty of a king
to addict himself with the utmost devotion to
the amusement of the chase ; to keep up a
grand stud of magnificent horses; to prostitute
to his own venal advantage important offices
of public trust; to devise every day fresh schemes
for replenishing his exhausted coffers by extracting
as much money as possible from the pockets
of his subjects, and of so doing it, by means
of the exercise of imaginary prerogatives, that
while acting in utter defiance of all law and
justice, he may still make a specious show of
having law and justice on his side ! And in
addition to this they seem to regard it as the
duty of a king to caress by every means in
his power the vulgar populace, in order to win
their good graces, and so make them the sub-
servient tools of his tyrannical behests !

GG266

y And here let me give you an approved
recipe for the manufacture of a king—of such
a king, I mean, as kings generally are. Take
a man entirely ignorant of the laws of his
country, a man no better than a traitor to the
interests of the commonwealth, a man intent on
his own pursuits, given up to pleasure, hating
learning, detesting liberty and the progress of
truth, a man thinking of nothing so little as the
advancement of the welfare of the nation, but
measuring everything by the standard of his own
desires, and of his own selfish requirements at
the time; take such a man as this; encircle
his neck with a chain of gold, as emblematic
of the virtues which should be linked together
in his breast ; put on his head a gem-decked
diadem, as indicating that, being crowned with
noble qualities, he should surpass in excellence
all common men ; place a sceptre in his hand
as symbolising justice and a bosom impervious
to corruption ; and, lastly, attire him in a robe
of purple, as a badge of the loving attention
he should pay to imperial affairs, and—lo and
behold—before you struts a king ! Oh, if,
taught by the significance of these external267

insignia, he did but compare what royalty ought
to be with what in his person royalty really
is, it would come to pass, I imagine, that he
would feel thoroughly ashamed of his regal
accoutrements, and would fear lest every witty
passer-by should turn them into ridicule as the
habiliments of a stage-play sovereign !

And next, a few words about the grandees
of the court. Now, a more thoroughly cringing,
servile, insipid, empty-headed set of men than
the generality of them are you will fail to find
anywhere. Nevertheless, all the while, they wish
to be regarded as the foremost personages on
the earth. Not a very modest wish—perhaps,
you will say. Well, no—and yet in one respect,
I think I may truly assert, that they are very
modest in their wishes indeed. For instance,
they wish to have their bodies bedecked with
gold, and gems, and purple, and other such
like external symbols of worth and wisdom, but
nothing further do they require. They rest
satisfied with pitiful, material symbols, and have
not the very faintest desire to be possessed of
the inestimable endowments they are intended
to represent. No ; these empty signs so per-268

fectly content them that all the virtues which
they signify they leave to others!

Do they then acknowledge that they are
deficient in virtue, since it evidently appears
that they have no wish whatever to acquire it ?
Oh, not at all. On the contrary, they are
abundantly happy in the belief that they are
superlatively virtuous—thinking, forsooth, that to
be attached to the king's household, perpetually
saluting, beslavering, and flattering him, is in
itself an ample guarantee of their being men
of pre-eminent excellence ! Admirably, in their
own opinion, do they fulfil everything that is
required of them in life ; approaching their
sovereign with set verbiage of homage ; plying
him plentifully with high - sounding epithets ;
characterising his reign as serene, despotic, and
magnificent ; polishing his face well for him, so
to speak, and pouring adulation upon him with
lavish profusion. These are the arts that become
a noble courtier, and their consciences tell them
—most unspotted and exemplary men—that they
discharge such duties to perfection !

I fear, however, if you examine in detail
the ordinary tenor of their lives, you will find269

that they are very far indeed from being such
unblemished worthies as they superficially appear;
you will discover them to be mere worthless
Phaeacians,* as dissolute and lazy a set of
scamps as were "the suitors of Penelope," and—

But Echo,f no doubt, to your mind will supply

The sequel J far better than daft Ego || I.

Well; they lie in bed till noon. Then they
summon their chaplain to their bed-side to offer
up the sacrifice of the mass, and as the hireling-
priest goes through his solemn farce with per-
functory rapidity, they, meanwhile, have all but

* The inhabitants of the island of Phaeacia, under their King
Alcinous, were proverbially spoken of as a luxurious and in-
dolent race.

t That is—Memory,

X As an echo repeats a concluding sound, so memory will
recall " the sequel"—namely the lines in Horace which follow
the words " suitors of Penelope " (sponsi Penelopes) which
Stultitia quotes. The passage referred to is the following
" Nos numerus sumus, et fruges consumere nati,

Sponsi Penelopes, nebulones, Alcinoique
In cute curanda plus aequo operata juventus,
Cui pulchrum fuit in medios dormire dies, et
Ad strepitum citharae cessatum ducere curam."

—Hor. Ep. i., 2, 28, &c.

|| There is a play, it will be observed, upon the words Echo
and Ego. I have endeavoured to represent it, though perhaps a
little clumsily.2 JO

dropped off again into a comfortable condition
of slumber !*

After this they betake themselves to break-
fast ; and that is scarcely over when dinner
supervenes. And then come their pastimes—
their dice, their cards, and their gambling—
their merriment with jesters and buffoons, their
gallantries with court-favourites, their fiddle-faddle
sports, and their lame attempts to prove them-
selves facetious. And while all this goes on
refreshments are frequently in request. And
then, shortly afterwards, supper-time arrives, and
they are eating and drinking again ! Nor does
this suffice them : they must needs wind up
with a glass of tipple, and you may take my
word for it, by Jove, that it is not one glass
only that they think enough !

In such a mode as this, without ever
knowing what it is to have time hanging
heavily on their hands, they while most pleasantly
away the hours, days, months, and years of
their mundane existence. At the same time I

* " Qui, propemodum cubantibus adhuc, sacrum expedite
peragat." To go expeditiously through the sacred rite (the
sacrament), whilst they are still almost lying in bed.271

will honestly confess that their folly sometimes
is so glaringly great as to be really almost too
much for even me .(Folly) to stand.* When,
for instance, I see such puny sycophants as
they are giving vent to great swelling words
of pomposity; when I behold the female part of
them thinking themselves more or less goddesses
in proportion to the prolixity of their tails ;f when
I witness courtling vying with courtling to gain
the smiles of royalty; and when, furthermore,
I observe how pleased each of them is with
himself if he happens to have on his neck a
more than usually massive chain—to show off
his wealth, you know; and his strength, too,
I should fancy, for it must be exceedingly
cumbersome to wear—then, really, I am almost
inclined to doubt whether such people do not
actually outstrip the legitimate boundaries of
folly.	'

And next, let us turn our attention to
another class of men—namely popes, X cardinals,
and bishops, who have long industriously rivalled,

* " Ipsa saginatior abeo." Even I depart surfeited.

f The lengthy trains of their court-dresses.

' J Summi pontifices.272

if they do not actually surpass, the state and
magnificence of princes. Oh, if bishops did
but Weigh in their minds the admonition which
is conveyed to them by the very vestments
which they wear—those vestments of theirs of
snow-white linen—which indicate so clearly how
pure and unsullied their lives should be ; if
they did but draw the reflection from their
bi-lobed mitres, which though parted at the
summit are united at the base, that the two
divisions of the Bible form together one whole,
and that a competent knowledge of the New
as well as of the Old Testament Scriptures
should be studiously acquired by every one
who professes to declare the word of God; if,
again, they did but deduce as a natural and
appropriate lesson from the gloves with which
they so carefully enclose their hands, that
hands which are engaged in the administration
of sacred rites should be kept pure and holy
from all profane contact with secular affairs ;
if, moreover, they did but bear in mind that
a pastoral staff is an emblem of pastoral duties,
and that it implies how very vigilant should
be the guardianship which they should exercise273

over the flocks committed to their care ; if,
finally, they remembered that the cross which
is borne before them should solemnly remind
them of the earnestness with which they should
continually strive to crucify the desires of the
flesh; if, I say, they did but seriously weigh in
their minds these and many other considerations
of a similar kind, their lot would unquestionably
be one replete with sadness and solicitude. As
things are, however, a right bonny time of it
do they spend, providing, with all due diligence,
abundant pasturage for themselves, and leaving
their flocks either entirely without ministerial
supervision and commended to none to care*
for but Christ, or abandoned to the negligent
charge of so-called friars and vicars. Indeed,
what the very word "bishop" implies—namely,
laborious and watchful oversight—never seems
to enter their heads. Yet in one respect I
won't deny that they verily are bishops—in
that they are always most vigilant overseers
of their own financial interests, and have a
very keen eye indeed to the netting of cash !

Similarly the Cardinals, if they did but
solemnly reflect that having succeeded to the

HH274

place of the Apostles, it is incumbent upon
them to lead Apostolic lives ; if they did but
seriously consider that, being not the owners,
but only the dispensers of spiritual endowments,
they will have, at no distant period, to render
up to their Great Master a strict account of
how they have fulfilled their work ; if, further-
more, they did but moralise occasionally on the
meaning of the habiliments they wear, and recalled
to mind that brilliant as is their vesture, so
brilliant also should be the example which they
should set to mankind; that warm and glowing
as is their inner purple garment, so warm and
glowing should be their love to God ; that
broad and capacious as is their flowing outer
robe—covering entirely the mule on which these
Most Reverend dignitaries ride, and of sufficient
amplitude, were it necessary, to cover even a
camel—Oh, if they did but reflect that broad
and capacious like this should be the spirit of
charity within them, embracing all who need it,
shown forth in a readiness to impart to all
wholesome counsel and advice, to allay the strife
of warfare, to stand forth boldly against the
tyranny of iniquitous kings, and to spend not275

only riches—though, by the way, what on earth
the successors of the poverty-stricken apostles
have to do with riches I don't quite see ; still,
let that pass—to spend, I say, not only riches,
but even their very life-blood for the flock of
Christ; surely, surely, I contend, if men were
only wise enough to weigh well in their minds
such considerations as these, there would be
either none amongst them who would have any
ambition to become cardinals, and none who,
if they were cardinals, would not gladly and of
their free choice give up their vocation if they
could, or they would be prepared to relinquish,
utterly and for ever, all worldly ease and
enjoyment, and would devote themselves, heart
and soul—like the apostles of old time—to lives
of solicitude and toil.

Again, the Sovereign Pontiffs,* the vice-
gerents of Christ, if they did but realise the
solemn obligation they are under to walk in
their Master's footsteps, to resemble him in his
poverty, in his labours, in his teaching, and in

* In penning what follows Erasmus evidently had in view the
characters of Alexander VI. and Julius II., of whom the latter
was theft occupying the papal chair.2J6

his willingness to take up his cross and to die
for the welfare of men; if they did but reflect
how the very name of Pope which they bear,
and which signifies Father, summons them to
be Fathers indeed to the Church committed to
their charge, and how the epithet Most Holy
which is affixed to it admonishes them that in
their characters they should be men of passing
saintliness ;—surely, I say, if they thought on
these things, no class of people in the world
would feel more crushed to the earth under
the heavy weight of their responsibilities.

Ah ! you may rely upon it, no man who
reflected seriously on these things would squander
all his wealth in the purchase of the popedom,*
and no man who had once gained it would
think it worth his while to call into requisition
the sword, the poison-cup, and all kinds .of
violence in order to retain it. No; his whole
gratification in its possession would assuredly
depart directly a man became amenable to the
influence of wisdom. Of wisdom—did I say ?
Aye—if a pope had but a single grain of wit

* In 1492 Cardinal Borgia (Alexander VI.) obtained the
popedom by bribing the conclave.in his head, a single infinitessimal particle of
the savoury salt alluded to by Christ,* instan-
taneously all his happiness would be destroyed,
and his very existence would be a burden to
him. All his wealth, his honours, his authority,
his victories, his patronage, his dispensing powers,
his revenues, his indulgences, his horses, his
mules, his satellites, his unbounded pleasures—
and oh! what a market, what a harvest, what
an ocean of delights have I in these few words
enumerated—all, all—would be as nothing to
him ; he would loathe them all, and would
abandon himself instead to watchings, and
fastings, and tears ; to prayers, to preaching,
and to study; to deep-drawn sighs, and a
thousand wearisome austerities.

And another deplorable consequence that
would certainly result if popes were to become
wise is this, that the vast number of writers
they employ—the hosts of - copyists, notaries,
lawyers, schemers, secretaries—as well as a crowd
of muleteers, grooms, waiting men, procurers,
and other viler lackeys whom I forbear to
name; in short, if the popes were wise, all the
* Matt, v., 13 ; Mark ix., 50 ; Luke xiv., 34.278

vast concourse of hangers-on who are now so
great a disgrace—I beg pardon, I mean so
great a grace*—to the Roman see would be
reduced to a condition of starvation. This were
indeed a sad calamity—nay, an inhuman and
abominable cruelty ; but oh—infinitely worse—
the very popes themselves, our grand ecclesias-
tical princes, the shining luminaries of the
world, would have to give up all their glorious
magnificence, and to descend—oh heavens what
a fall — to the humdrum simplicity of the
apostles! f

As things are, however, very different is
their case. They lead an easy life of it,
leaving all the laborious duties of their exalted
office to Peter and Paul, who have plenty of
leisure to attend to them, and taking only the
splendours and enjoyments of it themselves !

And thus it comes to pass that owing to
the benign influence of me (Folly), scarcely

* There is a play in the Latin on the words onerat and honorat,
which I imperfectly represent by disgrace and grace.

f Literally " to the scrip and staff"—in allusion to the
injunction of Christ to his apostles that they were to provide
themselves not even with these. Matt, x., 9, 10 ; Mark vi., 8 ;
Luke ix., 3 ; x., 4; xxii., 35.279

any class of men lives more joyously than
they do, more softly, more luxuriously, more
free from care, impressed with a firm belief
that they superexcellently fulfil everything that
Christ requires of them, and that all they have
to do as chief bishops of his church is, from
time to time, to deck themselves out in grotesque
and almost theatrical costumes, and with much
ceremony and much pompous parade of their
titles—describing them as possessed of all beati-
tude, and reverence, and holiness conceivable—
to deal forth grandiloquently their blessings and
curses on mankind!

But is this really all they do ?—you will
ask. Do they never work miracles as the
apostles did before them ? No ; the practice
is old and obsolete, and altogether unsuited to
these modern times. Do they, then, never
instruct the people ? No; that were far too
laborious. Do they, then, never interpret the
sacred scriptures ? No; they leave that to the
schoolmen. Do they, then, never devote them-
selves to solemn meditation and prayer ? No;
that were far too sombre an employment for
them. Do they, then, never shed tears of28o

sorrow or repentence ? No; that were despicable
and womanish. Do they, then, know nothing
of the trials of poverty ? No ; such sordid
things are far beneath their notice. Do they,
then, never condescend to men of low estate ?
Not they indeed :—

'T would ill become the dignity of those
, Who scarce let kings salute their holy toes.

But would they not die for the faith ; would
they not submit even to be crucified, if need
so required ? Not they, be assured. Death
were little enough to their liking ; but to be
stuck upon a cross would be simply ignominious:
they would take precious good care, I warrant
you, to keep as far as possible from such a
fate of infamy as that! No; their only weapons
of warfare are those I have spoken of above
—namely, blessings and curses ; such sweet
benedictions on the one hand as St. Paul makes
mention of,* and of which they are extremely
liberal ; and, on the other, such bitter male-
dictions as are implied in their interdicts,
their suspensions, their excommunications, their

* In Romans xvi., 18. Thus Erasmus, by the mouth of
Stul,titia, describes the Pope's blessings as sweet but utterly
unavailing—" fair speeches deceiving the hearts of the simple ! "28i

anathemas, their vengeance-threatening pictures,*
and, above all, in those terrific thunderbolts of
theirs—their bulls; by which, at their sole will
and pleasure, they consign the souls of mortals
to the very lowest depths of Tartarus, and
which these Most Holy Fathers in Christ,—
these his most benevolent Vicars—hurl against
none with more malignant acrimony than against
those who " at the instigation of the Devil "f
endeavour to diminish and despoil the patrimony
of Peter!

The patrimony of Peter ! But what, you
will ask, is that ? for Peter professed, as we
are told in the Holy Gospels, that he abandoned
everything when he became a disciple of Christ.

* " Ultrices picturae." Such pictures pourtrayed the future
miseries of excommunicated heretics, and were distributed
.oad amongst the people with the sanction and approval of
the pope. Listrius says that they were common in his days—
and he was a contemporary of Erasmus—at Rome. They were
painted on handkerchiefs, or square pieces of linen cloth, and
represented an excommunicated person with a crown of flames
on his head, with ghastly demons tormenting him on all sides,
and with fires blazing up beneath his feet.

f " Instigante Diabolo." A familiar quotation, we are in-
formed by Listrius, from the phraseology of papal bulls of the
period. The words, of course, are here used in the irony
of satire.

I I282

" Behold," said he, " we have left all and
followed thee."* Nevertheless, for all that, they
fondly imagine that his patrimony consists in
such things as lands, and cities, and revenues;
in remunerative harbour-dues, and in the pos-
session of dominion over wide-spread provinces !
These are the acquisitions for which our popes—
in their burning zeal for Christf—contend ;
these are the apportionments which they go
through fire and warfare to obtain, and ... for
which they saturate the earth with the blood
of Christians!

All the while, however, they delude them-
selves with the idea that they are defending
Christ's spouse, the Church, in a manner truly
apostolical, priding themselves on how courage-
ously they discomfit those whom they are pleased
to call her baffled enemies; just as if the Churcv
by any possibility whatever, could have any more
dangerous enemies than godless popes — men
who, without uttering a word in his defence,
allow Christ, as it were, to pine away neglected;
bind him, hand and foot, with the shackles of

* Matt, xix., 27 ; Mark x., 28 ; Luke xviii.j 28.

f Bitterly ironical is all this.283

their enactments with no object in view but
the increase of their gains ; pervert his precepts
by their forced interpretations ; and finally—
worse than all—by leading lives of pestilential
depravity, inflict upon him, so far as in them
lies, a wound that is deadly indeed !*

Moreover, although the Church of Christ
progressed originally in spite of the most de-
termined opposition ; although she was founded,
confirmed, and finally established by the blood
of her martyred children—proving her possessed
of a life of which no earthly power could deprive
her; yet now, as if Christ—who ever defends
his followers as he well knows how best to do
—as if, I say, Christ, her protector, in these
days of ours had perished and was no longer
in existence, they must needs have recourse to
the sword in order to promote her cause !

And, again, although warfare is so barbarous
an employment that it becomes savage animals
rather than human beings ; although it is an
outbreak of such infernal madness as to be
regarded by the poets as fomented by the Furies

* Heb. vi., 6. " They crucify to themselves the Son of God
afresh, and put Him to an open shame."284

of Hell ;* although it is so pernicious a curse
that it sows the seeds of vice and immorality
broadcast amongst mankind ; although it is
fraught with such dire injustice that the vilest
of freebooters are those who are fittest to con-
duct it ; and although, finally, it is so glaringly
impious as to be absolutely out of character
with the religion of Christ ; yet—for all that—
what do we find ? Christian prelates neglecting
everything else, and revelling amidst the carnage
of battles !

Yes ; you may see decrepit old popes, f
fired with all the ardour of juvenile impetuosity,
sparing no cost, grudging no labours, prevented
by no obstacles, setting at defiance laws, re-
ligion, and the claims of peace, and going
forth like troopers to the fray, utterly indifferent
—provided they gain their ends—if they throw
the whole world into confusion, -destroy all trade

* Thus in Virgil (/En. viii., 324, &c.) the Fury Alecto is
represented as fomenting contention.

f Pope Julius II., who was then occupying the papal throne,
is, as Listrius intimates, here pointed at. Erasmus was very
bold to venture to lampoon as he does the reigning pontiff, and
it is a marvel that he had not to pay dearly for doing so, since
his satire soon became a notable production, and was read by
every one familiar with the Latin tongue all the world over.285

and commerce, devastate fruitful provinces, and
convert prosperous cities into heaps of ruin !*

Nor are there wanting learned courtiers
who belaud all this stark insanity of theirs as
a zealous display of pious heroism, having dis-
covered, I presume, by some ingenious methods
of ratiocination of their own, how perfectly
compatible is Christ's commandment, " Love
thy neighbour as thyself," f with a man's
drawing from its scabbard a fatal sword, and
plunging it into the vitals of a brother !

A question arises here concerning which as
yet I have failed to form my opinion, namely
this, whether certain of the German bishops,
who, as everybody knows, are addicted above
all others to the barbarous practice of warfare,
derived that practice from the popes or not,
or whether the popes learnt it from them.
Anyhow it is certain that their bellicose pro-
clivities are remarkable ; for, neglecting all care
of divine worship, all offices of solemn bene-
diction, all religious observances whatever, they

* I have ventured thus freely to expand the meaning implied
in the Latin, " res humanas omnes sursum et deorsum miscent."
f Matt, xxi-i,, 39 ; Mark xii., 31.286

act in no respect as Christian bishops over
their dioceses, but solely like so many heathen
satraps over provinces, and seem verily to regard
it as almost cowardly, and little less than a
disgrace to any one belonging to their order
to render up his pugnacious soul to God any-
where else than on a field of battle !

And the common herd of priests, thinking
that it would ill become them to be less
courageous champions of the Church Militant
than their saintly superiors—for lack of other
objects to take up the cudgels about—display
their warlike ardour in fighting for their tithes.
And, by heavens, they do fight for them with
all their might and main—swords, staves, and
stones being freely used !*

Ha, ha! people call them blind : they are
keen-sighted enough though in this matter at
any rate, and should there be a word or ex-
pression in any old musty statute books which
may serve to strike terror into their unlucky
parishioners, and make them hand over to them

* What a constant source of bitterness and irritation in
English parishes tithes were before the Commutation Act was
passed the reader will scarce need to be reminded.287

more than a due share of tithes, no men in
the world, I warrant you, will discover it more
quickly than they !

In the meanwhile it never enters their minds
how much is everywhere said in these same
statute-books about the duties which they them-
selves in their turn owe to their parishioners.
They are far too blind to see that ! Nor do
they see—what at any rate we might expect
that they would see, tonsuring their heads so
scrupulously as they do, in order to assume
the appearance of men grown grave and sedate
with advancing years — that those who, like
themselves, have adopted the sacred calling of the
priesthood, should be in their demeanour grave
and sedate, shunning youthful and worldly lusts,
and meditating diligently on the things of heaven.

Yes; happy men ! they are quite unsuscep-
tible of any such serious reflections. Deluding
themselves with the blissful belief that by
mumbling through, as they do, day by day—
no matter how—certain routine offices of prayer,
they perform most excellently everything that
can possibly be required of them, their con-
sciences remain perfectly at ease; yet if there288

be a god above either to hear or understand
them, by Hercules, he must be a strange god
indeed ! At all events, speaking of them
generally, I have no hesitation in asserting
that, so far as they are themselves concerned,
—even when they pray their loudest—they
neither hear nor understand a single word
they utter, but go through the services as
mechanically as mere senseless machines !

But one peculiarity there certainly is which
priests have pretty much in common with
profane laymen; and it is this, that they keep
quite as sharp a look out after the harvest of
their emoluments as the most money-grubbing
laymen in existence. Whatever other laws they
may neglect, you may be quite sure they will
never overlook the laws for the getting of gain!

If, however, there is any real cross to be
carried, any burdens to be borne, they prudently
put them on other people's shoulders ; and
those other people put them on other people's
shoulders again. Thus from hand to hand the
ball goes tossing on. Just, for example, as
kings amongst the laity delegate the duty of
governing their kingdoms to their ministers, and28q

their ministers, again, to others beneath them,
so our priests—too modest, no doubt, to make
any display of it themselves—delegate the whole
practice of piety to other people I The people,
again, in their turn, leave it all to the priests,
or, as they call them, Churchmen—-just as if
they had nothing whatever to do with the
Church themselves, and had never taken upon
themselves the vows of baptism ! The priests,
similarly, who call themselves seculars—I suppose
because they know more of worldly affairs than
of Christianity !—leave it to the regulars ;* the
regulars, again, leave it to the monks ; the
laxer-living monks leave it to the stricter-living
monks; the stricter-living monks, with one consent,
leave it to the mendicants ; the mendicants leave
it to the Carthusians ; and, finally, the Carthusians
so effectually bury and conceal itf that it dis-
appears from daylight altogether!

* Clergy attached to monasteries, as being under monastic
regula or discipline, were called " regulars," other clergy—such
as all parish priests in England now are—" Seculars."

f " Bury and conceal it " under a mass of ceremonies.
The Carthusians are here specially singled out as men who
seemed to make religion consist in mere formal observances,
about which they were extremely scrupulous, whilst in their
mode of living many of them were notoriously lax.

J J290

In like manner the popes—the most diligent
of men in the harvest-field of money-getting—
leave all labours which they find more apostolical
than they like to the bishops; the bishops
leave them to the pastors ; the pastors to the
vicars; and the vicars to the mendicant friars.
These, again, thrust them back upon those by
whom the wool of the sheep is shorn !*

* Serious as are the foregoing charges against the monks and
clergy of the time, the picture is scarcely overdrawn. The poor
sheep, certainly, were most sadly fleeced. What with the sale of
sacraments, the exaction of testamentary bequests, and the en-
forcement of exorbitant fees, it is hardly an exaggeration to say
with Dr. Draper that " the Church had degenerated into a
contrivance for the extortion of money—See Intellectual De-
velopment of Europe, vol. 2, ch. vii.Chapter XI.

Fortune Favours Fools.

But it is not my intention now to enter
into any further details of the lives of our
popes and priests, lest, if I say more than is
meet in commendation of their follies, I should
lead them to suppose that I am deriding them
—weaving a satire upon them instead of pro-
nouncing a panegyric. And, similarly, I forbear
to deliver myself of any further laudations on
bad and incompetent kings, lest, should I
happen to overplay my part, I should appear,
under the guise of extravagant eulogy, to be
only sneering with covert contempt at all those
highly exemplary sovereigns under whose benign
sway you are privileged to live.* Nothing, of
course, can be more absolutely contrary to my
purpose! Should I chance, therefore, already

* A neat bit of irony this. Folly is praising "bad and
incompetent kings," but of course it would be impolitic so to
call the " highly exemplary" sovereigns who were then reigning !2Q2

to have said more in their favour than in
becoming decency I ought, I can only reply
that my sole object in the few remarks that I
have made about them has been the more
convincingly to prove to you how absolutely
necessary I (Folly) am to every mortal being's
welfare, and that no man, be he who he may
—be he even such an exalted dignitary as is a
pope, or a priest, or a sovereign—can enjoy a
life of happiness and prosperity unless he
becomes a devotee of mine, and has me
therefore to befriend him. In short, it must
be so, since Rhamnusia (the great goddess
Fortune), who directs as she lists all human
affairs, acts with me perpetually in concert, and
there can be no more determined enemy than
she is to wise men ; whilst, as to fools, even
though they sleep away their days in ease and
indolence, she showers all good things into
their lap with unsparing profusion.* The history
of that prince of fools, Timotheus, affords, as

% " The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong-,
neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of under-
standing, nor yet power to men of skill, but time and Chance
happenoth to them all."—Eccles. ix., u.293

you are aware, a striking- illustration of my
words. His very name is viewed as a talisman,
and, as to his successes, they were so singularly
fortuitous that from them originated the familiar
proverb, " Although the fool sleeps, yet his net
gets full of fish !"* Him and such as him we
colloquially speak of as "lucky birds !"t And
lucky birds indeed they are. But what of the
wise ? What are the proverbial sayings that
apply most appropriately to them ? Why, when
we speak of a wise man we proverbially describe
him as one who has been " born under an evil
star," one whose " horse will never carry him
to the front," and whose " gold is all of the
Toulouse (to lose) kind!" X I might quote

* The Athenian general Timotheus, although but an indifferent
strategist, was yet so continually successful that he has been
represented as "sleeping by the side of Fortune, whilst the
goddess drove cities into his net."

f The old Greek proverb here quoted by Erasmus would be
unintelligible to people in general, so I give the above as of
somewhat equivalent sense. At Athens the owl, being sacred to
Minerva, was regarded as a bird of good omen, and so when the
proverb, " The owl flies," was applied to a man it simply meant
that he was a man of uncommon luck, or, as we jestingly say,
" a lucky bird."

X "Aurum Tolosanum." The saying originated in the fact
that the Consul Caepio, after plundering the temple of Minerva294

numerous other familiar adages to the same
effect, but I forbear, lest I should seem to have
been pilfering them from the collection of my
friend Erasmus.*

To go on, however, with my remarks. I
was saying just now that Fortune favours fools.
I repeat the assertion. She favours, I maintain,
hare-brained, slap-dash fools—idiotic fellows fond
of rushing into all kinds of risks, and who
fearlessly trust their success to the turn of a
die. Wisdom, on the other hand, renders men
nervously timid of bold adventures, and therefore
deters them from all sorts of projects which
would result in their gain. The consequence
is that, as a rule, you find wise men eking
out a miserable existence in poverty, starvation,

at Tolosa of a vast quantity of gold, was never afterwards
fortunate. The modern name of the town by an obvious double
entendre very happily explains the meaning of the expression.

* The first edition of Erasmus's collection of " Adages ; or
Proverbial Sayings of the Ancients " was published in Paris in the
year 1500. A second edition greatly added to and improved was
published in 1508. The Satirist here, as Listrius intimates, gives
a sly thrust at certain contemporary authors, though mentioning
none of them by name. He imputes their propensity to steal
other people's ideas to their poverty in ideas of their own—in
short, to their stupidity and folly—by representing Folly as a
plagiarist.295

and squalor, neglected, unhonoured, and disliked;
whereas you see fools rolling in riches, pro-
moted to offices of state, and flourishing in
every manner conceivable !

And here, let me ask you a plain question.
Do any of you consider it a desirable thing
to win the good graces of the noble, and to
be received into the society of the jewelled
magnates of the court ? No doubt, you do.
Well then, let me tell you this—they are all
votaries of mine, and whoever wishes to commend
himself to them can possess nothing more useless
than wisdom, nothing more absolutely damning
to all his prospects of success!

Again ; some of you, probably, would like
to get rich. Let me assure you, then, that no
trader will ever get rich who puts faith in the
sentiments of wisdom. Wisdom says, Avoid
perjury, blush to tell a lie, commit no petty
thefts, scorn dishonest gains. Such balderdash
scruples must be scattered to the winds!

Again, perhaps, some of you may be fired
with an ambition to get advanced in the church,
and to obtain some portion of the spoils and
honours that fall to the share of ecclesiastics.2g6

Steer clear of wisdom, then, my friends—steer
clear of wisdom, or assuredly you will have the
mortification to behold many a stupid dolt of a
fellow, as witless as a jackass, and with a voice
like a bull, passing you on the road to preferment!*

Some of you, again, it may be, have formed
an intention of entering at some time or another
of your lives into the condition of matrimony.
And a very good intention too. However, a
needful caution I must impart to you, and it is
this—If you wish to get a wife, mind above all
things that you beware of wisdom; for the girls,
without exception, are heart and soul so devoted
to fools that you may rely upon it a man who
has any wisdom in him they will shun as they
would a vampire !

But, finally, whoever you are, and whatever
may be your plans for the future, you will
assuredly all of you regard a life of jollity as

* Things have changed for the better since the age of
Erasmus, yet even now, unfortunately, it is not invariably the
wisest clerics who obtain promotion in the church, but those
whose opinions accord with the traditional theology of the time.
Let any of the latter who, in these days of free speaking and
free literature, may have fears about their orthodoxy remember
the admonition, " Steer clear of Wisdom," and let them remem-
ber, too, that it is the admonition of Folly.297

an object worthy of your seeking. Keep away
then, above everything, from all contact with
the wise ; never mind what mere low degraded
animals the people you consort with may be—
prefer them to men of wisdom !

And now—to sum up much in a few words.
Go amongst what classes of men you will; go
amongst popes, princes, judges, magistrates,
friends, foes, great men, little men, and you
will not fail to discover that a man with plenty
of money at his command has it in his power
to obtain everything that he sets his heart upon.
A wise man, however, despises money. And what
is the consequence ? Everyone despises him !

KKChapter XII.

Stultitia Backs up her Opinions by Authorities Profane
and Sacred, and Gives Instances of the Fallacious
Arguments of Divines.

But although I might proceed for ever with
my praises, since in very truth they are without
measure and without end, yet of necessity,
sooner or later, I must bring this speech to a
conclusion. I will, however, before doing this,
show you in as few words as I can how many
great and distinguished authors there have been
who have not only proved themselves living
illustrations of me (Folly) in their conduct, but
have also, in their appreciation of my excellence,
advocated my cause in their writings. I shall
thus avoid the imputation of being the sole
trumpeter of my praises, and shall also by
anticipation rebut the calumny of the lawyers
that I have nothing to " allege" in my defence.
I will act then now precisely after the example299

of the lawyers themselves, and " allege "—-just
as they do when they have some suspicious case
to bolster up—a mass of irrelevant* evidence !
If such a mode of demonstration satisfies the
lawyers, it may well—ha, ha!—satisfy me ! So
now to my task.

To begin, then, let me quote—as admirably
adapted to my purpose—an exceedingly well-
known proverb, of the expediency of which I
take for granted you are all of you fully
persuaded. And it is this :—

When you have no proof to bring
Simulation is the thing.f

Quite true ; and consequently in accordance
with this we rightly teach our schoolboys what
an excellent policy it is. For instance, we
impress upon them, in the following hexameter
verse, that

Stultitiam simulare loco sapientia sum ma est,

—in other words that it is the highest wisdom,
when occasion needs it, to simulate folly. A

* ovbev 7rpos e7ros—nihil ad rem.

f To simulate good arguments when none such are forth-
coming Folly here professes to be her policy. . She has certainly
carried it out with much cleverness in this oration.3 00

capital admonition for our schoolboys, undeniably,
and one, too, I doubt not, which—whenever it
suits their purpose to screen themselves from
punishment by pleading ignorance—they eagerly
carry into practice!

Just conceive then now, if you can, what
an immensely good thing folly must be, when
the mere simulation of it—the mere fallacious
shadow and imitation of it—can be thus described
by learned men as deserving of such unqualified
commendation !

But far more remarkable still are the
compliments that are bestowed on folly by the
poet Horace—the most distinguished of all those
sleek and self-indulgent libertines who in former
ages used to wallow like hogs in the mire of
Epicurus,* and whose words therefore will
naturally be all the more likely to receive your
approval and attention. Well ; this illustrious
authority teaches us, with a candour infinitely
to his credit, that wisdom's gravest counsels

* Horace was certainly very epicurean in his opinions and
mode of life, though the acknowledged adherent of no particular
school of philosophical thought. He professes himself an
independent thinker,

" Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri."30i

will fall flat unless enlivened by interludes of folly.

The dreary arguments of reason
Let interludes of folly season.

He besottedly adds, " Such interludes should be
brief," but in that I differ from him of course!

Again, he exclaims—enraptured, no doubt,
with the charms of merry-andrewing—

'Tis sweet, 'tis passing sweet, I say,

At proper times the fool to play.

And in another place—

I vow that I'd rather be giddy—nay mad
Than pass a dull life of it sapient and sad.*

And in Homer's Odyssey we find that the
poet immediately after he had praised Telemachus
in unmeasured terms, goes on forthwith to
speak of him as being an example of " simplicity"
itselff (yijirio?)—the very expression, I would have
you observe, which the tragic writers are accus-
tomed to apply to children and young men as
an epithet of their transcendent approval!

* The allusion here is to Hor. Ep, ii., 2, 126, 128 : and in the
passages above to Carm. iv., 12, 27, 28. Stultitia, when it suits
her purpose so to do, cleverly distorts the meaning of her
quotations by separating them from their context—a dodge of
controversy of which, no doubt, the period of our satirist
* afforded some pertinent examples.

f Stultitia chooses to understand the expression " simplicity "
as equivalent to simple-mindedness or folly, and so represents
the poets as commending folly!302

The sacred poem of the Iliad, again, what
is it throughout but a mere panegyric on folly
—an eulogistic glorification, from one end of it
to another, of the wrathful exploits of a set of
fools of kings and fools of people!

Cicero, again, lays it down absolutely as a
law—as a fact impossible to be disputed—that
" folly abounds everywhere." Now you are all
of you, of course, aware that blessings benefit
the world precisely in proportion to their
diffusion. What a godsend, then, must folly
be whose influence is thus confessedly diffused
amongst mankind in all quarters whatsoever!

But probably the authority of these great
heathen worthies will be regarded by Christians
as of little weight. I will therefore, with your
permission, go on now to prop up my praises
by "pouring forth," as our learned doctors say,
a " flood " of quotations in my favour from
writings which they acknowledge as divine.* In

* Folly proceeds to quote Scripture. It is to be regretted
that our satirist did not somewhat curb his playfulness here. At
the same time it should be borne in mind that under the fallacious
arguments of Stultitia he is really drawing a mocking caricature
of the tactics of ex parte theologians, and showing how, by
unfair quotation and exposition, Scripture may be plausibly
represented as upholding almost anything.3°3

strict propriety, no doubt, before doing this I
ought first to supplicate the theologians to grant
me their leave to trespass thus on their peculiar
province. But—ha, ha !—never mind, I will assume
their consent to have been conceded!

It might be prudent, too, since I am now
about to venture on a difficult undertaking, to
appeal again to the Muses to descend from their
abode on Helicon, and assist me in my perilous
task. However, it might perhaps be considered
profane in me to do this ; and, certainly, it is
hardly likely, in a matter so foreign to their
taste, that I should get much help from them.
So I will simply do this. I will act on the
hope — as I think I justly may — that, whilst I
play the part of a theologian, a theological
spirit may possess me ; for assuredly the soul
of Duns Scotus, bristling with subtleties like a
porcupine with quills, will hardly allow so excellent
an opportunity to be thrown away. No, no—
he will, I doubt not, eagerly migrate hither from
the gloomy portals of his Tartarean Sorbonne,*

* Duns Scotus, though born in Northumberland, and educated
at Oxford, was afterwards for a considerable time eminent as a
theological professor in the university of Paris.304

and entering my breast inspire me with all the
arguments I need! After that he may go whither
he listeth, and be off to the crows* for me!

But, Oh! that I could change my looks !
Oh! that I could assume a more demure ap-
pearance, and disguise myself in the garb of
a reverend ecclesiastic ! . I am filled with
apprehension too, lest, in displaying before you
the vast mass of theological materials that I
have at my command, some one or another of
our grave doctors should rise up and accuse
me of having been plundering on the sly the
contents of his portfolio. What, however, if I
have pilfered a few ideas from the parsons ?
Surely it is very natural. Even the fig-tree
god Priapus caught up the Greek expressions
let fall by his master, and the paltry Lucian
cock, from long intercourse with men, actually
crowed in human words ! What wonder then if
I, whose converse with divines has been so
exceedingly prolonged and intimate, should in-
cidentally adopt as my own some of the verbiage
they employ ?

* C9 Kopaica<?—" to the crows "—birds of ill omen. The
meaning is, " And may ill luck attend him ! "3°5

Well, now—with good luck—to my task.
In the Book of Ecclesiastes the first' chapter,
the fifteenth verse, you will find it written,*
" The number of fools is infinite."")" Since then
the Preacher thus declares their number to be
infinite, it must be plain to you, surely, that he
includes under that number all mortal men what-
soever — except, may be, an insignificant few
whom, so far as I know, no one has ever set
eyes on !

Jeremiah is more ingenuous still, affirming,
as he does, in the tenth chapter of his prophecies,$
that—so far from being made wise—every man
by his wisdom is actually made a fool of! He
attributes wisdom solely to God, but men—one
and all—he pronounces .to be fools !

And in accordance with this he says a little
before,|| " Let no man glory in his wisdom."
Somebody will perhaps ejaculate, " But why so,

* Listrius observes that the author here ridicules the pedantic
custom of certain divines of his day of never making a simple
quotation from the Bible in the course of their addresses without
particularly mentioning the book, chapter, and verse from whence
it was derived, as if they thought that doing this was a wonderful
evidence of their erudition.

f So the words are in the Vulgate and in the Douay translation,
•j Jer. x., i^.	|| Jer. ix., 23.

LL306

0 most excellent Jeremiah ? Why will you
permit no man to glory in the possession of so
divine an endowment as wisdom ?" " Why, for
the best of all reasons," he will reply; "because
no man has got any wisdom to glory in !"

But to return to Ecclesiastes. When this
writer exclaims, " Vanity of vanities ; all is
vanity,"* what else do you suppose he means
to assert but exactly what I have all along been
insisting on—that the world is a vanity-fair, a
mere play-ground of human absurdity ? In short,
he puts a spoke into the wheel of Cicero, and
corroborates that justly celebrated dictum of his,
referred to above, concerning the universal pre-
valence of folly !

Again, in the book of Ecclesiasticus we read,
" A fool changeth as the moon, but he who is
wise standeth fast as the sun."f Now, interpreters
are agreed that the moon, dark in itself, aptly
symbolises the condition of the race of man—
of all human beings without exception — whilst
the sun, as the fountain of light, is an emblem
of God. It follows, then, that God is here
evidently represented as alone wise, and that the
* Eccles. i., 2.	f Ecclus. xxvii., u.3°7

race of man, all human beings without exception,
are as evidently characterised as fools !

The same conclusion it is easy to deduce
from the assertion of Christ in the Gospels, that
no one can be justly called good but God only;*
for if, as the stoics affirm, all who are not wise
are fools, and those alone wise who are good,
it follows, as a necessary consequence, that folly
embraces the whole human species ; for where,
I should like to know, can a good man be
found ? Echo answers—Where !

Again, Solomon says in the 15th chapter of
the 'Book of Proverbs, " Folly is joy to him who
is destitute of Wisdom,"f evidently confessing,
I beg you to perceive, that there can be no
pleasure in life without folly !

And to the same effect does he say in
another place,X " In much wisdom is much
grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth
sorrow."

And again, " The heart of the wise is in
the house of mourning, and the heart of fools
is in the house of mirth." ||

* Matt, xix., 17 ; Mark x., 18 ; Luke xviii., 19.

t Prov. xv., 21. | Eccles. i., 18. || Eccles. vii., 43°S

Hence, in his own case, not finding- it
sufficient for his happiness to be devoted to
the study of wisdom, he had recourse also, of
necessity, to the study of folly ! You do not
believe me, perhaps. Well then, hear his own
words, " I gave my heart to know wisdom, and
to know madness and folly /"*

And here I would remark that by naming
folly last he evidently prefers it first. How so ?
you will ask. Well, I will tell you. The
writer, you know, is called Ecclesiastes. We
must, therefore, give to his words an ecclesiastical
interpretation. Now, since it is, as you are
aware, a recognised ecclesiastical rule that the
highest dignitaries should always come last, it
follows that Ecclesiastes, by placing folly last—
and actually anticipating in doing so a precept
of the Gospelf—proclaims folly to be worthy
of our especial veneration !

And that folly is more excellent than wisdom
Ecclesiasticus, too—whoever he may have been
—bears the very clearest testimony. I won't

* Eccles. i., 17.

f "The last shall be first "—Matt, xix., 30 ; xx., 16 ; Mark x.,
31 ; Luke xiii., 30.3°9

quote his words, however, until I shall first
have extorted from you the confession that the
inference which I draw from them is correct.
In order to this, I will adopt what Plato tells
us was the method of Socrates with his disciples,
and will request you to answer me this question.
Do you usually hide away in your strong boxes
things which are rare and precious, or things
which are of no value at all ? You hesitate
to reply. Well; since you appear so diffident,
I will supply an answer for you from a proverbial
saying of the Greeks, the import of which,
since it is quoted approvingly by Aristotle—
whom all our reverend doctors swear by as their
infallible god—you will, no doubt, appreciate
accordingly. It is this—

What is worthless men display,

What is good they hide away

True, they do; and I will put it to your own
experience whether you do not do so yourselves.
Would any one of you be such an egregious
fool as to leave valuables—such as jewels and
gold—unprotectedly displayed by the road-side?

* The Greek saying in the Rhetoric—trjv 'eVi 6vpai<$ 'vSpiav—
would convey no sense to most readers. I have, therefore, thus
represented its meaning as explained by Listrius.3io

By Hercules f I should think not. You would
lock them up with the utmost care in dark and
concealed recesses ; you would securely stow
them away in the most secret corners of the
strongest of your strong boxes, and would never
leave them out carelessly and dangerously
exposed. Valueless things you might leave
exposed, but priceless treasures you would
diligently conceal.

And now you will be prepared to accept
the inference which I wish you to draw from
the passage in Ecclesiasticus to which I referred
you above. My assertion is that he teaches
that folly is more excellent than wisdom ; for
what are his words ? " Better is he that hideth
his folly than a man that hideth his wisdom."*
What a priceless treasure, then, must folly be
which is thus to be hidden and concealed!
How infinitely more excellent than wisdom !f

* Ecclus. xx., 31.

f In all this fallacious reasoning assigned to Stultitia, Erasmus
is really mocking and satirising the controversialists and preachers
of his day; representing them as, either designedly or ignorantly,
perverting the sense of Scripture, and so twisting and turning
its words as to make them mean anything whatever that suited
their purpose. Scripture, I fear, is too often quoted in the same
random fashion still, and thus made to support the most contra-
dictory propositions.3H

Moreover, the sacred Scriptures represent
fools as men characterised by an extraordinary-
generosity of disposition. Now a wise man,
you know, looks down with contempt upon
everybody else; whereas, on the other hand, a
fool esteems all other men as his equals.
Ecclesiastes tells us so, if I rightly understand
him, when he says, " A fool when he walketh
in the way, because he is a fool, deemeth all
other men to be fools like himself.'1'1* Now this,
I take it, is a striking evidence of his generosity!
And for the following reason. Every man,
you know, thinks prodigiously well of himself.
If then a fool thinks all other men to be fools
like himself he necessarily entertains of all
other men a prodigiously high opinion, and
affords us a remarkable example of large-hearted
and noble generosity!

Is then the name of Fool a name to be

ashamed of? I trow not. Not even was King

Solomon ashamed of it. He says plainly, " I

am the most foolish of men."f St. Paul,

* Eccles. 3, as in the Vulgate. A.V. differs.

f Prov. xxx., 2, as in the Vulgate and Douay Versions. The
words are professedly those of " Agur the son of Jakeh," and
not of King Solomon as Stultitia represents. ,312

again, the great teacher of the Gentiles, was
not ashamed of it. On the contrary, he glories
in it. Writing to the Corinthians he arrogates
to himself the appellation as a title of especial
honour. " I speak as a fool," he exclaims.
And here I would beg you to notice very
particularly the words which follow. Not content
with simply telling us that he was a fool, he
actually goes on to say, " I am more,"* as if
he considered that it would be nothing less
than a disgrace in so distinguished a worthy as
himself to be surpassed in folly by any human
creature whatever! f

Ah ! I thought it would be so. I hear a flock
of Greek commentators already cackling out their
objections to my interpretation. Conceited ped-
ants ! With their bewildering annotations $ they
are misleading all the theologians of the day,

* II. Cor. xi., 23.

f Stultitia's distortion of the Apostle's meaning is, of course,
egregious. Her method of argumentation, however, is a fair
caricature and reductio ad absurdum of no small amount of
theological special pleading.

X Erasmus had already written copious " annotations " on the
New Testament, having brought out Valla's Annotations in 1505,
and having now commenced his famous translation with annota-
tions of the Greek Testament.3i3

and throwing- dust into the eyes of everybody
else. But—dear me ! what now do I see ? Why
actually second if not first amongst them is- one
of the aptest of my pupils—Erasmus ! *—of whom
for his reputation's sake f I have already more
than once made honourable mention. What will
happen next—I wonder ?

Well; they are screeching out to me that
my statement is ridiculously erroneous ; that I
could not have made one more thoroughly
worthy of myself; % that the meaning of the
apostle was altogether different from what I
have imagined it ; that he never said that he
was a greater fool than other people at all;
that what he asserted was—that, if others were
ministers of Christ, so also was he ; and that
—as one who was surely entitled to boast

* Erasmus here makes Stultitia describe him as being, if not
the first Greek scholar of his day, at any rate the second—" Si
non Alpha certe Beta est meus Erasmus." In Latin scholarship
he felt himself unrivalled, and in Greek second only to Budaeus.
But though Budaeus may have surpassed Erasmus in a knowledge
of Greek, in general learning and in intellectual gifts he was, by
a long distance, his inferior.

f Stultitia speaks of Erasmus as having the reputation of
being a fool—" one of the aptest of her pupils ! "

{ More thoroughly worthy of Folly—more thoroughly foolish,
that is.

MM314

somewhat of himself in this particular, knowing
himself to be very considerably superior to any
other of the apostles—he did not rest satisfied
with declaring that he was their equal, but
corrected himself and said "I am more." And
then they go on to explain that, wishing this
high opinion that he entertained of himself to
be accepted as true, since otherwise very
naturally such a boastful assertion as he made
about himself would have been disgusting in
the ears of all sensible people, he very judiciously
sheltered himself under the guise of folly, and

gave himself out to be a-well—a—" man

less wise "* is the expression they use, in
order that he might thus enjoy a fool's privilege,
and be able to speak the truth without giving
offence to any ! f

Well; what St. Paul may have meant when
he wrote the words alluded to I will leave them

* Vulgate and Douay—" I speak as a man less wise."—A.V.,

" I speak as a fool."—Greek., irapa(f)povCbv X«XtD.

f Stultitia had previously distorted the meaning of the apostle,
and made him out to declare himself a fool; she has now, as a
clever controversialist, distorted the arguments of her opponents.
According to her the apostle was a real fool, and according to
her opponents—so she maintains—he was a pretended one.
Thus either way credit accrues to herself!315

to dispute about as they list. I, for my part,
at any rate, shall continue to follow, as I have
ever done, the guidance of the leading divines
of the day—comfortable, stupid, well-to-do men
of strictly orthodox opinions. And—by Jove !
too—let me tell you this, that the great majority
of our recognised teachers—the parsons—are
quite at one with me here. Almost any one
of them, I venture to say, would infinitely prefer
to remain in the darkest condition of error with
them, than to be taught the truth, however
clearly, by any of these new-fangled, three-
tongued* monstrosities ! No ; they have no
more respect, you may depend upon it, for any
of these crackjaws than they would have for so
many jackdaws !f For have they not a far-
famed theologian^ of their own who contradicts
in his works every assertion that they make ?
If I mentioned his name I should only afford

* " Three-tongued " — as being acquainted with the three
learned languages—Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

f There is a play on the words Graeculos, " contemptible Greek
scholars," and graculos " jackdaws."

X " Gloriosus theologus." The word gloriosus has a double
meaning. It is, of course, used here satirically, and implies not
only that he was held in high repute in a world of fools, but also
that he was a self-asserting braggart.31S

them an opportunity of throwing dirt at him in
Greek, and of sneering at him as " the ass of
the lyre," so out of prudence I will withhold
it.* Well ; this far-famed theologian, as luck
will have it, has ventured on an authoritative
explanation-]- of the very passage we have been
considering—an explanation which, I beg leave
to say, exactly tallies with my own. To the
words, " I speak as a man less wise—I am
more," he has devoted an entire chapter.
And — which argues much surely for his im-
mense dialectical skill — to this chapter he has
appended a lengthy supplementary section.
And how do you think he explains the apostle's
assertion that he was " a man less wise ? "
Why in this way. I quote his own actual
words not only " in form," but also " in sub-
stance,so that there can be no mistake about

* Stultitia, although professing to withhold his name, has
really revealed it! The old Greek byeword which she has just
quoted points out exactly who he was. Nicholas of Lyra is the
theologian intended, so called from the place of his birth near
Evreux, in Normandy. He taught divinity with great reputation
at Paris, wrote copious commentaries on the Bible, and died in
1340. His works, though they have now long been entirely
neglected, were, in the days of Erasmus, held in considerable
esteem.

f An explanation expressed " magistraliter et theologaliter ! "

% Scholastic terms used here derisively.3T7

it. " If," says he, " the apostle was ' little
wise ' " (as of course he must have been) " to
represent himself as being on an equality with
false apostles, he must necessarily have been
' less wise' to represent himself as being superior
to them." That is sound logic at any rate !
So then it comes to this—that the apostle was
much such a fool as I called him ! though,
nevertheless, I must admit that, a few lines
lower down, the author, forgetting entirely
what he had previously said, is so grossly and
senselessly inconsistent as to go off in a different
strain altogether !

But why should I be at the pains to produce
individual instances like the above in proof of
what is patent to everybody—namely, that it is
the universal habit of divines to interpret
Scripture after my fashion ? In fact, it is a
right allowed them by popular acquiescence to
measure heaven, as it were, with a foot-rule,
to twist and turn the meaning of the Bible
into any shape they please. And, as a model
to guide them, they have no less a dignitary
than the apostle St. Paul, who—if any credence
can possibly be placed in the statements of3iS

such a learned pentaglot* as Jerome—was
certainly a practised adept at misquoting- and
misinterpreting, since the words of divine
scripture, as quoted by him, have frequently a
totally different meaning assigned to them from
what they have in the passages from which he
takes them. Once when he happened to be at
Athens, and by chance beheld an inscription
on a heathen altar, he actually converted it
into an argument for the Christian faith ! You
will wonder probably how he accomplished this.
Well, he did it in a very easy way indeed.
He simply omitted all the words in the
inscription which it did not suit him to quote,
and cited only those which he wanted—namely,
two of the last of them! And even those two
he did not render correctly ! The whole title
originally ran :—" To the Gods of Asia, of
Europe, and of Africa; To Gods Unknown
and Foreign—Dns Ignotis ex Peregrinis—is

*A "pentaglot"—a man acquainted with five languages.
Jerome who revised the versio vetus of the Scriptures, and made
a new Latin translation of various books from Hebrew and
Chaldee, must necessarily have been acquainted with five
languages—viz.: Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, Latin, and his own
native tongue, the Dalmatic.319

this altar raised." Paul quoted it, "To the
Unknown God"—Deo Ignoto ! *

After this apostle's example I suppose it is that
it is the universal custom now with our teachers
the parsons,—worthy descendants of their theo-
logical forefathers — to garble their scriptural
quotations. Picking out four or five words from
this or that biblical passage, and altering them,
if need be, to suit their use, they vaunt them
as upholding no matter what doctrine they may
have to propound, even though the words, as
connected with what precedes and follows them,
really teach—not only something that is alto-
gether different, but—in all probability, the exact
opposite ! And this, indeed, they do with such
consummate audacity that many is the occasion
on which even the very lawyers themselves have
viewed their performances with envy ! For what
in the world is there that cannot be proved by

them in this way ? Why, that great man-

dear me ! I was on the point of letting out
his name,f but have again fortunately checked
myself—fearing the Greek byeword that I should

* Acts xvii., 23.

f As if she had not " let it out" already !320

assuredly have drawn down on his devoted head.
—Well ; that great man whom I alluded to
above actually screwed out a doctrine from the
very words of Christ in St. Luke's Gospel about
as consentaneous with , the mind of Christ as
water is in harmony with fire ! Let me refer
you to the passage on which his comments were
founded. It is one in which the evangelist is
telling of Christ's being in a condition of ex-
treme danger from his foes. Now at such
times, naturally enough, good disciples are
anxiously eager to defend their masters to the
very utmost of their power with any weapons
that they may happen to have at hand. But
Christ did not wish his disciples to fight for
him in this way. On the contrary he desired
to teach them that such instruments of warfare
were quite unnecessary to advance his cause.
In order to impress this upon them, he asked
them whether—when they had gone out at his
command to preach the Gospel, so destitute of
all travelling equipments that they had not even
provided themselves beforehand with shoes to
protect their feet from injury by the thorns or
stones, or bags of provisions for their sustenance321

on the way — he asked them, I say, whether,
when they thus had nothing" whatever of their
own, they had ever been allowed to want ?
Their answer was that they had been in lack
of nothing. On receiving- this reply from them
he went on to say, " But now, he that hath a
purse let him take it, and likewise his scrip ;
and he that hath no sword let him sell his
garment and buy one."* Now, since one para-
mount object of Christ's teaching was undoubtedly
to inspire his followers with a spirit of meekness,
to lead them to repudiate retaliation, and to
abjure revenge, and to lose their very lives
rather than injure any one, it is surely abun-
dantly plain what his meaning in this passage
must be—namely, that those who go forth as
his accredited ambassadors need no worldly
accoutrements to protect them, no shoes, no
staff, no garments even—that, even if they were
absolutely destitute of everything, possessed of
nothing earthly that they could call their own,
they might go forth successfully to fulfil their
mission. There is, however, one thing which
he tells them they will require, and that is a

* Luke xxii., 36.

NN322

"sword"—not indeed a material sword such as
robbers and traitors are assailed with, but—the
Sword of the Spirit, a sword which effectually
penetrates to a man's inmost heart, eradicates
from it all evil affections, and leaves it the
shrine of piety.

Such is the correct interpretation of the
passage. But see now, I request you, how our
celebrated theologian twists it. He represents
Christ, by enjoining his disciples to be armed
with a "sword," as counselling them to be
equipped with an ample supply of death-dealing
weapons to secure them against the risks of
persecution; and explains that, when he told
them to take a " bag," he meant a goodly
bag-full of provisions!—-just as if Christ, who
had said immediately before that he sent out
his preachers " without purse, or scrip," or
anything,* was so changeable in mind that
what he affirmed one moment he absolutely
contradicted the next; as if—forgetting that he
had said, " Blessed are ye when men shall
revile you and persecute you, and say all
manner of evil against you;"f forgetting that
* "Parum	instructos." f Matt, v., il323

he had said, "Blessed are"—not the ferocious,
but—"the meek;* forgetting that he had bidden
them look to the fowls of the air and the lilies
of the field as examples of the trusting confidence
they should place in the protection and providence
of the Almightyf—as if Christ, I say, forgetting
all this, could have become suddenly so enamoured
of the " sword," as to bid his disciples to sell
the very clothes off their backs, and to go
forth naked as they were born, rather than be
unprovided with a bludgeon !

And as he thinks that by a " sword" is
meant all things needful for warlike operations,
so by a " bag " he understands a plentiful
supply of the creature-comforts of life. Hence
it comes to this, that this able expositor of
the divine mind represents the apostles, as
setting out to preach the religion of the
Crucified, armed with pikes, slings, cross-bows,
and blunderbusses ! He also loads them with •
travelling bags, portmanteaus, and band-boxes, and
provides them, furthermore, with hampers packed
copiously with " prog," so that—go where they
might—they should not go without their dinners !

* Matt, v., 5.	f Matt, vi., 26, 28.324

Nor is he in the least shaken from his
view of the passage we have been speaking of
by the highly important consideration that
although Christ so emphatically commanded his
disciples to procure a sword, he yet, almost
immediately afterwards, severely upbraided one
of them* for venturing to draw from its
scabbard a sword which he had been careful
to obtain. And, surely, I may add, such a
thing was never heard of as the apostles of
Christ going forth with shields and poignards
to resist the violence of their heathen foes.
Yet this they would undoubtedly have done had
Christ's words meant what our expositor has so
ingeniously supposed.

Again, another theologian, whose name for
his reputation's sakef I forbear to mention—
though his name is by no means an unknown
one—when commenting on a verse in the prophet
Habakkuk which says, referring to tents of skins,
" The skins of the land of Midian shall be

* Matt, xxvi., 52 ; Luke xxii., 50, 51 ; John xviii., 11.

f Stultitia spoke of Erasmus as one who had the reputation of
being a fool; she speaks of this theologian as one who really
was a fool, though he had the reputation of being wise.325

troubled," actually extracted from it the astounding
interpretation that Habakkuk here, with prophetic
foresight, was alluding to the skin of excoriated
Bartholomew! *

I was present myself lately at a theological
conference—for it is my usual practice, you know,
to frequent such meetings']*—when some one in
the room enquired what authority there was in
Scripture for the burning of heretics ? Would it
not be far better, he asked, to endeavour to
convert their minds by argument than to convert
their bodies into ashes by the flames ? On this
a gruff old duffer in the company, whose super-
cilious bearing unmistakeably pronounced him a

* St. Bartholomew is traditionally said to have been martyred
in India by being flayed alive. The passage referred to is
Habakkuk iii., 7, as in the Vulgate. In the Douay version it is
thus translated :—" I saw the tents of Ethiopia for their iniquity;
the curtains of the land of Midian shall be troubled." The
commentator, no doubt, took Ethiopia, which a foot-note in the
Douay Bible calls " the land of the Blacks," as indicating
India; but how he could have turned " the skins of the land of
Midian " into the skin of Bartholomew it is difficult to conceive.

f Folly professes to be usually present at clerical meetings !
The Conference alluded to, according to Mr. Seebohm (Oxford
Reformers), occurred during the Session of Convocation in 1512.
" The following story," says Mr. Drummond (Life of Erasmus
Vol. 1, p. 199), " it would seem, was a true one, which Erasmus
had from Colet, and the scene took place in St. Paul's Cathedral."326

divine, replied with an air of pomposity which
I shall not easily forget, that the law in question
was enacted by no less an authority than the
apostle St. Paul ! Paul, he averred, distinctly
laid it down as a rule that an heretical man, after
one or two rebukes, should be put out of existence.
"Yes; 'out of existence' "—he repeated in a
tone of thunder so as to give additional emphasis
to his words—" a man that is an heretic, according
to the apostle, must be put out of existence I"*
Many present wondered what had come over the
man that he should make such a preposterous
assertion, when gradually the truth dawned upon
the minds of some of them that the speaker
was actually arguing under the ridiculous impres-
sion that the word devita was identical with de vita !
These laughed at him of course, but as for the
rest they considered his interpretation as eminently
sound and satisfactory!

But the speaker was not to be put down by
a few noisy dissentients. No; he was far too
clever a controversialist for that—far too " irre-
fragable " a disputant ; so, one Scripture-proof

* The allusion is to Titus iii., 10, as in the Vulgate—
" Hasreticum hominem devita."32 7

failing him, he was speedily ready' with another.
Well; having concluded his harangue—which, by
the way, he did not do without repeated interruption
—he summed up the matter in the following
-triumphant fashion. " And now," said he, " I
have done. I have proved my case. It is written,
' Thou shalt not suffer evil-doers to live.'* Every
heretic is an evil-doer. Therefore, &c."f

All were struck with admiration at the
ingenuity of this argument, and the doctor sat
down amidst a perfect stampede of applause !
And—actually—there was not a single individual
present who was learned enough to be aware
that "evil-doers" here is a wrong translation of
the original Hebrew, and that the law in question
was never applied but to sorcerers, conjurors,
and wizards ! Neither, again, did any one of
them perceive that if all evildoers should be put

* Exodus xxii., 18.—Vulgate—" nialeficos " (evil-doers);
Douay—"wizards ; " A.V.—"a witch"

f The author, as Listrius remarks, ridicules here the frigid
syllogisms which were in vogue with the theologians of his time.
They seemed to imagine that a conclusion must be true because
founded on premisses conventionally accepted as true, and did
not appear to be aware that an extravagant and unreasonable
conclusion is in itself a reductio ad absurdum of the premisses on
which it is founded.to death, not only should the penalty of death be
the portion of heretics, but of drunkards and
sensualists as well. No, no,—-they could not see
that! It would hardly have suited them, I fancy!

But it were foolish to give further instances
of the fallacious argumentations of our divines;
for, indeed, so innumerable are they that, were
I to write down but a bare catalogue of them,
I should have to fill more volumes than ever
Chrysippus or Didymus composed.* It will,
therefore, I presume, be allowed to be excusable
in a mere amateur theologian like myself not to
have undertaken here a minute assessment of
them all.

I return then to St. Paul. " Ye put up
gladly," he says, "with fools "f—speaking of
himself! And again, "Receive me as a fool."J
And this—" I speak it not after the Lord but
as it were foolishly."|| And, again, elsewhere,
"We are fools for Christ's sake."§ Oh! what
encomiums on folly are these ; and — from the
lips of what an author !

* Chrysippus is said to have written upwards of three hundred
treatises, and Didymus a thousand.

f I. Cor. xi., 19. t II. Cor. xi., 16. || II. Cor. xi., 17.

§ I. Cor. iv., 10.329

But hear him further. He is openly incul-
cating' folly as above all things necessary to the
Corinthians, and conducive to the welfare of their
city. " If any man amongst you," says he,
" seemeth to be wise, let him become a fool
that he may be wise."*

And in St. Luke's Gospel we are told that
when Jesus Christ fell in with two of his disciples
on their way to Emmaus he positively accosted
them as fools ! f

Now whether or not it may strike you as
extraordinary I do not know, but it is nevertheless
true that St. Paul actually attributes a certain
kind of folly even to God ! He plainly says,
"The foolishness of God is wiser than men."J
And, again, that there is a peculiar sort of

* I. Cor. iii., 18.	f Luke xxiv. 25.

J I. Cor. i., 25. Mr. Drummond justly remarks :—"The free
way in which Scripture is (here) handled, and even the most
sacred names introduced, while it shows certainly great want of
taste, if not even want of reverence, might reasonably have
given offence to persons who were neither very superstitious nor
very bigoted. The age, however, was one in which there was
hardly any reverence and a great deal of superstition and
bigotry. Yet Erasmus afterwards became sensible of this error,
and acknowledged that he ought at least to have foreborne from
introducing the name of Christ in a humorous composition like
the Moria—Life of Erasmus, Vol. 1, p. 200.

OO33°

foolishness attributable to God is furthermore
manifest from the interpretation of this passage
by Origen.* And he very forcibly points out,
too, how the foolishness of God differs from the
foolishness of men ; for whereas the preaching of
the cross of Christ is held in the highest estimation
by God, by foolish, perishing men it is despised
as utter foolishness ! f

But what need is there for me to be
substantiating my case by so many scripture
proofs when one alone will suffice ? Christ
himself says to his Father in the mystic psalms,J
"Thou knowest my foolishness !" ||

Nor do I speak rashly in stating that fools
are the especial favourites of heaven ; for it is,
I presume, with God, much as it is with the
highest of our earthly potentates,§ who invariably
hold in suspicion and aversion men of superior
intelligence—just as Julius Csesar, who had no

* Origen Cont. Cels. i, xiii.	f I. Cor. i., 18.

J " Mystic psalms "—Psalms which have a secondary or
spiritual meaning beyond the primary or superficial sense of the
letter.

\\ Psalm Ixix., 5.

§ Of course Folly alone could entertain such a presumption.
The idea, too, of comparing such potentates as Julius Csesar,
Nero, and Dionysius to the Deity !33i

repugnance whatever to a drunken fool like
Antony, hated and detested Brutus and Cassius;
—just as Nero, too, abominated Seneca ; and
Dionysius, Plato—whereas, for men of unusual
dulness and stupidity they display peculiar
partiality !

Similarly, Christ always shunned and repro-
bated your wise, prudent, self - reliant men.
Those whom he consorted with, those who were
first gathered into his church, were unexcep-
tionably fools ! St. Paul bears witness to this
in no obscure terms, when he says, " God hath
chosen the foolish things of this world;"* and
when he says, again, " It pleased God by
foolishness to save the world" f — of course
because it was impossible that it could be saved
by wisdom ! In fact, the Apostle himself con-
fesses. as much as this when he exclaims, in the
language of the prophet, " I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the
prudent I will reject.''^ Thus Christ is repre-
sented as giving thanks to God that He had
concealed the mystery of salvation from the wise,

* I. Cor. i., 27.	f I. Cor. i., 21.

J I. Cor. i., 19. Thus in the Vulgate, and in the Douay Version.332

and had revealed it unto babes*—in other words,
to fools ; for in the original Greek the word
for "babes" is put in opposition to the word
which stands for " the wise," and hence must
here necessarily, as I have said, bear the sense
of " fools ! "

And consistently with this we find that
Christ is everywhere described in the Gospels as
pertinaciously attacking- the Scribes, and Pharisees,
and learned doctors of the law, and as sedulously
defending every ignorant and vulgar simpleton
that came in his way. For when he said
" Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees," f what
otherwise did he mean but " woe unto you, ye
wise men?" Whereas with silly women and
children, and rude unlettered fishermen he ap-
pears to have been mightily delighted.

Moreover, of brute animals those which
pleased Christ most were those which had least
of anything like vulpine sagacity about them.
And thus it was that he preferred to ride on the
back of an ass, when he might, had he so chosen,
have mounted without fear of danger even on
the back of a lion !

* Matt, xi., 25.	f Matt, xxiii., 13, &c. Luke xi., 44.333

Similarly the Holy Ghost descended in the
shape of a dove,* when he might have assumed,
if he had liked it, the form of an eagle or a
vulture !

And to the same effect is the fact that
everywhere in the divine writings frequent mention
is made of such animals as roebucks, kids, and
lambs !

And, again, those disciples of his who were
destined to immortal life Christ distinctly
designates " sheep," since of all animals in the
world, a sheep is the most stupid ! The proverbial
expression " sheepishness " f — which Aristotle
endorses, mind you |—is a sufficient testimony
to this; for it was evidently derived from the
imbecility of that quadruped, and applied as a
term of contempt to shallow-brained nincompoops
of men !

Now it is of such a flock of followers as
this that Jesus Christ professes to be the shepherd,

* Matt, iii., 16 ; Luke iii., 22; John i., 32.

j* 7rpopaTGiov rjOos.

X Stultitia rejoices to fling their great authority—Aristotle, at
the heads of her opponents. The allusion is to Aristotle's
History of Animals—Book ix., where he speaks of the stupidity
of the sheep.334

and delighted, too, himself in the name of Lamb.
Hence, when John the Baptist pointed him out
to his disciples, he did so with the exclamation,
"Behold the Lamb of God."* And, moreover,
under this appellation he is often mentioned in
the Apocalypse.

And what does all this manifestly prove
but that mortals—not excepting the most pious
of them—are all fools; and that even Christ—
when, in order to relieve the follies of humanity,
he took upon him human nature, and was
" found in fashion as a man,"t—albeit he was
the very wisdom of the Father^— became in
some sense or another a fool; just as in order
to cure the sins of humanity, in some sense or
another—goodness knows what—he became sin! ||
Nor, I beg you to notice, did he ever wish
to cure them by any other method than by the
foolishness of the cross ; by means of the
preaching of such idiotic, empty-headed num-
skulls as were the apostles; by means of men
whom he sedulously taught folly, and whom he
deterred in every possible manner from acquiring

* John i., 36.	f Phil, ii., 8.

I I. Cor. i., 24,	|| II. Cor. v., 21.335

wisdom, by setting before them as examples
which they should follow such stupid, senseless
things as children, and lilies, and mustard seeds,
and sparrows—things which live solely as nature
leads them, without any artificial contrivings of
their own, and without any solicitude for the
future!

Moreover, when he told them not to con-
sider anxiously beforehand what they should say
when they addressed themselves to kings and
rulers,* and when he forbade them prying into
times and seasons,f it was simply and solely
with the intention of teaching them that all that
they had to do was to trust heart and soul in
Providence, and never on any account to think of
exercising the smallest forethought of their own!

Similarly, God — after he had made the
world—strictly charged our first parents not to
taste of the tree of knowledge^—because, forsooth,
knowledge is the bane of happiness !

St. Paul, again, manifestly condemns know-
ledge as having a " puffing-up" and pernicious
tendency.|| And St. Bernard, I conclude, on his

* Matt, x., 18, 19 ; Mark xiii., 9, 11 ; Luke xii., 11 ; xxi., 12, 14.
f Acts i., 7. J Gen, ii., 17. || I. Cor. viii., 1.336

authority, thought the same, since the mountain
on which he describes Lucifer as having erected
a. throne he interprets to be the mountain of
knowledge !

And another argument which perhaps I ought
not to omit is this—that folly is regarded with
peculiar favour by the potentates of heaven.
Thus if a fool sins his pardon is guaranteed at
once ; whereas if a wise man sins—woe betide
him—for he has no forgiveness at all! Hence
it comes to pass that when men pray for the
pardon of their sins, although they may have
committed them with their eyes open, they in-
variably shelter themselves under the profession
that their misdemeanours were due to their folly!
Thus in the Book of Numbers, if I remember
rightly, Aaron says, deprecating the punishment
that fell upon his sister when he and she
murmured against Moses for taking a wife*—
" I beseech thee, my lord, lay not upon us
this sin which we have foolishly committed." f
Similarly, Saul, excusing himself to David says,
" It is apparent that I have acted foolishly."^

* " Aaron uxoris psenam deprecatur."

f Numb, xii., n, Vulg.

J I. Sam. xxvi., 21, i.e., I. Kings xxvi., Vulg.337

And David himself thus cajoles the Lord :—" I
beseech thee, O Lord, take away the iniquity of
thy servant, for I have done very foolishly."*
He felt sure enough, no doubt, that his only
passport to forgiveness was a plea of ignorance
and folly !

But a more cogent proof still. When Christ
was suspended on the cross, and prayed for his
enemies saying, " Father, forgive them," the
only pretext which he could allege on their
behalf was—their folly, their crass ignorance,
" They know not what they do."f

In like manner * St. Paul, writing to Timothy,
affirms, " I therefore obtained mercy because I
did it ignorantly in unbelief.

"I did it ignorantly," he says. Now what
is that but only another way of saying " I did
it not from malice but from folly?" And, "I
therefore obtained mercy"—what is that but a
confession that had not his folly screened him
no mercy would have been shown him at all ?

The testimony of the mystic psalm-writer,
again—whom, by the way, through lapse of

* II. Sam. xxiv., 10.

f Luke xxiii., 34.	J I. Tim i., 13.

PP338

memory* I omitted to quote in the proper
place—is to the same effect. " The sins of
my youth" says he, " and my ignorances do
not remember." t Now I would have you par-
ticularly to notice here the two allegations which
he urges in his defence, namely, his "youth"
and his " ignorances." He excuses himself on
the plea of "youth," because youth of course is
- the season of folly; and on the plea of his
"ignorances"—speaking in the plural number
observe—in order to make it appear that the
sway of folly over him was so tremendously
great that it fully entitled him to pardon!

* As might be expected in Stultitia.

I Psalm xxiv., 7, as in Vulgate and Douay.Chapter XIII.

Stultitia's most Eager Devotees—The Beatific Happiness
that Awaits them—Conclusion.

And now to sum the matter up, for to
go through all the multitudinous texts which I
could produce in favour of my case were an
endless undertaking indeed. I assert then, as an
incontrovertible fact, that the Christian religion
is entirely a religion of folly, a religion which
has the closest relationship to folly, but with
wisdom no affinity at all! Should any one
desire further evidence of this let him consider
for a moment who the people are who are its
most earnest and devoted adherents. Why,
evidently, those who are the most regular fre-
quenters of the churches, and the most fervent
suppliants at their altars, are not men of the
wiser sort, guided by intelligence and discretion,
but striplings and dotards, women and fools,
who act but as nature prompts them !34°

What, moreover, were the first apostles of
this religion but, as we have already seen, men
whose imbecility was remarkable, and whose
aversion to letters was intense ?

And, lastly, of all simpletons in the world
there can surely be no greater ones than those
of whose minds the craze of Christian piety has
taken possession. See how they act. They give
away their money and their property as if of
no value to them at all ; they tamely submit to
all sorts of wrongs and injuries ; they allow
themselves to be duped and imposed upon ; they
behave towards their foes as if they were
their friends ; they hold all pleasures and enjoy-
ments in absolute contempt ; in fasting, and
watching, and weeping, and toiling, and in
enduring all manner of abuses, they take a
positive delight ; their lives they scorn, to their
deaths they eagerly look forward. In a word
—they are bereft entirely of common sense, and
entertain apparently the absurd delusion that their
very own bodies do not belong to them—utterly
neglecting them, as they do, in order, as they
imagine, to take the better care of their souls
—just as if a man's soul had nothing whatever34i

to do with his body, but existed in some
different habitation !

In all this, I affirm, they act like men
insane. Hence there is the less cause for wonder
that the apostles at Pentecost were mistaken for
drunkards,* and that Paul seemed mad to Festuslf
Well ; since I have now put on the lion's
skin,$ I will venture to go further, and will
proceed to show you that even the happiness
which Christian people seek to get by means
of all their austerities and mortifications is merely
the delightful happiness of a certain species of
insanity ! Never mind the unpleasant name so
long as you recognise the felicitous fact.

In the first place, then, Christians agree
with the Platonists in this—that they entertain
the belief that the energies and aspirations of
the soul are cramped and bound down by the
trammels of the body, so shackled, as it were,
and crushed beneath their weight, that the soul
cannot soar upwards, as it otherwise would, to
the contemplation and fruition of spiritual realities.

* Acts ii., 13.	f Acts xxvi., 24.

J Stultitia, venting her high-flown utterances, compares herself
to the Ass in the Lion's Skin.342

Plato, again, represents philosophy as con-
sisting in a perpetual meditation on death, and
advocates it as an effectual means of drawing
away the soul from visible and corporeal things.
Christians say exactly the same of their religion.
But surely, if philosophy, if religion, draws away
the soul from visible and corporeal things, it is not,
as Plato has it, " a meditation on death," but is—■
to all intents and purposes—actually death itself!
for. it is precisely this that death itself effects.

Now as long as a man's soul remains
contentedly within his body, and uses the organs
of his body in a normal way, the man is
rightly regarded as sane; but if it tries to get
quit of his body—as the souls of religious
people do; if it endeavours to burst its chains,
and to assert its liberty—as if desirous of
escaping from a prison-house—then, I affirm,
the man is subject to insanity. Unquestionably,
if bodily disease, or deranged bodily organs,
caused him to act in this way, by the consent
of all he would at once be pronounced to be
demented. Why should he not be pronounced
to be demented when—under the influence of
religion—he acts precisely as if he were so ?343

People, you are aware, who are confessedly
insane often do very wonderful things. They
sometimes, for instance, predict future events ;
show a familiarity with languages they had never
previously acquired, and with recondite learning
of which they had no previous cognizance. In
short, they in all respects appear as if something
within them of a divine sort was agitating to
deliver itself. And such truly is the case; for
there can be no doubt that these spiritual
manifestations originate from the soul's having
succeeded in liberating itself from some of the
restraints of its bodily accoutrements, and having
consequently begun in some degree to be able
to exercise its exalted inborn powers.

The same I consider to be the cause why
people, in the agonies of approaching death,
frequently—as if verily inspired—give expression,
in the ravings of delirium, to utterances of
portentous extravagance.

Now, as all this happens similarly in the
case of enthusiastic pietists, why should we
hesitate to say, in like manner, of them that
their conduct proceeds from insanity—not, perhaps,
from an insanity precisely the same in kind,344

but still from an insanity so exceedingly like
it as to be characterised as simple insanity by
the run of common-sense men ?

Moreover, these common-sense men are
confirmed in their opinion by observing that
those who are devoted with such ardour to
religion, and whose mode of life differs so
entirely from that of the world in general,
form but an insignificant fraction of the great
bulk of mankind. What more natural conclusion
could they arrive at than that individuals so
eccentric are insane ?

But, after all, it is a case of Plato's cavern*
over again. Those people, you know, who were
confined within the cavern believed that nothing
existed but shadows. The man, however, who
had escaped and come back again, brought with
him the information that he had actually seen
real things, and that therefore his brethren in
the cavern, who believed in nothing but miserable
shadows, were sadly and grievously mistaken.
He commiserated their unfortunate lot, and ex-
pressed his pity for their silly delusion. And
what was the consequence ? Why, that they
* In Book VII. of the Republic,345

laughed at him as a consummate idiot, and
repulsed him with contempt from the cavern!

So it is with people in the world. The
mass of mankind think pious people fools; and
pious people, in their turn, think the same of
the mass of mankind. Thus we find men in
general absorbed in material things, and living
as if they imagined that nothing beyond them
existed. And, contrariwise, we find religious
enthusiasts avoiding material things and devoting
themselves entirely to the contemplation of things
invisible. The former give the first place in
their thoughts to money, the second to the
well-being of their bodies, and the last to the
salvation of their souls—some of them actually
thinking that men have no souls at all because
they cannot see them with their eyes ! On the
other hand, the minds of pious people are
concentrated primarily on God, as being the
most spiritual of all things, and secondarily on
their souls, as being in spirituality akin to God;
but their grosser bodies they treat with neglect;
and, as for money, which is first in the thoughts
of other men, they shun its very touch as
pollution! Or, if they must of necessity deal

QQ34-6

occasionally with so base a thing-, they do it
with disgust and repugnance, handling it as if
they handled it not, and possessing it as though
they possessed it not.*

But pious people have gradations in their
likes and dislikes for various things of the same
general character. Take, for example, the case
of the senses. Now, although of course all the
senses may be said to be connected with the
body, yet some of them—such as the five senses
of touch, hearing, sight, smell, and taste—are
more connected with it than others. Other
senses or faculties—such as memory, and intellect,
and will—belong rather to the soul than the
body, and evidence in a more peculiar way the
soul's activity. Now it is with a man's senses,
or mental faculties, just as it is with the limbs
of the body. Those senses, or faculties, which
are exercised grow strong, whereas those which
are left unexercised grow weak and atrophied
from disuse. Thus with religious enthusiasts—
their minds are wholly bent on spiritual exercises
as remote as possible from the exercise of their
five senses; and the consequence is that their
* L Cor. vii., 29, 30,347

five senses become utterly stunted and blunted,
and saintly men amongst them have been known
to have so lost the sense of taste as actually
to have drunk train-oil mistaking it for wine !*
On the other hand, ordinary men have their
five senses developed to the full, whilst their
higher faculties are dwarfed almost to zero.

Take, again, the case of the passions or
emotions of the mind. Some of them have
undoubtedly a very close affinity indeed with
the grovelling body. Carnal lust, appetite for
food, desire of slumber, and anger, pride, and
envy, are passions or emotions of this kind.
Against these pious people wage irreconcileable
war. But, on the other hand, worldly men
regard life as impossible without them.

And then, again, there are certain other
passions or emotions of a middle, or quasi-^hysicdX
description, such as patriotism, and the affection
which people have for their children, their parents,

* St. Bernard, Listrius observes, once did this. He was
intent upon the study of Scripture, when, being very thirsty, he
took up a tankard that chanced to be near him, and drank what
it contained. This happened to be oil; but, until convinced of
his mistake by a brother monk, he was under the impression that
he had been drinking wine!34§

and their friends. Almost all men hold these in
some degree of estimation. Not so, however,
religious enthusiasts. Even these they would
eradicate and destroy, except in so far as they
find their " content" in what is purely spiritual.
Thus, to make the matter plainer to you, they
declare that it is a man's duty to love his father.
But then he must not love him because he is his
father, that is, because he begat him, for he begat
no part of him but his body, and even of that
our pious people often ascribe the paternity entirely
to God, and not to a man's own natural father
at all ! But let that pass. What they state,
then, is this—that a man ought not to love his
father as. his father, but as—and in so far only
as—he is a good man—one in whom shines
out a reflection of the character of that spiritual
Being of supreme intelligence whom alone they
speak of as the Supreme Good,* and apart from
whom, they teach, there is nothing that is worthy
of being loved, or sought after.

By this same rule they test, and estimate,
all other duties of mankind, viewing them as

* The reader will need scarcely to be reminded that—What is
the summum bonum or " chief good?"—was a long debated
question with the ancient philosophers.349

duties only in proportion as they can make
them out to be services paid, not to the visible
and concrete individuals of which this world is
composed, but to their virtues, or their goodnesses,
or other invisible abstractions. And if they
cannot altogether afford to disregard the visible
things amidst which their lot is cast, yet they
invariably consider them all as being to them
of incalculably less worth than things which are
impossible to be seen!

Again, they say that in duties which belong
specially to religion—such as receiving the
sacraments, and performing acts of piety—there
must be found not only the body but the soul
—in other words—that a man cannot possibly
fulfil aright any religious requirement unless his
soul as well as body is engaged in the work.
Take the case of fasting. Now people in
general imagine that they are very good
Christians indeed if they abstain scrupulously
at certain specified times from animal food, and
retire to bed without their accustomed supper.
But this won't suffice for our pious people.
No ; the soul must needs be concerned in the
matter—the passions must be curbed, anger35°

must be kept down, pride must be driven out,
so that the soul, less impeded by corporeal
entanglements, may rise to the taste and fruition
of the dainties of heaven! *

Similarly, with respect to the Mass, although
they do not consider that the external ceremonies
connected with its celebration should be dispensed
with, yet, at the same time, they regard them
as utterly worthless, and even pernicious, unless
supplemented by spiritual accessories; unless, in
other words, that which is represented by the
visible signs be apprehended devoutly by the
soul. Now in the Mass is pourtrayed, as you
know, the death of Christ. This, they maintain,
men should show forth in their conduct, by
subduing, mortifying, and, as it were, burying,
their worldly and carnal affections, and rising
to a condition of renewed life, in union with
him and one another.

Such are the modes of thinking and acting
of our pious devotees. But how different
altogether are the views and practices of the

* The folly of mere formal fasting is here deservedly ridiculed,
and the folly, 011 the other hand, of superstitious extravagances
of devotion.35.1

people of the world. To them the sacrifice of
the Mass involves no spiritual sacrifice of self
at all. It consists solely in their frequenting'
it at set times with farcical formality; in their
displaying themselves at it when they do so
in as prominent proximity to their altars as
they can ; in their hearing a string of words
mumbled over, which are to them so much sound;
and in their gazing, without emotion, at what is
to them the performance of an idle ceremonial.

Nor is it only the few things which here,
for example's sake, I have instanced, but
absolutely all things whatever that they are
concerned with in life our religious enthusiasts
value—not according to any standard of worldly
utility—but only in so far as they prove a
means of drawing away their souls from the
material things of earth, and fixing them on
things which are spiritual, invisible, and eternal.
And hence it comes to pass that, since there
is the widest divergence of view on every
possible matter between them and the generality
of mankind, they each think the others mad.
The epithet, no doubt, is extremely well suited
to either party. At the same time I cannot352

help expressing my opinion that it is pre-
eminently applicable to those very pious indi-
viduals whose saintliness is more conspicuous
than their sense.*

This will be the more apparent to you if I
now go on, as I promised, to show you, in
few words, that the supreme reward which
religious people aspire to obtain—albeit they
know it not—is really and truly nothing more
or less than to be made exquisitely happy
by being brought under the absolute influence
and control of a certain felicitous description of
insanity.

In proof of this assertion I will first request
you to consider that so eminent an authority
as Plato entertained some such a dream as this
when he described the madness of being in
love as of all madnesses the happiest. And

* Under the words of Stultitia the satirist's own opinion is
transparent. Those—and in his days they were many—who
allowed their religious zeal to overstep the bounds of moderation
he looked upon as irredeemably silly. Formalism he held in
contempt. Some of its votaries were interested hypocrites, and
more still unreasoning dupes ; but pietism, honestly seeking to
please the great God of heaven by extravagances of austerity
and devotion, which reasonable men could view only with pity,
he regarded as infatuation indeed.353

the reason why this passion is so productive of
happiness is this. It makes a man who is
vehemently in love live, so to speak, in a
condition of ecstasy—his whole soul, and mind,
and senses, being- drawn away from himself
towards some other being. And the more this
is so—the more the man's soul and senses are
drawn away from himself towards the object of his

affections, the more and more happy he becomes.
♦

But though happy, he is none the less
insane. His soul is perpetually peregrinating in
thought beyond the bounds of its corporeal
habitation, nor are his bodily actions those of
a sane being. Without doubt, therefore, he is
rightly to be regarded as insane.

If not, I would ask you what meaning there
can be in such expressions as the following
which are familiarly applied to the case of
persons in love. People often, for instance, in
their common talk, pronounce a man in this
happy condition to be " beside himselfthey
beg him " to come back to his senses," and, if
he does so, they congratulate him on " having
return ed to reason."

Yes ; a man in love, though happy, is

RR354

unquestionably insane. And, moreover, the more
absolute control his passion gains over him, the
more utterly insane does it make him, but for-
tunately also the more supremely happy.

We are in a position, then, now to perceive
in what will consist that heavenly happiness
which pious people long after so ardently. It
will result, forsooth, from a beatific insanity,
from the soul's having completed its emancipa-
tion from all bodily thraldom. In fact, the body
will be got rid of altogether. It will be absorbed,
merged, lost, in what is spiritual. The soul, as
the stronger power, will master, will extinguish,
will annihilate it. And this it will do the more
easily, because—in the first place—it will be in
its own proper sphere in the world of spirits,
and secondly, because, in its previous existence
in the material world, it had pretty effectually
prepared the body for this vanishing transforma-
tion by making it all but vanish before, having
so attenuated and spiritualized it by fastings and
mortifications that uncommonly little more in that
direction remained further to be done!

And the soul, too, will lose its former identity.
It will no longer be itself as before, but, in355

some marvellous way, being- controlled by an
energy infinitely more potent than its own, will
be absorbed into the Soul which is supreme.

Thus will the whole man—body and soul—
be lost in a state of ecstasy, being placed out
of himself altogether, not only out of his body,
but also out of his mind, and being blissful in
proportion as he is so, enjoying ineffable trans-
ports of delight from union and coalescence with
that Supreme Soul in whom all happiness is
centred.

Now, although this condition of perfect felicity
is consummated only after the soul has been
clothed in its resurrection-body, and endowed
with immortality; yet, since the whole life of
pious devotees is nothing but one continued
contemplation — in fact, a sort of shadowy
similitude—of the life which is to come, it
naturally happens that some of them experience,
even here, a faint foretaste or anticipation of the
joy that hereafter will be theirs. And though
indeed it is but the minutest drop, so to speak,
of celestial happiness that distils from the
fountain of eternal felicity into their lowly
mundane cup, yet so beatific is its influence3 56

over them that if all the pleasures of the world
could be collected together in a heap, and be
offered them instead, they would spurn them
with absolute aversion. To such a degree do
things spiritual transcend in excellence things
corporeal; so infinitely preferable to things seen
are the unseen realities of heaven. And this
is precisely the prophet's affirmation,—" Eye
hath not see, nor ear heard, neither have
entered into the heart of man the things that
God has prepared for them that love him."*

Now this faint ecstatic foretaste of future
bliss of which I have been speaking, is not
destroyed when death ensues, but is heightened
and brought to perfection. That it is simply
a species of insanity, a peculiar sort of folly,
is evident from the conduct of those few, but
exceptionably happy people, who have been
fortunate enough to experience its delightsomeness.
Their actions, in all respects, are as like as
possible to those of madmen. They babble
incoherent utterances—not speaking like rational
beings, but giving vent to sounds which convey

I. Cor. ii., 9/ quoted from the prophet Isaiah.357

no meaning.* Then all of a sudden they will
change their whole aspect and demeanour. One
moment they will be in transports of joy, the
next they will be moody and sad. Now you
may see them weeping, now laughing, and now
groaning out long-drawn sighs. In a word,
they are utterly beside themselves. And when,
after all this, they return to their sober senses,
they deny that they have any cognizance of what
they have been about. Whether they were in
their . bodies or out of their bodies they cannot
tell ;f whether they were waking or sleeping
they know not ; of what they have heard, or
seen, or said, or done, they have no more than
the haziest recollection. It has all passed over
them like a dream. This alone they know for
certain, that while they were thus mad they
were transcendently happy. And, consequently,
no sooner do they come to themselves again
than they invariably lament it, and long for
nothing better than to be restored to their

* Acts ii., 4. " They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and
began to speak with other tongues as the spirit gave them
utterance." In I. Cor. xii. we have an earlier allusion to the
gift of "diversities of tongues."

f II. Cor. xii., 2, 3.358

beatific condition of insanity, and to remain in
it for ever and ever.*

In all this, I assert, they have a foretaste,
a slight and insufficient one certainly, but still
a true foretaste of the condition of the pious
in futurity!

But—dear me !—to what a length I have
been chattering. Why I had quite forgotten
myself, and have transgressed all reasonable
limits. I have, however, this consolation—that,
although I may appear to have been running
on with more flippancy and loquacity than is
meet, in my character as Stultitia, and in my
sex as a woman, I have an ample excuse and
explanation !

* Of such phenomena of religious enthusiasm and folly as
are here detailed, and which would seem to have been com-
paratively frequent in the days of our satirist, history affords
very numerous examples. The inspiration of the priestesses
of Delphi, for instance, is said to have been accompanied with
frantic gestures. The frenzy, again, of the Flagellants in the
14th century displayed itself in actions of the wildest description.
So with certain of the Huguenots in France, and with the
Lutherans in Sweden. So again with those who in the Middle
Ages were afflicted with the Dancing Mania. So, too, with the
early Methodists, and, more recently, with the revivalists in
Ireland.359

And now, in closing- my address, let me
request you to bear seriously in mind a homely
Greek proverb, which you will all of you do
well to remember. And it is this :—" Even a
man who is a fool has often spoken seasonable
words." But maybe you will deem the sentiment
inapplicable to the utterances of a woman.

Ah ! I see you are looking out for an
epilogue.* You won't get it, however. No;
it is really too stupid of you to suppose that
I, who hardly know what I am saying at the
time, should be able afterwards to recollect
such a farrago of verbiage as I have been
pouring forth. An old dictum has it, " I hate
a fellow-toper with a good memory." The
new version of it I commend to you is this,
" I hate a hearer with a good memory."f So

* " An epilogue "—in the sense of a " summing up " of what
had been previously advanced.

f " A hearer with a good memory"—that is one who remembers
what he hears, and weighs well its meaning. Listrius intimates
that a covert allusion is made here to those who frequent
sermons, and speak of them admiringly, and yet have afterwards
no recollection whatever of what the preachers may have said.
Ask them what this or that sermon that they have just heard was
about, and they cannot tell you. What has entered by one ear
has gone out by the other. So with the hearers of Stultitia's360

now farewell. Loud be your plaudits, long
your lives," and deep your draughts, ye most
distinguished votaries of Folly.#

declamation. They do not recall her remarks, nor appreciate
her meaning, and for this she (Folly) commends them. Wiser
men, however, will discern the satirist beneath the person of
Stultitia, and will ponder his lessons duly.

* An old orator addressing a learned audience would, as a
matter of courtesy, call his hearers viri doctissimi. Stultitia, for
a similar reason, at - the commencement of her declamation,
accosted hers as viri stultissimi. She now applies to them a still
more flattering epithet, and takes her leave of them as " the
most illustrious of fools "—Mortae celeberrimi mystae ! Of course
in Stultitia's compliments there lurks the satirist's derision.

THE END.

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